I noticed you didn't deny that you were doing this because of your uncontrollable lust for little children. Before you respond I want you to keep in mind this theory isn't one I've crafted myself for the purposes of making a point on Slashdot. I mean don't get me wrong I seriously doubt that is your reason for doing this, I think the probability is very low. But I notice you haven't denied it.

Again, I didn't ask for evidence and a contradictory view point, I asked for proof.

Have you gone line by line through say 10% of the HFT algorithms used and formally demonstrated that there are no common hidden assumptions.

Since I don't value liquidity in the stock market and believe in democratisation of access (that is abolishing special privileged access to stock and commodities markets via financial barriers and requiring markets to trade with a single percentage price per trade, essentially abolishing brokers, HFT, the whole swathe of middle men) on moral grounds it doesn't really matter what evidence you present that HFT improves liquidity. You aren't going to convince me it is a good thing by that route. As such I invite you to stop trying to convince me HFT is a good thing. I believe anyone should simply be able to go and put an order on the stock market via the internet under the same terms. There should be no middle men. Or we could abolish limited liability and associated government interventions in the market, either is fine with me, although I think the first idea is a better idea if we want companies larger than a grapefruit.

I also don't care much about volatility, I would rather a volatile market in which the mean price reflected the long term value (which I know is discounting short term information) better than a stable price which is reflective of the true day to day value with rapid but stable short term correction but does not force people to think long term. I know this will discourage people investing in the stock market, I would offset this by changing the way we tax shares and reduce taxation on real long term investment. Basically if you can show that you have held a share for over six months, a year, multiple years I would make cap gain and dividend taxes on those shares much lower than they currently are.

It isn't that your case isn't plausible. Nor am I convinced either way on HFT effect on liquidity or the spread. From what I can tell with enough players in the market they do increase the information reflected in the price. That isn't what I'm calling you on.

I suggest instead of trying to convincing me that HFT is a good thing (which will never work) you focus on giving me proof that a large subset of HFT are not making the same assumptions. After all that is what I'm actually calling you on. Otherwise I am just going to assume you are one of the middle men acting as a parasite on the rest of us.

The SEC report on the May 6th crash said the exact opposite to what you have just said.

www.sec.gov/news/studies/2010/marketevents-report.pdf

So now you are just being dishonest. What exactly is the dog that you have in this race? Who pays your wages?

Evidence is insufficient, your have made statements that are so confident you need proof. Your position may be correct but the confidence with which you have stated it is simply too strong. You are running counter to the position of the regulators and economists and doing so while supremely confident.

You didn't demonstrate what I asked you to demonstrate. You just listed a bunch of ways HFT might be beneficial. Demonstrate that it cannot and will not amplify a crash like you claim.

"The key fact of the story is that the 'tech bubble' component of HFT is over"

I see you posting this kind of thing left right and center on this story and it makes me think you have some dog in this race because there is absolutely no way you can know this, even if you have access to the highly guarded information that goes into building HFT systems.

How can you possibly know that there wont be another such glitch?

Please present proof that matches the categorical and unambiguous nature of your claims. Demonstrate that there isn't some seemingly reasonable common but catastrophic assumption built into a large number of the HFT systems in existence. A study where researchers have been given access to the source code and surveyed say a couple of hundred such traders would be a nice start, but your claims are absolute so I would like to see proof.

All actions are equally trivial for a deity because they are supremely powerful. The only thing a deity cannot do is the logically impossible. Since typically a deity is also the creator that makes them responsible for every single event that occurs. That is what being a deity means, to be able to do anything short of create rocks they cant lift or destroy themselves.

"Once again, experience belies this."

You are not a deity, you are not supremely powerful. You can therefore be benevolent within the bounds of what you are able to do. No logical contradiction is implied if you don't do the absolute maximal amount of good.

Further you can be benevolent some of the time and not benevolent at other time, your benevolence can change through time. A deity is a timeless entity, a single instance of lacking in benevolence means the deity is not benevolent because a deities actions cannot be thought of as temporally localised.

You cannot take examples of what is possible and impossible for you and apply it to a deity, it just does not work. If you want to claim a benevolent deity exists you have to show it is reasonable such a concept is not self contradictory working from the definition itself, not from your experiences because you are a very different entity from that deity. You could punch someone in the mouth for no reason (or even for fun and profit), a benevolent deity cannot because it implies a logical contradiction.

It isn't that the deity has an obligation. It is that it is logically contradictory for a benevolent deity to act in an evil manner or fail to act in a good one. A benevolent deity isn't obliged to do good, it is logically contradictory for them to fail to.

"The deity, however, is bound to a singular course of action, predetermined by myself, my wife, and the other party."

Yes exactly. But they are not bound by moral obligation, they are bound by the requirement that their own nature be internally consistent. The only way around this is to argue that gods notion of benevolence is so alien to our own that rape, torture, death and genocide somehow working for the greater good can be considered benevolence.

Free will is a self contradictory concept whoever it is applied to but in this case that has precisely zero impact. A benevolent deity can only chose between the maximally good actions (or inactions) available to it, not because it lacks free will (however you define it), and not because it experiences a moral obligation, but for the same reason it cannot create square circles. You cant choose to be a married bachelor and a benevolent deity cant choose to fail to do good or to do evil.

Because all actions are equally trivial for a deity and they are the root cause of all actions there is no distinction between action and inaction. A benevolent deity has virtually no choice in their actions because they can only pick from the set of maximally good actions (because the only way to make benevolence make sense in this context is as I suggested before making benevolence a property of the deities nature, and any violation of this nature is a grave indiscretion). There is no difference between a deity failing to prevent genocide and a deity failing to blow the wind so the smallest number of people experience an eggy fart. As a result all that is necessary to show such a deity does not exist is to find a preventable instance of suffering, it helps to find an extreme case because it prevents the 'greater good' rebuff, but frankly the time I stubbed my toe with no purpose does the job.
This is precisely the problem with deities, because they dabble in the infinite they end up with a whole bunch of properties which are extreme on one axis or another.

In which case I clearly need to woosh myself...

If you think I think YHWH is benevolent then you have inferred a lot from a very short statement. YHWH is by most accounts one of the worst entities in fiction responsible for genocide, torture and poor taste in sea food.

Depends, Dick could be an expert philosopher who has supporting arguments for why any creator deity is likely to be benevolent. Most natural theologians will provide you with such arguments to back up their particular deity. You are judging his argument without knowing it in detail. It could be the case that he is making an error by conflating deities with benevolent deities, or it could be that he has an argument for why any deity would by definition be good (if you want an example consider the Christian conception of ethics as being a reflection of gods nature, making god good by definition).

"Would a benevolent deity unfailingly override the poor decisions made by humans?" - Doesn't need to. Just has to fail to do it once when it would be desirable for them to do so and possible for them to do so. Dick judges that he has encountered one such incidence which is sufficient to rule out those deities. You might argue he has put his line in the sand as to what constitutes too much suffering and evil in a poor place, but I don't suggest making that argument to veterans faces unless you yourself have watched comrades slowly bleed to death while you pick bits of shrapnel out your legs.

Your request is obviously daft. Collections of atoms behaving as though they have free will is exactly what we would expect if the materialists are right. That is the point, a universe with conciousness and free will looks no bloody different to one without. That is precisely why they are spurious concepts. As far as us to "evenly distribute [our] time between barking, shrieking, silence, and speaking", asking someone without free will to exercise free will to prove their point is just absurd.

But not orthogonal to the question of if there are benevolent deities.

"It's a great user interface from the user's point of view, but a really terrible system to have."

I feel as though you are attacking our banking system somehow...

He said 70, not 7.