August 3, 2020
The season-ending cliff-hanger was started by the show Dallas, with their famous “Who shot J.R.?” thing that had everyone talking in the summer of 1980. No TV series had ever done that, but it’s now become the norm… because when they resolved the mystery the following season, more than 350 million people tuned in, from, all around the world. It was the highest-rated television episode in U.S. history. The Turkish parliament suspended a session so the legislators could run home in time to watch. Bookies were publishing odds as to who did it… and it was a long list, headed by some likely suspects, but rounded out by a lot of other irrelevant and/or impossible people. Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry was on the list at 10,000-1, even though he had nothing to do with the show. Ultimately, J.R.’s sister-in-law/mistress Kristin (4-1) was the guilty one, a fact finally revealed on the fourth episode of the subsequent season. Those producers knew what they were doing.
This long-weekend feels like a bit of a cliff-hanger. On our last episode, Friday, 50 new cases in B.C… and heading into a long weekend… and, since then, no updates in B.C and no update today in Ontario… so, this will all remain a cliff-hanger until tomorrow, when all the storylines get resolved. For now, the national number is totally wrong.
It occurs to me… those shows, back then… on network television, complete with commercial breaks… they’d want to keep you tuned in right to the end, so there’d often be a mini-cliffhanger before the last set of commercials. Remember that… where they’d try to sell you some useless thing, but they made it look and sound so good… Call now! Supplies are limited! Operators are Standing By!
For the moment, we’re all Standing By. Just not too close to each other.
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August 2, 2020
Island living… island schedule… the fact that this post is on time is quite an achievement.
Another incredible achievement was today’s return of those two SpaceX astronauts who spent 2 months on the ISS, and who splashed down safely back to earth this morning.
This pandemic sort of has us all on “island time”… certainly, it felt like March had about 79 days in it, and I’m sure that more than once, we all woke up wondering what day it was. Whatever, “island time”.
I wrote about those astronauts (among other things) the day they blasted off, May 30th… I just went back and read what I wrote, and it’s pretty good – if you didn’t read it the first time around, here’s a convenient link:
https://kemeny.ca/2020/05/30/day-75-may-30-2020/
But what’s interesting… as per “island time”… it feels like I wrote that 6 months ago. So much has happened since.
And one of the things that’s happened is the slow and steady increase in daily new cases in B.C… back on May 30th, that whole week was just single-digit increases every day.
We have data up to Friday, and those last three days… the last W T F were… +39, +29, +50. WTF indeed.
Let’s try get back to earth… safely, like those astronauts. As rough as the ride may have been… and from 27,600 km/h on the ISS, down to 26 km/h when they hit the water on splashdown… as bumpy as the ride may have been, they made it.
It takes thousands of hours of training for them, and many others, to achieve that… and a lot of it was listening to instructions and following them.
Here’s 10 seconds of training that’ll help get us all to a safe splashdown; socially distance and wear a mask. It’s not rocket science.
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August 1, 2020
Long weekend, short update.
Hot sun, cool shade.
Socially distance, distantly socialize.
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July 31, 2020
I keep threatening to write very little sometimes… but this time I mean it. I’m on South Pender Island for the long weekend, and while I’ll endeavour to post numbers and charts at 5pm, the usual content will be lacking.
Neat thing about these Gulf Islands… their history is quite unique. Between 1964 and 1977, as many as 125,00 Vietnam War draft-dodgers made their way to Canada… and many of them, having quietly slipped away in the middle of the night, literally under the radar, made their way to Salt Spring, Mayne, Galiano and Pender islands.
Jimmy Carter pardoned them all in 1977, but half of them chose to stay, having established lives here. It makes for an interesting crowd. After 1977, they could once again appear on the radar, but the simple island living was too good to give up. Sitting here right now, soaking it all in… the view, the nature, the trees, the water… I totally get it.
And… not great numbers across the country today. If we continue to have days like this… 50 new cases in B.C… I may just stay here.
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July 30, 2020
Ages ago, there used to a fiddler who’d stand outside the west entrance of the racetrack, sawing away at his instrument… the open violin case in front of him, ready to catch the loose change offered by fortune-seeking horseplayers. Because that’s how Karma works, right? You magnanimously throw a dime at a beggar, and you’re sure to hit the Trifecta for $780.
A lot of people must have thought that way, because the guy did ok. He was always there on the way in, and he was certainly there on the way out, to catch the loose change… or hopefully, bills… of the actual few winners who managed to cash in on that last race. As per every racetrack or casino in the world, the trick isn’t winning; the trick is leaving the place with your winnings still in your pocket. And when you manage to do that, you’re usually feeling pretty generous.
I’d wondered what the guy did with all that change… did he go home and meticulously roll it? Show up at the bank with bags of change? Did he just spend it, and make people wait at the cashier lineup while he carefully counted it out? It turns out the answer was much simpler.
One day, I happened to be standing at the bottom of the entrance ramp just moments before the last race of the day… and down the ramp came fiddler guy, holding his case wide open.
At the betting windows, all of the mutuel clerks (ie. tellers) saw him coming, and all of them instantly slammed their [Closed] shingles in front of their windows. Well, all but one unlucky teller who’d been busy, looking down… and didn’t notice his impending arrival. The guy made a bee-line, straight to her, and, just as she looked up, he dumped the entire contents of the violin case… probably more than $20 worth of quarters, dimes, nickels… but mostly pennies… on the counter and floor and everywhere else.
“All of it to win on number 6!”, he screamed at her.
“I told you not to do that!”, she screamed back.
Number 6 didn’t win, which might mean the guy wasn’t too good at picking horses. But you can’t really tell with a sample size of one. However, what he also wasn’t good at was… playing the fiddle. And that sample set was a lot bigger. Back in those days, racing was 5 days a week, from mid-April to mid-October. Let’s do the math… 24 weeks x 5 days = 120 days, and he was out there at least 8 hours a day… so close to 1,000 hours a season. And for at least 10 years, there’s 10,000 hours… that magic number that Malcolm Gladwell claims in his bestseller “Outliers” is the number of hours needed to master anything. Ironically, he mentions music – specifically violins – as a good example. Anyone can pick up a violin/fiddle (they’re the exact same musical instrument, by the way…) and master it by just putting in the hours.
Well, horseshit. If you, having never picked up the instrument, walked into a music store and just tried it, gingerly sliding the bow across the strings, making some sort of squeaky sound… that’s what that guy sounded like. Always. It never changed. He never improved. More than ten thousand “wasted” hours.
Which just proves the point, it’s not all about the hours. I’m not sure what the right number is, but that’s not even the point. The point is – quality time versus quantity time. Quantity means nothing if the quality isn’t there, and I’d venture to guess that 100 quality hours of practice beats out 10,000 hours of doing it wrong.
We can forgive Gladwell, because his sample set of musicians were from an actual music academy. That’s not a random sample set, and it certainly doesn’t include some degenerate gambler/Charlie Daniels look-alike.
This all came to mind while banging away at the piano, on a difficult piece I’ve been working on for… well, not yet 10,000 hours, but it’ll likely take that long. Chopin’s Nocturne in C-sharp minor has probably had far more talented musicians bang away at it for far less time… yielding far better results. Nevertheless, I’m enjoying it… and maybe that fiddler enjoyed his fiddling too.
And these days, this pandemic is going to keep us pretty isolated for a while. Lots of time to put in the hours… you can draw, write, sculpt, paint, cook, plug away at the piano/violin/clarinet/trumpet/harp/whatever… just be sure you’re enjoying it, and not just putting in the hours.
Quality… not quantity.
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July 29, 2020
I’ve written a lot about “the big picture”. I pride myself on what I consider to be my ability to see things from a bigger perspective, and guide my life accordingly. Life is lived in incrementally small steps, but you need to at least be heading in some version of a “right direction”, knowing full-well that the course-correcting along the way will make that path anything but straight.
This is a lesson… a concept… that I try to teach my kids continually. Think big picture. Put yourselves in someone else’s shoes. Look at it from their point of view. Look at it from all points of view. Consider the implications not just for the immediate future, but medium and long-term as well. Add that into your mix before you make decisions… etc etc.
I have countless examples – from myself, from people I know, from the world… but the following example came up in conversation last night, so that’s the one you’re going to get. It was from when my son Oscar was in grade 5.
It was Sports Day of that school year, so he was 10 years old. One of the last events of the day was a race for the entire grade… 800m… a couple of laps around the track.
The race started off with everyone at the starting line, all at once, but it became evident pretty quickly who the standout athletes were, who the average kids were, and who was really going to struggle.
Oscar is not an elite athlete, but he was holding his own… somewhere in the top third, in a group behind the future track stars.
But at some point, he looked back and saw one of his friends a little further behind. So he slowed down till he was even with him, and they ran together for a bit. And then he noticed another friend, even further back… so he eased off the gas pedal and slowed down to match that friend for a while. That happened yet again… and then, one final time, with a friend who was struggling all alone at the very back.
So Oscar dialed it all the way back, and ended up walking it in, tied for dead last. That friend was huffing and puffing. Oscar had barely broken a sweat.
I went up to him after the race… and I wouldn’t say I was mad, but I was pondering how to ask the obvious question without sounding angry.
“Hey… so… do you really think that’s the right way to run a race?”
“Who cares, dad. Nobody cares. Nobody’s going to remember who won that race. And anyway, I just felt bad for my friend.”
Hmm. Yeah, true… grade 5 Sports Day. Nobody, except perhaps those elite top-3 athletes at the front – will remember who won. Nobody will care, not even those three because one day they’ll go on to real high-school track meets, where it really counts… and possibly college scholarships. Today, this? Irrelevant.
I had some version of “you might not be expected to win, but at least try your best” or “all that’s asked for is an honest effort” or “you can’t just phone it in when you feel like it”… I don’t really recall, because I didn’t actually say anything other than… “Huh. Yeah… ok. Well done.”
Yet, big picture… those friends, especially that last one, might remember it. Oscar remembers it, but when it came up last night, he remembered it as no big deal.
This whole post is a bit of a counterpoint to yesterday’s, where, in response, some people said things like “keep an open mind”.
There is “big-picture thinking”, and there is “open mind”… but I also do draw the line at “doctors”, quoted by no less than The President, saying things like… there’s already a cure, but it’s being hidden from us… and that alien DNA is being used in medical treatments… and that some medical conditions are the result of people having sex with demons.
In the grand scheme of things, most certainly keep an open mind and be open to possibilities. As per my Sports Day example, sometimes we’re too narrowly focused on what’s typically expected, maybe because it’s all too familiar… and it prevents us from seeing the big picture. Keep in mind… no matter what nudges you into that way of thinking… the big picture always has a lot to offer. And so does common sense.
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July 28, 2020
A lot of discussions these days – the ones where you ultimately have to walk away, or at least agree to disagree because you can’t actually believe what you’re seeing/hearing/reading… end like this:
“Where on earth did you get that idea from?”
“I researched it.”
The “researched it” thing gets thrown around a lot these days, and as per the famous quote from The Princess Bride… “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Unless you compiled a literature review, and wrote (or at least, read) abstracts of the articles you read… and/or collected a random sample of sources and performed an independent analysis of their credibility… and, if not, at least looked into the sources of those articles (authors, publishers and, most importantly, funders) and dug into that… for fallacies, distortions or just plain-old, flat-out lies… you didn’t really research it.
And even if you didn’t do any of that, did you at least think about the source of the article and why the aforementioned list (author, publisher, funder) might have been motivated to distribute it? What about the people who refer or promote the article; what might be their motivations? This wouldn’t be research, but it would be at least a semblance of critical thinking that might serve to possibly justify your opinion with respect to the credibility of your sources.
To be clear, clicking a link to a video or an article from your finely-tuned, curated feed on Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat or TikTok or whatever flavor-of-the-day social media platform serves as your de-facto news source – no, that’s not research. In fact, given the way with which that information is making its way to you, it’s perhaps as opposite to research as you can get. It’s spoon-feeding you exactly what you want to hear, because then you’ll click on it and generate some revenue for someone far down the line. And, in doing so, pad your conformity-bias just a little bit more because something new agrees with it… and set you up to click the next related thing.
Digging around the internet is the place to do research these days, but what exactly you’re doing makes all the difference. There’s a lot of good stuff out there; it’s just a question of wading through the crap to find it, and using some methodology to achieve that.
Incidentally, Wikipedia… a relatively good place to find a pretty good summary of anything within the entire body of knowledge of human history — can be easily downloaded. As crazy as it sounds, it’s only 10GB (compressed)… which is 42GB uncompressed, ie plain text… which means all of it, like all of Wikipedia – every single article – fits easily onto a $15 64GB USB thumb drive. You can carry around with you the entire knowledge base of humanity on your keychain, with lots of extra room for pictures and family videos. Not a bad thing to carry around in case you’re shipwrecked in the middle of nowhere with your solar-powered laptop. Or abducted by aliens.
Yeah, aliens… they’re here, living among us. It’s true; I researched it.
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July 27, 2020
When I was a kid, there were like 13 TV channels (instead of today’s 1,300), but most of it was crap and/or not interesting to me. But one thing that was never to be missed… Saturday morning cartoons.
One day, I will write about the revolutionary avant-garde music that accompanied many of those cartoons. Pull up any Tom & Jerry cartoon on YouTube, close your eyes and just listen to it. There should be graduate-level courses taught about it. Even without the cartoon, the sounds tell a story of their own, with an incredible, vast range of musical styles — and noise — all crammed into a few minutes.
Anyway, that’s not what this is about… this is actually about Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner.
Wile Ethelbert Coyote (yes, really… don’t say you never learn anything reading these…) is an interesting character; both genius and stupid, rolled into one.
Here’s his schtick… he comes up with an idea to catch the roadrunner… some ideas are simple, some are super-complicated. Recall the complicated blueprints… and vast array of parts he orders from ACME. He puts together some very sophisticated contraptions, which of course inevitably fail… but here’s the thing… he never follows up on his initial idea. He gives up and moves on to the next one.
Like, think about it… a rocket-powered helmet for forward thrust, and roller skates… and it almost worked… he almost had the roadrunner… until the bird took a sharp turn, right in front of an enormous wall of rock… which the coyote hit with about 500 g of force.
But he’s a cartoon, and he brushes it off, and moves on to the next idea. Hey coyote… come on, man… it almost worked! Don’t give up on it. You know, like next time, fire up the rockets and roller skates somewhere else, when the roadrunner is on a 20-mile straightaway.
Or that catapult that looked so good on paper, but fired you straight into the ground… you know, modify it… put a limiter on it. Put something on it that ejects you at the optimum part of the swing. Fiddle with it. Do something. Don’t abandon it. Don’t just let the roadrunner stand there and laugh at you. Meep meep!
This bothered me more than anything… and if I, a seven-year-old-kid, could come up with the rudimentary mechanics of the scientific process just by watching a silly coyote keep “killing” himself, you’d certainly, these days, expect better from an army of “intelligent” adults who have the entire knowledge base of human achievement at their fingertips.
This is the way science works. This is how it progresses. And experimentation is a key part of it, because you’re rarely right the first time.
As a computer programmer, I can count the number of times something worked straight out of the gate. Exactly twice.
I remember the first time it happened; I had a program I wanted to write… I had it all figured out in my head. I sat down at the computer and banged it all out; it took about 3 hours. And then, I hit the [Build] button for the first time. But instead of the inevitable long list of warnings and show-stopping errors, it was zero warnings and zero errors; all I got was a program ready to run. And I ran it, and it worked perfectly. Any other programmers… please feel free to chime in with your opinions as to how often that happens…
We are, today, living in a huge science experiment, and since we’re immersed in it, it’s important to understand the process. There are mistakes all the time, and we learn from them and we course-correct them. The insanity of the sorts of arguments that say things like, “Dr. X, several months ago, said masks were not necessary. Now the doctor is saying they are. The doctor was clearly wrong back then, so how can we trust anything the doctor says?”
Brix, Fauci, Tam… even Henry. Pick your doctor; that statement applies. All of them have made statements which, at the time, agreed with the science. Then, through experimentation and observation, the science changed. And so did their opinions and corresponding directives. That’s how the process works.
Elon Musk has treated us all with first-row tickets to this process. If you’ve been following SpaceX from the start, you’ll have seen countless attempts at recovering a booster rocket by landing it vertically on a ship. Some blew up. Some missed the ship and fell into the ocean. Some landed and tipped over. But these days, they routinely simply fall from the sky, perfectly vertical, and perfectly hit a bullseye on some ship in the middle of nowhere, and, in gymnastic terms, stick the landing. It’s astonishing. As per a previous article, closely indistinguishable from magic.
But it’s not magic; it’s countless iterations of making mistakes, adjusting, trying it again, over and over and over, till you get it right. A couple of times in my life, I’ve hit that [Build] button and it’s just worked. Several thousand other times, I’ve had to hit that [Build] button several hundred times for a single, simple little program. That’s how the world typically works.
And that’s the world we’re presently in; where scientists are making decisions with the best information they have – at this moment. Certainly in hindsight, it might change. But for the moment, who exactly are you going to trust? A scientist with decades of experience? A former reality-show star? An Instagram influencer who has like, omg, so many followers?
It was always amusing to see the coyote go off a cliff… and hang in the sky until he made the mistake of looking down, realizing where he was… and then have gravity kick in… like, if perhaps he hadn’t noticed, things would’ve been ok. Unfortunately, that’s not how the real world works. The bad things — in that case, gravity — will tug at you as soon as you give them a chance.
I think, collectively, it’s best not to have approached the edge of that cliff in the first place. But if you find yourself there, as is the case for many people these days, be careful who you listen to.
Just like what the roadrunner was so good at doing to the coyote… some of them will send you flying off that cliff. Meep meep!
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December 18, 2020
Louis Armstrong was perhaps the greatest and most innovative trumpet players of all time, so it’s a bit ironic that he’s probably best known as a vocalist, for his timeless rendition of “What a Wonderful World”. Similarly, Wayne Gretzky, perhaps the greatest and most innovative hockey player of all time… might be more remembered for something he said; something that’s been repeated about five hundred million times, in every context imaginable: “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it’s been.”
To some extent, that tired, hackneyed phrase has lost all meaning, having now become so ubiquitous and diluted.
But… it has its uses. For example, if you’re Dr. Bonnie Henry, by now you have some vision as to how things work… how the pandemic works, how hospitals work within its confines and, most importantly, how the general public seems to behave.
So… if I had to criticize Dr. Henry for anything, it would be for her failing to skate to where that particular puck was going to be on Halloween. It was becoming evident that things were about to break at the seams, and more should have been done.
On October 31st, B.C. was seeing about 350 new cases a day, and about two deaths a day. Then came the parties and the crowds and the “it’s no big deal, come on man, it’s Halloween!!” excuses.
Around 10 days after the numerous private parties and the overrunning of downtown, there was a sharp rise in daily case counts; they had doubled. But deaths hadn’t gone up, so everything was fine, right?
Ten days after that, there was a sharp rise in daily deaths… to levels we haven’t yet managed to recover from.
This isn’t rocket science, and this isn’t unpredictable… because it’s the exact same pattern we’ve seen several times. Where the puck has been, and, more importantly, where it’s going, has now become glaringly obvious.
From the “this is why we can’t have nice things” point of view, Dr. Henry has imposed measures over the holidays that seem harsh. It’s unfortunate she didn’t impose them before Halloween, because there’s a chance this would be a far more normal holiday season if she had. As it is, these measures are now necessary, but probably not sufficient. Without enforcement to back them up, these … [Continue Reading]
December 17, 2020
A quick thought with respect to the winding-down of what history will undoubtedly call the ugliest presidency ever… I wonder if it’s occurred to those who support Donald Trump – at least 74,000,000 Americans – that after all is said and done, no matter what you believe is broken and needs fixing… that this wasn’t the guy to do it.
Notwithstanding he didn’t keep the very election promises upon which he was originally elected (the border wall that Mexico will pay for, the healthcare plan that’s just a few weeks away, etc), suddenly there appeared this whole notion of a large, left-leaning group of overlords that’s controlling everything… well, if that’s the case (which it isn’t, but let’s say it is) – Trump has failed miserably in dealing with it. If you’re a staunch Republican who thinks these are real issues, I think you have to admit your guy failed you. You, like him, can scream fraudulent election and all that… so, ok, let’s say it was… it was a huge fix, all aimed at getting Biden elected – Trump, with his genius intellect and intuition saw through it all along; he identified countless examples of voter fraud. But then what?
In four years, he’s appointed more federal judges than any president in history… placing these people in roles with lifetime appointments – roles that had been gleefully held open by Mitch McConnell. These guys, with their frenzied zealous desire to stay in power, did everything they could… and it still wasn’t enough. With all his appointed judges, with all the vague but passionate handwaving, with all of the alleged evidence, look what he managed. Nothing. From the sounds of all that, you’d think it’d be a slam dunk. But no. Zero. What. A. Loser.
Forget for a moment what he’s broken (and there’s plenty) – in some crazy world, one could argue it was for the greater good, and you have to break eggs to make omelettes or whatever. OK, let’s entertain that for a moment… so, sure… lots got broken, yet… nothing got fixed. If there exists a Deep State (there doesn’t) that’s controlling the radical left (it isn’t), then… despite knowing all this, he couldn’t do anything about it. That deep state now sits well-entrenched, now in power, ready to … [Continue Reading]
December 16, 2020
Today, we’ll take a step back from gambling advice and bashing Trump and discuss… yes, how about the pandemic…
As usual, there is good news and there is bad news.
Let’s start with the good news, and that is that around the entire planet (with one notable exception), things are getting better. That doesn’t mean things are great, but if you look at the numbers and graphs below, it’s clear things have stopped getting worse in Canada. They’re either just bad, or improving. At some point, I’ll throw together some world data for comparison, but the graphs will look similar; sharp drop-offs in the rates of new cases, which in turn should show fewer hospitalizations and eventually fewer deaths. Where they were growing quickly, they’re growing more slowly. And in some places, stopped. Entirely. New Zealand is the first country on the planet where C19 is gone. Period. Restrictions lifted. Workplaces, restaurants, sports stadiums… packed with happy, healthy people. This was the place that locked down early and hard, and almost did away with it on the first go-around… but it came back, so they took more drastic action. And this time it stuck. Brutally ironic and pathetic was Donald Trump, at that time, mocking them… “It’s over for New Zealand. Everything’s gone.” That was Trump, trying to imply something like, “See? No matter what you do, you can’t get rid of it. Why bother wrecking the economy, when it won’t make a difference?”
Trump wasn’t the only one with that attitude, but the attitude is wrong. Strong decisive action can make a big difference.
While things look to be getting no worse pretty-much everywhere, the huge exception is, of course, is the U.S… where things are getting drastically worse. The collision course between the pandemic, people who don’t care, and the vaccination… it’s a perfect storm, made more complicated by that second factor… people who still don’t believe there’s a serious virus and/or people who do but won’t get vaccinated. If all Americans were to go out and get vaccinated as quickly as possible, the entire country would be rid of the virus by summer. There will probably be enough vaccine to go around to do that. All the timelines we’ve heard rely mostly on the understood supply of Pfizer vaccine that’s … [Continue Reading]
December 15, 2020
A little more on yesterday’s topic… according to the Washington Post this morning, Trump has doubled-down on his dubious election claims 15 times. Two to the power of 15 equals almost 33,000. So now, he’d have to be putting down over $65,000 to try to win back his original $2 bet… if he were betting red, which I suppose, in a certain way, he is. He’s gone from loser to Loser to LOSER… the only thing that’s changing now is the point-size of the font, but like betting systems that eventually run out of money, the screen can only fit so much as well. We’re pretty-much looking at nothing more than a big capital L now… and yet, if this morning’s torrent of even more election-fraud Tweets is any indication, he’s not done yet. Even Mitch McConnell has thrown in the towel… but Trump? Nope.
If doubling down is the wrong way to bet, is there a right way? Yes… as long as you keep in mind that if you’re betting against the house, you’re going to lose in the long run… no matter what. Unlike poker or horse-racing, where you’re playing against other people, you’ll never beat the house in the long run. Not that it’s easy with poker or horses, but at least it’s possible, and there are some people good enough that they actually do it professionally. But casino games? Nobody is making a living playing slot machines, blackjack, roulette or craps… assuming it’s a “fair” game. There are ways to “game” advantages in all of those, with mechanical aids or card counting… but those change the house odds, and then it’s a whole different story. But assuming you don’t have a roulette computer jammed into your shoe, and/or assuming you’re not able to count cards without getting caught, the house has an edge, and every dollar you bet plays into that edge. If you’re going to bet $100 in Blackjack, mathematically, the soundest way to do it is bet it all at once. That way, the house only gets one shot at imposing that edge on you… not countless times to chip away.
But… it is possible to win in the short term, and it’s possible to have a lot fun doing so… so what do you do … [Continue Reading]
December 14, 2020
There is a very common betting strategy called the Martingale — you can apply it to red/black on roulette, or blackjack, or any simple game with close to 50/50 odds – where, if the odds are truly 50/50 and you have infinite wealth, you will never lose. Unfortunately, the odds are never really 50/50, and nobody has infinite wealth… so, in the long run, you will actually always lose. And when you lose, it’ll be ugly.
Martingale is more commonly known as the strategy of doubling down, and here’s how it works: Say you’ve decided to bet red on roulette… so you bet 10. If you win, you’ve won 10. Now you bet another 10 and hopefully win again.
But if you lose, you bet 20. Now, when you win, you’ll not only win what you just bet, but you’ll also win back your original loss. And when you win, you can go back to betting 10.
If you lose again… well, now you have to bet 40… but, no worries, it’s 50/50 or whatever, it’s due to come in, etc. And with that bet of 40, you’ll win back everything you’ve already lost… right?
As we’ve learned, exponential growth gets ugly… in a hurry. 10/20/40/80/160/320/640… if you thought it can’t possibly come up black 7 times in a row, you’d be mistaken… it happens far more often than you think, and now you’re having to bet 1280 just to win back everything you’ve lost… and just to profit 10. Eventually you hit the casino limit. Eventually you run out of money.
So, no… doubling down doesn’t work, because there’s no finish line; because infinity is nobody’s version of a finish line. For whatever reason, people still tend to employ this strategy, and I’m not just talking about casino gambling. Today itself provided two examples.
One small example would be this morning’s Wall Street Journal editor defending the disgusting Jill-Biden-bashing piece that I wrote about yesterday. Instead of just apologizing for his appalling lack of judgement, he’s saying it’s no big deal, he’s blaming “team Biden” for the backlash and he’s accusing critics of playing the race card. He’s doubling-down on his mistake, and now he’ll appropriately face further backlash… to which the WSJ will respond with an apology, or, they’ll double-down again. There’s an ugly … [Continue Reading]