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@schulzb589 I accept that I haven't given a proof of this impossibility, but I believe the concerns I've laid out could probably be formalised in a way that would lead to one, though it'd involve something like a combinatoric diagonalisation similar to Russell's paradox.

 @paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 To state my issue in a more philosophical way, I think the desire to combinatorially totalise mathematical syntax is an effect of something like a transcendental illusion, what I sometimes call the Mythos of Logos.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 It's the Leibnizian desire to obviate creative dialogical interaction (dialectical reason) by providing a deductive system (monological reason) that would allow us to simply 'shut up and calculate'; the desire to obviate the pragmatic autonomy of discovery by automating it.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 It doesn't matter how many times this desire is betrayed by its own formal tools: Russell, Godel, Turing, Chaitin, etc.; it doesn't matter that these betrayals are what drive the externalisation of thought by producing new tools to automate computation. It always comes back.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 The desire to brute force reality, be it mathematical or empirical, is always lying in wait, whispering seemingly 'reasonable' lies about what is and isn't rationally possible. This is as close as I come to endorsing Heidegger and Adorno's worries about technoscience.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 But for me, technoscience is not generating an external force that saps our critical awareness ('instrumental reason') or disguises the hidden mysteries of human life (Gestell). Its *legitimate* will to power is being betrayed by the very pragmatic instincts that it cultivates.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 This is a broader cultural issue that extends well beyond the bounds of philosophy of computer science, but the latter is the Archimedean point from which maximal rational leverage can be achieved in the forever war on such rational betrayal. That's the gambit of neorationalism.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 But that's merely the most *abstract* line of attack, and there are also a more *concrete* tactics to be deployed in the war against the self-betrayal of freedom. This is where contemporary rationalism bleeds into contemporary Prometheanism: https://t.co/6UcpWWJX8y
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 To take one strand of such Prometheanism, the project of left-accelerationism (l/acc) is to cultivate and reinforce freedom's tendency to expand itself through any means necessary, insofar as this is an ultimate end (categorical imperative) implicit in rational agency itself.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 I'm a Kantian, which means I believe that normative autonomy (qua self-legislation) is an *end in itself*, but I'm also a Spinozist/Foucauldian, which means I believe that the causal underpinnings of such autonomy are something like *means in themselves*.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 This notion of a means-in-itself as opposed to a means to a given range of ends is what @benedict calls a 'platform', and the integrated platform architecture that enables autonomous agency as such is what @bratton calls 'The Stack'. These are the concrete foundations of freedom.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton Freedom's self-betrayal is the tendency of these platforms toward decadence: to retard, disarticulate, and generate points of leverage that some 'users' (putative 'owners') can use to exert and accumulate power over others ('capital') all at the expense of growing agency.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton l/acc has always understood itself as the project of untying the knots that freedom has tied itself in: egalitarian emancipation as an unsnarling of the forces that drive freedom's tendency to ratchet itself, and thereby escape any seemingly 'natural' trap it's been caught up in.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton This is why my own (limited) contribution to the #ACCELERATE reader (https://t.co/bg0QgFT7jK) was to insist on the incorporation of Veblen alongside Marx and Federov as a precursor of contemporary accelerationism.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton As I noted when I shared this article (https://t.co/ST58FHFdZc), it's a tragedy that The Theory of the Leisure Class overshadows The Theory of the Business Enterprise, which presents the most concise and convincing alternative to the normative framework of Marxism that I've seen.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton It's not a complete alternative, or even an entirely incompatible one. I mean to say that it's perhaps the most significant theoretical critique of political economy after Capital. It tells a different story about the internal struggles of capitalism and their inevitable destiny.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton Veblen posits two tendencies that are intertwined within capitalism: the machine process, which is the autocatalytic tendency of *industry* to ratchet human capacity, and the pecuniary drive, which is the autocatalytic tendency of *commerce* to maximise profit/accumulate capital.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton He claims that these competing forms of autocatalysis are in some sense symbiotic: industry provides commerce with its products and services ('the real economy'), while commerce ('the market') modulates the process of industrial refactoring, revision, and expansion.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton Nevertheless, he believes that they are in conflict: the machine process articulates and expands the industrial means (platforms) that constitute the economic base of freedom, while the pecuniary drive will happily sabotage them to seek sources of *rent* and accumulate *capital*.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton The separation of these tendencies is precisely what Nick Land denies in the opening of the 'Teleoplexy' piece that closes the reader (https://t.co/kLgs7WTG0d). This is the crucial explanatory (as opposed to normative) disagreement in the debate between between l/acc and r/acc.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton Land is thus constitutively unable to even comprehend the conflict that Veblen sees here, which is a deep irony, given that he is the consummate thinker of cosmic conflict (https://t.co/CTjHHm50Ei).
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton Rather than inevitable technocapital singularity (or a diverse eschatology), in which artificial intelligence bootstraps itself into existence like a nightmare god (or pantheon) travelling back from the future, Veblen foresees futures dominated either by industry or commerce.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton The choice is between a return to some neofeudal arrangement in which the old hierarchies of power are emulated on a monetary virtual machine (commerce wins), and a technocratic system in which expertise is cultivated and cultivates freedom in turn (industry wins).
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton For anyone who has been paying attention to the evolution of neoliberal capitalism over the last 40 years, the idea that commerce will reimplement feudal structures within a putatively market based system will sound not just plausible, but all too familiar (cf. privatisation).
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton The real difference between Marx and Veblen is that Marx sees the industrial proletariat as the revolutionary class destined to fight (and win) the war against capitalists, whereas Veblen believes this is the destiny of engineers, who may well lose without *class consciousness*.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton There are plenty of problems with Veblen's position, not least an obsession with *optimising efficiency* that is itself a facet of the Mythos of Logos (https://t.co/wzlEQ54zwJ). Bataille's celebration of *energetic excess* is a useful corrective to this (https://t.co/ZaSBrgcWPw).
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton But the idea that engineers need to develop class consciousness, that they must understand the normative parameters of the role that they play within the industrial system, is itself a powerful corrective to persistent Marxist nostalgia for earlier forms of industrial labour.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton In the age of automation (https://t.co/HTqzcrm5i8), as work becomes increasingly detached from technics (https://t.co/NssAJX05IZ) while the core and periphery of the workforce are divided into those with *jobs* and those with *gigs*, the revolutionary parameters have shifted.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton To bring us full circle, and return to computation as both a locus of labour and a means of automation, nowhere is the conflict between the machine process and the pecuniary drive more obvious than in software development and the wider tech industry that encompasses it.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton Is there a better way to describe the conflict between the coalitions of the willing that expand and maintain the open source software on which the Stack is run, and the bloated over-managed edifice of commercial software development that parasitises it? It's the exemplary case.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton As Richard Stalman might put it, software should be free not in the commercial sense, but in the political sense: free as in freedom. This has long been the rallying cry of industrial hackers fighting an endless war against commercial sabotage. There's your class consciousness.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton Of course, there's more to the economy than software, and there are always more proletarians than engineers, but the accelerationist unsnarling of productive forces required to defeat the autocatalysis of commerce and its neofeudal destiny demands solidarity between the two.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton I reject every purported opposition between the technoscientific expansion of freedom and the 'authentic' realities of human social life (https://t.co/Sp2C7pVLHG). Resist that nostalgia for a more simple time that hides in your fantasies of the future. Kill the Mythos inside you.
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton Even if you want to retain the term 'communism' for the Promethean project of collective emancipation that brings about the end of capitalism and opens the door to something else (post-capitalism), you must destroy the perfect commune inside your head (https://t.co/aa2rcbOc40)
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton And that's how you get from the critique of computational reason to the techno-political opportunism of left-accelerationism: https://t.co/KM0mXTntJ6
@paulkreinerhere @schulzb589 @benedict @bratton @threadreaderapp unroll

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pete wolfendale
pete wolfendale
@deontologistics
So, here’s a way of reframing this question: which societies enabled coexistence and collaboration between people with divergent social styles, rather than imposing a dominant social style? Such social pluralism is very important indeed.


I suspect that the vast majority of the answers to the original question will fall foul of the tendency to project ideal social arrangements that reflect our own style of social understanding and engagement, and that this will lead them to talk past one another.

Consider the perspective of someone far away from you on in the neurological map, who doesn’t overlap with your socially calibrated genetic resources for social intelligence: the social heaven of an autist introvert may be the social hell of a bipolar extrovert, and vice versa.

I’ve had many good conversations about this with people in different parts of the map who overlap with me in different ways (h/t @tjohnlinward, @dynamic_proxy, @maradydd, @mojozozoe, @UnclePhobic) whose personal heavens I would like to visit, but maybe not live in full time.

We get to see glimpses of these heavens not merely in the past, but in the present, and abstract their geometries, both in spatial/architectural terms (https://t.co/aTcRgtJOVJ) and in temporal/dynamic terms (). The physical/computational platforms around us configure our agency.
SOCIETY
pete wolfendale
pete wolfendale
@deontologistics
This is what happens when you train neural networks largely on tone and its stylistic relics. They pick up formal features of arguments (not so much fallacies as tics) that have almost nothing to do with semantic content (focus on connotation over implication).


This is a secular problem in the discipline. It's got nothing to do with the Analytic/Continental split in the anglophone world. They've both got the same ramifying signal/noise problem, it's just that the styles (tics and connotations) are different in each pedagogical context.

And this is before we start talking about tone policing and topic policing, which are both rife and essentially make the peer review journal system completely unfit for purpose, populated as it is by a random sampling of pedants selecting for syntactic noise over semantic signal.

We've allowed a system of self-reinforcing and ratcheting filters to evolve that effectively *fuzzes* our contribution to the growth of human knowledge (https://t.co/VmW15pGt7J), because it selects for properties only loosely related to those we claim to want. Let that sink in.

This is literally the opposite of what a filter is supposed to do: extract signal from noise, syntactic compression that preserves semantic content. Instead we are awash in syntactic artifacts optimised for minimal criticisable content and maximal pedantic posturing.
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pete wolfendale
pete wolfendale
@deontologistics
I’m beginning to think that the left has been too obsessed with GDP as a broken economic metric governing the global shitshow, when inflation is more insidious. Deflation may be a more radical demand than degrowth. Burst bubbles. Deflate the price of fossil fuel infrastructure.

It’s amazing just how much political economy is still determined by the threat of stagflation. This has created a weird metonymy in which as long as you’re fight inflation (preserving the interests of (older) savers) you’re also fighting stagnation (supporting (younger) earners).

To some extent the residual fear of deflationary spirals lies behind this, waiting in the wings for any suggestion that stagnation must be fought with deflation. This is entirely understandable, as uncontrolled deflation hits the poorest hardest.

The assumption that conjoins these fears into an engine of unbridled economic stagnation is that there’s a unitary market effectively mediating between the markets in different sectors, be this unity micro-economic or macro-economic in flavour. But this just isn’t how it works.

There is so much more logistic friction in the price system than the popular story of just in time production suggests, not least in the concrete details of differentiated trade between economic actors from local businesses to nation states.
ECONOMY
pete wolfendale
pete wolfendale
@deontologistics
My morning thought. I think what's most incompatible about the way I think and the journal article format as a means of capturing and validating thought is that I have a completely different sense of the relation between tentativeness, rigor, and informatic compression.

The characteristic Pete thought is: wait a minute, this whole area is dominated by an assumption that no one seems to be questioning, and I've got two options to express that: i) outline the logic of the issue in a quick and compressed way, ii) write a small book with references.

The discipline seems to want something in between these poles every single time, and this makes me extremely anxious because I feel (with good reason) like any partially referential engagement with the issue will get instantly torpedoed by anyone outside its referential remit.

To repeat something I've said before: I'm actually quite good at being *concise*, I just find it very hard to be *brief*, because most of the thoughts I have don't permit brevity. Consider what your (referential) reactions are to this brief piece:

One of the main genres of publication I've actually excelled in over the years is dictionary articles, which I take a lot of joy in writing, and include some of the pieces of which I'm most proud. Consider this one on the crux of Meillassoux's project:
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pete wolfendale
pete wolfendale
@deontologistics
I think one way of looking at the economic pathologies of our society, without using words like 'capitalism' and 'rentiership', is to talk about inequities in the distribution of risk. Some have more taste for risk than others, sure, but risk is not distributed on this basis.

In the UK, so much of our political troubles come from the growth in the landlord class, who if nothing else, wield disproportionate power relative to their social worth: at one and the same time claim to be martyrs to the risk of investment, and demand these risks be minimised.

Of course, it's possible to make claims like this: e.g., nurses have every right to claim that they shoulder not merely more risk than most, but far more risk than is strictly necessary. The pandemic has made this brutally obvious to anyone who has been paying attention.

However one chooses to tally up compensation for this social role, be it financial, social, or some other privilege, it's pretty obvious that every last 'essential worker' is shouldering more societal risk than most non-essential workers compensated far better than they.

The way this trade off gets (implicitly) articulated as 'pay vs. purpose' is one of the enduring insights of @davidgraeber's Bullshit Jobs. Yet there are many essential workers who don't even get the illusion of purpose in compensation for personal risk (e.g., warehouse staff).
ECONOMY

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🧵 @DianeLangberg wrote about NDAs in Christian environments, noting “An NDA is an agreement to hide something. In the cases I have encountered it has always been an agreement to exercise power over and hide sin.... [it is] unlike our Lord.”
1/

NDAs are traditionally “non-disclosure” - don’t talk about specific X. Often in church/ministry cases - they’re overly broad - don’t talk abt *anything* re: your employment

but also may include

“non-disparagement” - don’t say anything negative about us EVEN IF IT IS TRUE
2/

Numerous articles have described the use of NDAs in Christian environments and the conflict with principles described in the very faith supposedly being promoted. I’m linking them here then I’ll offer my 20-year lawyer and victim of silencing (gag order) take on the practice.
3/

“Silence of the sheep” (2018) from @emlybelz described how the conference of catholic bishops has now banned NDAs in abuse cases but how some churches and Christian orgs still use them without

Later in 2018, @scotmcknight discussed NDAs after the Bill Hybels sex abuse scandal, noting that often the stronger party is implicated in sin because the whole reason for the NDA is bc they know that something is wrong and they don’t want it
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American Hacker
American Hacker
@AmericanHacker
OK, more housekeeping ahead of putting this account up on blocks.

#BurnNotice - search for that coming from my account, you'll learn some things about troubles in late 2020.

But this is going to be pretty meta, it's about what goes a #BurnNotice and why.

We've used the #BurnNotice tag in the past to denote an entity that is in need of special attention. That practice dates back to 2011/2012 and lapsed some time ago.

This is a more traditional sort of

Let's put some bounds on this. Those in a #BurnNotice are NOT:

1) people I dislike

2) people I think are competitors in some fashion

3) "feds", whatever you people mean by this undefined term.

4) informants. Got a list of those, too, it's handled differently.

The #BurnNotice is more focused on people who present as if they might be working for Erik

Or maybe they work for Tiger
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Cory Doctorow #BLM
Cory Doctorow #BLM
@doctorow
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Planet Money on HP's myriad ripoffs; Strength in numbers; and more!

Archived at: https://t.co/esjoT3u5Gr

#Pluralistic

1/


On Feb 22, I'm delivering a keynote address for the NISO Plus conference, "The day of the comet: what trustbusting means for digital manipulation."

https://t.co/Z84xicXhGg

2/


Planet Money on HP's myriad ripoffs: Ink-stained wretches of the world, unite!

https://t.co/k5ASdVUrC2

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Strength in numbers: The crisis in accounting.

https://t.co/DjfAfHWpNN

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#15yrsago Bad Samaritan family won’t return found expensive camera https://t.co/Rn9E5R1gtV

#10yrsago What does Libyan revolution mean for https://t.co/Jz28qHVhrV? https://t.co/dN1e4MxU4r

5/
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Lunar Whale Rider
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Ok. I’ve organized my thoughts about the revival of Six Days in Fallujah. I want to approach this through the lens of someone who was IN Fallujah during 2004-2005, during some of the worst urban combat US Forces have ever experienced.

Let’s get a few things out of the way: the invasion of Iraq was a war crime. Period. Argue otherwise and I’ll block you. Does that make myself and others who fought war criminals? No, of course not. Did individual soldiers and Marines commit war crimes? Absolutely.

I’m someone who is deeply proud of my service. I tried my hardest to conduct myself as humanely as possible. I’m also someone who was forced to do things I’m not proud of to survive. Taking lives should never be a point of pride.

Iraq was a failure of our own making. Not only did we invade illegally, we did it without a plan. The vast majority of the insurgency were disaffected Iraqi soldiers without a job after we broke apart their military, not religious fanatics.

Yes, groups like AQI showed up to fight, but they came after we handed them a major propaganda victory by showing up in the first place and turning PMCs like Blackwater loose. There was little to no cultural sensitivity training.
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I am done giving this doctor or team grace. I started with "We are tremendously grateful for all you are doing." He seemed irritated to speak to us. Literally I asked, "What is the likelihood our mom will die on current support, in the next 24 hours, so we can plan travel?"

He hammered us with how severe this was and that was. Yes, that is why I am asking the question. "We are asking you to be a thought partner so we can make responsible decisions as the family." I had had pre-conversations with doctor friends to understand the numbers and prognosis

He said "It would be illegal for me to tell you that she won't die, then she dies." Yes, that is why I said LIKELIHOOD - critical care docs deal in likelihoods. It so frustrating to be on this side and not get a fraction of the standard that I have been held to and hold myself to

Then I made the error of saying, "I'm a pediatrician, I literally do this work on family-centered, compassionate care." to which the charge nurse answered, "It is not the work we do. We keep people alive." End of life care IS your job. Planning IS your job. It's not just numbers

Compassion is not only a pediatric thing while critical care/end of life can proudly lack it. I've had more end of life conversations than I want to remember. My mom is not numbers. She is a human being. I am modulating my voice, complimenting you, leveraging my network.
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https://t.co/UAAUxSeA0L

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Thread 👇

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We love travelling together (even if I'm only a glorified laptop watcher 😒) but we're both much happier being able to share our ideas outside of our own little bubble and our products have benefitted too!

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#தினம்_ஒரு_திருவாசகம்
தொல்லை இரும்பிறவிச் சூழும் தளை நீக்கி
அல்லல் அறுத்து ஆனந்தம் ஆக்கியதே – எல்லை
மருவா நெறியளிக்கும் வாதவூர் எங்கோன்
திருவாசகம் என்னும் தேன்

பொருள்:
1.எப்போது ஆரம்பித்தது என அறியப்படமுடியாத தொலை காலமாக (தொல்லை)

2. இருந்து வரும் (இரும்)


3.பிறவிப் பயணத்திலே ஆழ்த்துகின்ற (பிறவி சூழும்)

4.அறியாமையாகிய இடரை (தளை)

5.அகற்றி (நீக்கி),

6.அதன் விளைவால் சுகதுக்கமெனும் துயரங்கள் விலக (அல்லல் அறுத்து),

7.முழுநிறைவாய்த் தன்னுளே இறைவனை உணர்த்துவதே (ஆனந்த மாக்கியதே),

8.பிறந்து இறக்கும் காலவெளிகளில் (எல்லை)

9.பிணைக்காமல் (மருவா)

10.காக்கும் மெய்யறிவினைத் தருகின்ற (நெறியளிக்கும்),

11.என் தலைவனான மாணிக்க வாசகரின் (வாதவூரெங்கோன்)

12.திருவாசகம் எனும் தேன் (திருவா சகமென்னுந் தேன்)

முதல்வரி: பிறவி என்பது முன்வினை விதையால் முளைப்பதோர் பெருமரம். அந்த ‘முன்வினை’ எங்கு ஆரம்பித்தது எனச் சொல்ல இயலாது. ஆனால் ‘அறியாமை’ ஒன்றே ஆசைக்கும்,, அச்சத்துக்கும் காரணம் என்பதால், அவையே வினைகளை விளைவிப்பன என்பதால், தொடர்ந்து வரும் பிறவிகளுக்கு, ‘அறியாமையே’ காரணம்

அறியாமைக்கு ஆரம்பம் கிடையாது. நமக்கு ஒரு பொருளைப் பற்றிய அறிவு எப்போதிருந்து இல்லை? அதைச் சொல்ல முடியாது. அதனாலேதான் முதலடியில், ஆரம்பமில்லாத அஞ்ஞானத்தை பிறவிகளுக்குக் காரணமாகச் சொல்லியது. ஆனால் அறியாமை, அறிவின் எழுச்சியால், அப்போதே முடிந்து விடும்.
ALL
Delilah S. Dawson
Delilah S. Dawson
@DelilahSDawson
So here is a secret: Not everything I write goes anywhere. I have at least 4 books completely written and edited that never went on submission. I have books that stalled out at 20k. I have docs on my computer with opening paragraphs I don't remember writing. But! 1/

Every now and then an idea sticks with me like that corner of tortilla chip that just won't go down your throat. It happened with SPARROWHAWK, which began as 40k of a YA story, died, and was reborn as a comic, thanks to @christopher_j_r and @boomstudios. And now... 2/

It's happening with THE WILLOWS, a short story that you'll see in @UncannyMagazine next year. This Southern Gothic horror story began as an attempt to sell my next Romance to @AbZurdity after the Blud books in 2014 or so. And she didn't buy it. Guess why? 3/

Turns out, it wasn't a Romance! It was Southern Gothic Horror. Even the bones of it screamed strangeness, not sexiness. I loved the taste of the world, but I hadn't found the right story yet. Tried to write it 2 more times and failed. Until I finally understood what it was. 4/

So I took the 50 pages I'd written and cut half of them, twisting the story around from a gothy Romance inspired by the band the Civil Wars and turned it into a spooky descent into madness. And it looked back at me from the abyss as if to say, DUH. Sometimes... 5/
WRITING
Pran Katariya
Pran Katariya
@KatariyaPran
The Straddle is my favorite trade these days. But more often than not, one needs to adjust to make a good return from it. There are many ways to do this depending on your view, psychology and imagination. Will discuss a few that I use

The Straddle is a delta neutral strategy and it is important to keep deltas in check during the course of the Trade and not let them run away from you. Of course Volatility is the elephant in the room- but not going there as that will require a separate discussion

The first and most common method is to go 'inverted.' That is to say to shift the untested side to generate additional Premium and increase the runway to Breakeven. So if you start with a Straddle at 700 and price goes to 740, you can move the PE up to say 720.

How much should you move the untested side? While again this is a matter of skill, experience and artistry, the rule of thumb is to cut deltas by half. Remember, prices will move and you have to allow sufficient room for them to fluctuate

The second method is to shift the entire Straddle in the direction of the move. So if you have a 700 Straddle and Price goes to 740, you can shift the Straddle to 720. If you time this right, it can generally be done at virtually no cost or minimal cost.
ALL , OPTION SELLING , STRADDLE OPTION SELLING