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Someone who has spent the past several posts wringing his hands about how obsolete and poor he's gonna be instead of getting his promised future as a rich doctor really ought to knock that shit off. You don't get to mock "poorcel!" when you're begging "anyone know a way I can get into America, I want to be rich and live a good life?"
It's not just a question of affording the money, it's also a question of how you budget and spend, and the wife and kids question is separate from that.
I could afford an arbitrary expense of a few hundred dollars. But if you want me to risk money, you'll have to do better then tell me "if you get that unlucky 10% chance, you'll be out a few hundred dollars, but hey, you can afford it", unless you have a very sophisticated idea of "afford" which is not just "you have $X and no plans to use it for anything".
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On the contrary, this seems consistent with the belief that any functioning adult in the US is richer than God.
Since God has a net worth of about zero, I can't disagree.
If not, I hope he's filing his taxes properly, assuming they're not tax exempt on religious grounds.
C'mon man -- He's got the whole world in His hands, just because he struggles with liquidity doesn't make him poor.
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I might be poor in 5 years. Well, if not poor, then unemployed, which isn't the same.
I can afford a 100 dollar bet over a timespan of 1 year, and I'm pretty sure anyone else here could too, including justifying it to the missus. Even 1-5k is feasible, especially since I don't have to pay out right now. If my circumstances are so dire that I can't afford that in a mere 2 years, things are so FUBAR that we all have bigger problems to worry about
You're mistaking it as an accusation of poverty in the first place, it's more of an accusation of mild hypocrisy, I think it's a lame excuse when people regularly make far bigger spends on impulse. I know I have, and I'm already among the poorest Mottizens in absolute terms.
Snarking at someone about "if your family would be impoverished by the price of a meal" is pretty much sounding like an accusation of poverty. I don't bet because I think it's stupid, and I never win anyway, so whether or not I can afford to bet a tenner isn't why I avoid bets. Maybe the other person has a different reason, but "if you don't take up my bet it's because you're poor, boo sucks to be you" isn't a mature argument.
You might want to open the first link he shared, because among the myriad (bad, IMHO) reasons he shared for refusing to take bets, one was that he couldn't justify it to the wife and kids.
If memory serves, he's a lawyer or in an associated field, and he's certainly not going to end up in the doghouse for a sum that small. Even if he isn't one, he's almost certainly wealthier than I am by a country mile.
I already am amongst the poorest Mottizens around, at least in absolute terms, and given that I don't want to be paid out adjusted to purchasing power parity, there is no way this represents a worse deal for him than it does me.
After all, both parties taking bets expect to win, with a net positive expectation after taking the odds into account.
I can't force anyone to take a bet can I? If he can't afford to bet, it's a completely different scenario to giving reasons why he doesn't bet in general.
If you keep losing bets, then the smart decision is both to not bet, and temper your expectations on how right you are about things.
This isn't something like horse racing, where you have a middleman taking a cut, meaning that you have to be better than merely being right more often than not to have it be worth your time.
I'm right on things I care to bet on more often than not, and since I recently missed an opportunity to make bank on Nvidia because I couldn't convince my dad to invest in time nor had the money to do so myself, I have no qualms about taking on one.
In your opinion, indeed. You sound like you're offended he wouldn't bet with you. My view on this is nobody has to bet on anything and "I don't want to" is sufficient reason. "Oh, you're so pussy-whipped your missus won't let you bet" and "boo-hoo, your family will starve if you bet a small amount of money, loser" are not, as I said, convincing arguments and make you sound like a playground bully.
His reasons are his reasons. You proposed a bet, he refused, there we are. Again, my own view is that "if you really believed the postion you hold, you'd bet money on it and if you don't you're a pussy/coward/poorcel loser" is fucking stupid, like the local tough guy trying to chivvy someone into drinking drunk because "a real man can hold his booze and if you don't want to go pint for pint with me, you're a dum-dum loser!"
Then again, I'm a woman, and these male dick-measuring rituals don't impress me much.
I've also never liked the Rationalist love of betting and I considered writing an effortpost about it at one point.
There is a certain machismo to it that I find distasteful. I also don't think it's a coincidence that the same belief structure that loves to make people pay rent (via utilitarianism) also love to make beliefs pay rent (via betting). The motto is the same in both cases: "if you're not useful, you're out".
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I am only mildly offended that he wouldn't take a bet with me.
I take much more umbrage with his dismissal of betting in general, which I consider it a rather good rationalist tradition, though it's certainly not exclusive to them. Like I said, it's a tax on bullshit, and a strong signal of confidence in one's claims.
I certainly would be embarrassed if my wife and kids stopped me from spending 10-100 dollars on a whim. If saying that counts as bullying in your eyes, so be it, I wouldn't have even thought to bring it up if he hadn't clearly mentioned it.
We're (hopefully) all adults here, and I for one don't see it as bullying in the least to point out flaws in someone else's policies, nor do I complain when others criticize me without making blatantly unjustified accusations.
Hlynka's claims that I misunderstood him because apparently I might have mistranslated from English to "Indian" is just about the only one, barring some idiot who insinuated that my medical degree was fake because he got mad at me speaking ill of C.S. Lewis. And even then, I only found it laughable rather than anything I care about, not that I minded the people speaking up for me. I'm not looking for a school marm to stop people from saying mean things of me, or in this case, simply making a negative judgement. If that's not to your taste, I'm sure you can acknowledge that I'm not a hypocrite about it.
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