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What you are getting at is that for a single person, the chance of going bankrupt is high but for a population ensemble, the average wealth increases.

This is absolutely true. All it takes is to understand that for the single person, the model isn't ergodic but all expected value based models assume ergodicity.

See [section 4 here](https://www.jasoncollins.blog/posts/ergodicity-economics-a-p...) on losing wealth on a positive value bet.


The mathematician Daniel Litt has driven social media users to distraction with a series of simple-seeming but counterintuitive probability puzzles.


I will play:

- they do not know how useful the skill is. (Cocks solved the public-key cryptography problem without knowing what it would be used for)

- they do not have the cash to invest => just a straight up lack of capital to make the ROI worth it.

- they are unable to bet in the geography they reside in => you need a middle man who can bet on your behalf.

But let's comment on a throwaway line in an otherwise interesting article. I wonder if this counts as bike-shedding.

Or maybe a classic of the genre "why was this comment needed?"


This comment thread is strange. I think you both raise interesting points, but are also rather hostile. Why not just respond sincerely? You have interesting things to say.


I felt OP was needlessly negative. In classic internet fashion, I added to that negativity. Not proud of it.


Why do you think they are insincere? They could sincerely be hostile and raise interesting points.


Eh, it’s just some sass.


My forcing function was external. I was getting randomized by a lot of tasks and I felt I wasn't getting anything done. So I started to break down my day into 30 minute chunks. This got the feedback loop of seeing things get done going.

I also started to take notes about projects, other teams' working, notes from internal documentation etc. This has allowed me to retrieve some things super quickly to the point my teammates have been amazed. Another way to get the dopamine hit going.

Long story short: my brain is a primate, it needs dopamine hits, find a way to make your intended behavior give you dopamine hits.


Happens on Android too. Google and Facebook have a secret agreement to share data.

https://www.wired.com/story/texas-accuses-google-facebook-il...


This is such a laughably naive view. The documents in court __show__ that even microsoft could not move Google out of Apple's defaults. But sure, "removing hurdles for new businesses to start" will obviously solve this.


So hire a thug to kill another thug, what could go wrong?


The article mentions the 5000:1 odds bet, but reading the text of the bet itself is hilarious:

>>> Whereas Carlo Rovelli and Geoff Penington firmly believe that gravity is better described by a quantum theory.

>>> And whereas Jonathan Oppenheim is more sympathetic to other possibilities (i.e. doesn’t have a clue) ...

[1] - https://www.ucl.ac.uk/oppenheim/pub/quantum_vs_classical_bet...


It's heartwarming to see these people have fun while still sticking to serious work. Everything should be like that.


When it comes to science, only the British seem to be able do that.


Rovelli is Italian, and I think Pennington is American and Oppenheim is Canadian.


> a small amount of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, or wine

I think we can guess who write up the contract!


Crisps though!

> Should space-time be shown to be quantum, the loser will give to each of the winners, one ITEM* of their choice. If the alternative hypothesis is deemed to be correct, the losers will each give 5,000 ITEMS to the winner.

> * ITEM is defined to be a object of the winner’s choice, worth no more than 20 British pence on January 21st, 2021. Examples include some crisps, a bazinga ball, a small amount of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, or wine


The contract doesn't specify what kind of balsamic vinegar. Supermarket balsamic is just a mixture of colourings and flavourings. Proper solera balsamic is sipped as an aperitif, and is much too expensive for me to have ever tasted.


It doesn't say the amount either, just that each item must be worth less than 20 british pence.

So it can be one drop of "Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale di Modena DOP", which is the real deal. Prices start at around 50€ for 100mL, but it can easily go into the 100s if you want the more premium ones (25 years). A single drop would fit the 20 pence bill.


Why not have both: salt 'n' vinegar flavour crisps?


Interesting that three so obviously intelligent people could get the odds of the bet wrong: it’s not a 1:5000 bet, it’s a 2:5000 bet a.k.a. a 1:2500 bet.


I mean clearly if it's a mistake this is a matter of terminology not intelligence, but could you explain how it's wrong?

If A wins, B pays A $1. If B wins, A pays B $N. For the bet to be fair (zero expectation value), the probability that A wins needs to be p=N/(N+1) and that B wins needs to be 1-p=1/(N+1). My understanding of what "odds" are is the ratio of the outcome probabilities: p:(1-p) = p/(1-p) = N/1 = N:1. (This is why the "log odds" are log(p/(1-p)).)

Do they use a different notion of "odds" in sports gambling?


Turns out the only interesting thing is how sloppy my reading is (and how quick I am to blame others for that sloppiness…).

I simply missed the second “each” below:

> Should space-time be shown to be quantum, the loser will give to each of the winners, one ITEM of their choice. If the alternative hypothesis is deemed to be correct, the losers will each give 5,000 ITEMS to the winner.


Given this each, I'm surprised the headline isn't 10,000:1 bet.

Also, who wants 10,000 <$20 items? It's a cool payout, but if I wanted to spend ~$200,000, I wouldn't do it in 10,000 pieces.


It's not $20. It's 20 British pence - about 25 cents.... "Examples include some crisps, a bazinga ball, a small amount of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, or wine."


I think, reading it, it could be £1000 worth of wine. For example two cases of decent Gevrey Chambertin, I myself could bring myself to accept such a thing.


I don't think so. It's 5000 from each loser and there are two potential losers so 5000*2=10000 and 2:10000 is the same as 1:5000.


>> A competent board should have asked for legal and professional advice...

I will bite. How do you know they didn't?


Typically it would be framed amicably, without so much axe-grinding, particularly for public release. Even ChatGPT itself would have written a more balanced release, and advised against such shenanigans. I enjoy that irony.


That's the thing. Lawyers can give them the letter of the law but might have no idea how popular Sam was inside and outside the company, or how badly he was needed. And that's what really matters here.


Why does it matters to a board that sticks to the principles of the charter of a non-profit? Why would they look at anything else other than the guiding principles?


Because their charter says their goal is to get to AGI, or something like that.

If 99% of their employees quit and their investors pull their support because Sam was fired, they're not getting anywhere and have failed to deliver on their charter.


>house collapses in 15mph wind

Why didn’t they hire a competent builder?

You:

>how do you know they weren’t? It could be pure happenstance! All the nails could… could have been defective! Or something! waves hands


Enron had independent auditors and a law firm approving what they did.


>> and anyone who appears to be willing to breach the status quo with violence is horrible.

Not commenting about the rest, but anyone who is willing to breach the status quo with violence IS IN FACT HORRIBLY HORRIBLY HORRIBLE. Start digging into history and each side will have enough justifications for war ten times over.


Absolutely, I agree. It should be resolved peacefully or just not resolved (status quo). My point was not that it was wrong to oppose a violent resolution - my point was that it's obviously hypocritical to oppose your opponent employing a violent resolution when they think it might succeed when you support a violent resolution as long as you think you might succeed. It's not genuine non-violence, it's just "They shouldn't be allowed to fight us unless we will win", which is obviously fair for any prospective nationalist, but is damaging to your argument that you're just a peaceful country and you don't understand why your neighbour is so warlike.

And of course, all of this is in the context of me explaining why bringing up that Taiwan nearly had nukes until the US stopped it is not a great idea for those attempting to advocate for Taiwan's side in the dispute, because it raises the obvious question of "Why did they nearly have nukes, what were they planning to do with the nukes?"


This take is so misinformed on how the law works, I am not even sure where to begin. Cases are often decided by judges and how they __interpret__ the law. If you have two generations of the judiciary who have grown up drinking the kool-aid of the magical auto-correcting market, you cannot do shit.

> And yet, this epiphany, that markets are politically structured and don’t have a will of their own, hasn’t made it to one very important place: the judiciary. The same week Sullivan gave his speech, a panel of three D.C. Circuit Court judges struck down a monopolization case against Facebook on the grounds that markets self-correct. "Many innovations may seem anti-competitive at first but turn out to be the opposite,” wrote the panel, “and the market often corrects even those that are anti-competitive." The D.C. Circuit Court panel was bipartisan, and included Republican appointees Karen L. Henderson and Raymond Randolph, as well as Obama appointed judge Robert Wilkins.

> These words undermine Congressional statute, and may devastate the ability to use antitrust law against digital platforms, at least in the D.C. Circuit. The specific procedural question was on the right of state attorneys general to bring an antitrust case over a violation that happened years earlier, as Federal enforcers can. Three judges made a policy decision to disallow that, even as Congress had just passed a law a few months earlier to make it easier for states to participate in antitrust enforcement.

[1] - https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/all-rise-how-judges-rule-...


The cases are being lost.

It doesn't matter to what degree someone is informed if they're pointing out objective facts.


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