2024 Election Thread

[deaddmwalking]

When I was a preteen my brother and I discussed the ultimate way to win infinite money and determined it was to go to a casino with no limits on bets, make a bet on any game, and keep doubling your bet if you lose. Eventually you'd win and gain your initial bet in profit, assuming you had infinite money, and then you could start the process again. DDM's investment advice sounds a lot like this childish plan to win infinite money if you have infinite money.

It's definitely about incremental statistically guaranteed return on investment. Here's an article that discusses the lottery scheme. Following the Michigan Roll-down lottery, they instituted it in MA. Nobody cheated the system, but a lot of people writing about it like to claim that they did.

Always doubling your bet only works if you already have infinite money, so there's no point, really. If I have $1k, but I'm content to win $100, I could bet $100 on roulette. Effectively I'm betting on a coin flip. If tails comes up, I win. But if it's heads? Now I need to bet $200; if it comes up heads again I have to bet $400; if it comes up heads again I have to bet $800; and now I'm potentially out my whole stake. The odds of losing each time are 1/32 - pretty good odds that I win eventually. But if I apply that strategy consistently, you'd expect that sometime before my 32nd try I'd get unlucky. That seems like a lot of work (and risk) to make $100.

Regarding Silicone Bank, I probably should have explicitly stated that no investors were bailed out, and nobody (including myself) advocated that they should. Depositors, not investors, received their deposits back. Many of them had more than $250k in the bank (the limit of FDIC insurance). Making depositors whole prevented downhill effects that are difficult to predict but could be dire and include direct impacts on individual laborers who would not have received their paychecks.

[PseudoStupidity]

A lot of billionaires' companies banked with SVB, and thus when we insured their deposits entirely (instead of the amount the federal government insures bank deposits for everyone else) we literally bailed them out for banking with the risky bank instead of leaving them holding the bag for their own bad investment (banking with SVB, a thing they did for reasons related to money-making, aka an investment). Their deposits were insured by US taxpayer dollars, which is money that came from people like you and me. They literally gave your money to billionaires because they were making stupid bets, but because a few other investors lost money you're happy with that. And you thought it was good that they did this, and you still think that! That's fucking nuts, dude. They stole from you to give money to rich people and you're saying "thank you sir, may I have another?"

[Kaelik]

Yeah cannot stress how much that part of svb's "investment" strategy was to give companies low interest loans that no other bank would give IN RETURN FOR having them put millions of dollars in deposit accounts with svb.

So it was literally the case that the federal government bailed out the rich companies that were engaging in a fraudulent scheme.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

It's definitely about incremental statistically guaranteed return on investment.

It is NOT "incremental" you stupid fucking thick headed innumerate illiterate piece of shit! It was just explained to you, you are MASSIVELY misusing that word.

Also you are misusing guaranteed there as well, not as much, but definitely because you have demonstrated you don't actually understand the actual very specific conditions under which anything (approaches) guaranteed under this moronic plan at all.

But regardless INCREMENTAL is the wrong fucking word for this and for you, get it out of your stinking fucking innumerate mouth and apologize to the English language.

[Kaelik]

The fact that dead dm thinks incrementally losing money over and over and over until you eventually get a single big payout is "incremental gains" does at least explain his political desire to keep promoting the worst democrats to incrementally make everything worse forever as "incrementalism"

[phlapjackage]

No. I believe that if you calculate the odds correctly

This is the part I had issue with (emphasis mine). Calculating the odds of a coin flip, a roulette spin, or a lottery are doable (to some extent), sure. The things affecting the outcome are understood and countable. But this discussion was about the lifespan of Trump, and I think most people (including me) were arguing that it's impossible to calculate the odds correctly, because there are just too many variables, many unknown or not-well-understood variables. And that the data you were using to try to calculate odds wasn't correct either, re: things like acturial tables of avg 80yo men. You even kinda acknowledge this yourself, when you just assign 0% to assassination because you feel like it because that number is impossible to really calculate correctly.

Making depositors whole prevented downhill effects that are difficult to predict but could be dire and include direct impacts on individual laborers who would not have received their paychecks.

Isn't it interesting that these 'difficult to predict' impacts ended up with a result of rich people getting to make big-money investments with no risk.

I mean, I hope the govt is going around everywhere and making sure nothing has potential dire and direct impacts on individual laborers. Oh wait, what's that? The govt isn't doing that, and only intervenes like this for certain situations that seem to revolve around rich people ? Why do you think that is ?

[deaddmwalking]

Deliberately conflating deposits and investments are misleading. In January 2023 there were 60 million shares valued at $300 each meaning the company was valued at $18 billion.

A few short months later that value was gone. Owners of the stock lost $18 billion in their investment. Now unless you think that the depositors were also the investors the decision to extend protection to excess deposits (over the FDIC limit of $250k) meant that investors lost money. If the depositors were the investors, they lost their investment so I guess the best case is they lost half their money instead of all of it.

As for Trump, the odds-makers established 0.79% as the 'break-even'. All you have to do is calculate if that is too high or too low. I calculated it as too high. Assassinations (like meteor strikes) just don't make much impact. Considering how polarized our politics is, if assassinations were easy they'd have happened a lot in the last 8 years.

[Kaelik]

As for Trump, the odds-makers established 0.79% as the 'break-even'. All you have to do is calculate if that is too high or too low. I calculated it as too high. Assassinations (like meteor strikes) just don't make much impact. Considering how polarized our politics is, if assassinations were easy they'd have happened a lot in the last 8 years.

And while your method of calculating is fucking dogshit, I want to focus on how you just typed

"assassinations just don't make much impact" about a .79% chance estimation.

Assassinations definitely make an impact in a .79% chance. Even if a bullet didn't literally graze this mother fucker's ear like 2 months ago, assassination should have an impact on a .79% chance if you were talking about Biden, or Harris, or Obama, or Clinton.

Some insane levels of stupidity to think you have calculated the percentage chance to two points beyond the decimal and say assassinations have no effect on the number.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

Some insane levels of stupidity to think you have calculated the percentage chance to two points beyond the decimal and say assassinations have no effect on the number.

Also notably, with the arrogance to believe that his ass methodology and results are actually in his imagination more accurate than the results the bookmakers, actual professionals trying to make money off making an estimate on this, managed to get.

[deaddmwalking]

Some insane levels of stupidity to think you have calculated the percentage chance to two points beyond the decimal and say assassinations have no effect on the number.

What do you think the odds are that Trump is assassinated within a 2 week timeframe (specifically from that post to the day of the election)?

It sounds like you think it's at least a tenth of 1%.

I don't.

The odds of Trump dying is the sum of every single possible cause of death. He could get hit by a bolt of lightning! The odds of getting hit by lightning in a year are about 1 in 1.22 million. It turns out that including that in 2 weeks doesn't even affect the rounding.

There are over 500,000 political figures. There have been two American political figures assassinated in the last 10 years. That puts the odds of getting assassinated at about 1 in 2.5 million annually. Which means Trump is twice as likely to be hit by lightning in any given two week period as he is to be killed by an assassin's bullet.

@NPP - It is incremental. I'm going to explain my point fully so you can stop acting confused.

Let's say that there's a roulette wheel (or a die) with 100 numbers, and that it's fair (ie, there is no bias toward specific results, so each result has a 1% chance of occurring). Now, you might expect 'the house' to pay you $95 for every $1 you bet if you pick the right number. Since you have a 1% chance of picking the right number, even if 100 players choose every single number the house pays out $95 to the winner and collects $99 from the losers (the winner of course gets their original bet back). But if the house doesn't understand the odds and they agree to pay $105 to the winner the best strategy is for you, individually, to place 100 bets (one on every single possible result). This will cost you $100, but you're guaranteed to win $105 (plus your original $1 bet for a total of $106). If you spend $100 to earn $106, you are incrementally making a small profit.

Now, let's say you have only $50 - should you bet at all? Probably! You have a 50% chance of walking away with $106, and a 50% chance of walking away with nothing. If you have $50/week and you play 1/week, over time you'll expect to make, on average, $53. There are reasons that you might not do something even if it is 'mathematically likely to result in a positive benefit'. For me, earning an extra $6 may not be worth the time it takes to place 100 bets. If I'm only able to cover half the available options the risk of losing that $50 might outweigh the benefit of a free cup of coffee most weeks. But if the 'expected value' exceeds the cost, statistically you'll make money eventually. For the record - virtually all gambling has a negative expected value - if it didn't the house wouldn't always win. And the house always wins. But that's because they understand this stuff (because their business, and maybe their life, actually depends on it).

[Thaluikhain]

There are over 500,000 political figures. There have been two American political figures assassinated in the last 10 years. That puts the odds of getting assassinated at about 1 in 2.5 million annually. Which means Trump is twice as likely to be hit by lightning in any given two week period as he is to be killed by an assassin's bullet.

There's been 2 or 3 attempts on Trump's life in the last few months. And that Trump is a former PotUS, and, well, Trump, not just a political figure.

Why do these not affect your maths?

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

@NPP - It is incremental. I'm going to explain my point fully so you can stop acting confused.

You spectacular moron. Again, all you are doing is demonstrating your complete failure to understand.

You START your IDIOCY by creating a deeply artificial example roulette scenario that in the real world would never happen.

Then you FAIL to rig your fucking example correctly by rendering it irrelevant by making sure to give yourself a literal 100% chance that there will be one, and only exactly one utterly guaranteed win. Something that does NOT exist in your fucking moronic investment advice. Guaranteed and fixed numbers of wins do NOT exist in any of the other examples discussed UNTIL NOW. And that very much changes things.

But apparently not in ways that help YOU because you fucking throw that guaranteed single win out the fucking window by moving to an example of buying half the Roulette wheel every time. Except actually you only do that because "you don't have enough money" for the guaranteed win. Which means you are telling someone to bet ALL their money all 50 dollars, on a 50% chance to win, by your numbers $3, WITH A FUCKING FIFTY PERCENT CHANCE OF LOSING $50 WHICH WE HAVE ESTABLISHED IS ALL YOUR MONEY AND YOU CALL THAT A GOOD BET.

You half assedly acknowledge the risk of losing ALL YOUR MONEY might be bad, but in a way that is shallow and dismissive. Then you say YOU WILL MAKE MONEY EVENTUALLY.

No. You won't. Not if you lost ALL YOUR FUCKING MONEY the first fucking bet. And then no, it is not guaranteed profit any more, not since you dropped half the wheel from the bet, it only APPROACHES guaranteed as your number of bets approaches infinity. You CAN lose two coin flips in a go, 2 coin flips do NOT "incrementally" "guarantee" the "profit" of one heads result. even rigging your example to a fifty percent win rate does NOT prevent the real possibility of losing hundreds of dollars in a row before seeing even one win, and if you ARE unlucky at all at the start, you have dug a deep hole for the small profit rate to dig back out of even if your luck evens out at average or turns to good instead of bad.

The problem is you ALWAYS ASSUME INFINITE ASSETS, you ALWAYS ASSUME INFINITE BETS and you ALWAYS ASSUME ZERO DEVIATION FROM AVERAGE RESULTS.

You do not understand the implications of FINITE NUMBERS and INDIVIDUAL INSTANCES. Pretty fucking important things.

If we go back to your original claims instead of your FAILURE TO RIG YOUR OWN FAVOURABLE EXAMPLE BECAUSE YOU DON'T FUCKING UNDERSTAND MATH. Potentially very high value returns with VANISHINGLY SMALL success rates and NO straight up 100% guaranteed wins "on the board" EVER. The number of required bets to even approach "probably but never guaranteed" breaking even is huge, and the consequences of falling in the band of results even SLIGHTLY beneath "average" in turn is huge and utterly devastating to an investor.

Especially if in order to hit what YOU call "mathematically favorable" conditions like a coin flip of a 3% profit compared to a equal chance of a loss close enough to 30 times that REQUIRED you to spend ALL YOUR MONEY because you didn't have the infinite money required for the infinite bets that allow you to APPROACH BUT NEVER REACH a 100% success rate.

BECAUSE YOU ARE GIVING PEOPLE INVESTMENT ADVICE THAT CAUSES THEM TO LOSE ALL THEIR MONEY UNLESS THEY ALREADY HAVE INFINITE MONEY YOU MORON.

[Kaelik]

Going to ignore all the very stupid roulette example and focus on the assassination thing:

1) you are claiming to know that an assassination has less then 1/100th of a percent chance. Do you realize that? You said 1/10, but you claim it has less then 1/100th of a percent.

2) putting "all politicians ever including dog catchers" in the denominator and then "successful assassinations I've heard about" in the numerator is exactly the kind of bot posting that people keep making fun of you for.

Trump is manifestly more likely to be the target of assassination then the state comptroller of Texas. One reason we know this is because THREE PEOPLE HAVE TRIED TO ASSASSINATE HIM IN THE LAST FUCKING 3 MONTHS! Comparatively I believe zero assassination attempts have been made on the state comptroller of Texas ever.

This should suggest to anyone who isn't a moron that "all politicians" is a very bad set.

It's also a minor thing, but you don't know how many politicial figures have been assassinated in the last 10 years. Because if someone did kill a local judge because they were mad about a custody case there's no guarantee we would have heard of it. Even aside from just news propagation, we can't even be sure they will get caught or it will be attributed to assassination and not "unknown shooting" or "died at 84, we didn't really check for poison."

It's probably still a very low number, but you don't have the faintest clue what it is, so even if your set wasn't dogshit, you still would be wrong.

[deaddmwalking]

@Kaelik - I picked numbers that I think make sense. We haven't had a president (or presidential candidate) assassinated since the 1960s. There have been attempts, but the people in place to stop it mostly stop it. The reason that people talk about the Trump shooting is because of how shocking and weird it is - to the point that people believe that it was a false-flag operation. I don't think a bunch of people WISHING that Trump would get assassinated is the same thing as making him LIKELY to be assassinated. Most of the people who would prefer him dead aren't the kind of people to walk around with AR-15s. I'm absolutely fine with assigning less than a 1/100th% chance of Trump being assassinated in any 2 week period.

Let's say I give it a 0.004% (that would be low enough that it wouldn't round to 0.01%). That's low enough that the odds of him getting assassinated in 10 years is about 1% - or about 0.10% in a given year.

I am absolutely fine with those numbers. Personally, I still think that's high. Turns out killing presidents (or presidential candidates) is hard. If it wasn't it would happen with regular frequency. Using 50 years of Presidents (and candidates) doesn't give me a single assassination even if that's a statistically significant number of people - that would imply a very low percentage chance.

@NPP - If the odds are 1% and you can't play all the fields and/or there is no guaranteed winner, if the payout is $105 you would expect to win about 1% of the time so every $100 you spend, will, on average, net you $105. That's highly VARIABLE (and there are ways you can reduce the variance), but I provided an example of a lottery where you were STASTICALLY GUARANTEED to make more than you spent. So, okay, contrived situation that explains exactly what real life was like. That's me making it simple for you.

[Kaelik]

"The liklihood of the guy who got his ear wiffed by a bullet getting assassinated is .004% because generally the people who walk around with guns aren't generally the people who want to kill him" is a pretty great example of how your post hoc rationalizations get for using an acturial table. So many things wrong with that sentence it's hard to start with. But turns out, you only need one weirdo right wing guy who has a gun and wants to shoot trump for an assassination attempt, regardless of what the general numbers are, because three weirdo right wing guys have tried to shoot trump already.

No one actually belivies you would have put the assassination chance at .004% if you didn't start with a very stupid very different stupid estimate of Trump death and then have to backfill to avoid admitting your first estimate was very stupid.

Presidential assassinations are rare because we have security, you are probably going to get caught if you succeed, and usually it doesn't matter because the VP is just the same fucking person. That doesn't really change that obviously there is SOME factor that makes Trump different from the average president, and one way we could check that is THAT THREE PEOPLE HAVE TRIED IN 3 MONTHS.

Everything you say is some variation of "if you start from the assumption that Trump is exactly like every other 80 year old then []" "if we start from the assumption that Trump is exactly as likely to have someone try to assassinate him as the average president [but of the last 60 years only, don't count the successful ones, because then each president has an 8% chance of being successfully assassinated and a 14% chance of being shot]"

What people keep telling you is that if you start by assuming something manifestly false, your conclusion is going to suck.

[deaddmwalking]

If your point is that these things can't be estimated, I disagree. If you think you have a better estimate, that'd be something worth discussing.

But I absolutely don't believe that Trump will be assassinated. As you note, he has security. My take is that security will be better after the oversight in Butler, PA. Much better. To the point that there won't be anyone who gets that close in any reasonable amount of time.

[PseudoStupidity]

Deliberately conflating deposits and investments are misleading. In January 2023 there were 60 million shares valued at $300 each meaning the company was valued at $18 billion.

A few short months later that value was gone. Owners of the stock lost $18 billion in their investment. Now unless you think that the depositors were also the investors the decision to extend protection to excess deposits (over the FDIC limit of $250k) meant that investors lost money. If the depositors were the investors, they lost their investment so I guess the best case is they lost half their money instead of all of it.

When all these companies gave their money to a bank that gambles with their money they were making a bet that the bank would have that money when they came back to withdraw it, there were better banks for doing that (and actual accounting practices to protect your money from a bank failing. It's not weird for companies to have thousands of bank accounts, use deposit networks, or probably a large number of things I'm not aware of to protect their funds). Any company that handed all its money to SVB for safe keeping was gambling, that is and was my entire point. It isn't just the SVB investors that were gambling, it was also the companies who gave the bank money well beyond the amount that was insured by the FDIC knowing the bank was run by gamblers.

We always bail out the rich, we do not bail out the poor. How could you live in this stupid country and not even know the basics of how this shit works? Were you asleep for the Great Recession? Rich people get a safety net, poor people get fucked.

[Kaelik]

If your point is that these things can't be estimated, I disagree. If you think you have a better estimate, that'd be something worth discussing.

But I absolutely don't believe that Trump will be assassinated. As you note, he has security. My take is that security will be better after the oversight in Butler, PA. Much better. To the point that there won't be anyone who gets that close in any reasonable amount of time.

My point is broadly that your particular method of "assume obviously false thing" is a bad method.

I'll further follow up and say that anyone saying they have an estimate to the hundredth place of a percent of how likely Trump is to die before a certain date is fundamentally misunderstanding how estimates work and assigning degrees of certainty to things that are not justified.

If someone said "Trump has a between 0-10% chance of dying before he takes office" I would of course, just say "wow, unlike deaddm, you get how estimates work, and you understand that you don't have a high degree of certainty! Congrats!" But if someone says "I think trump is 1.27% likely to die" I would say "Wow, you don't understand how estimates work. You can't have an estimate that has more significant figures then your least certain input."

[Kaelik]

Any company that handed all its money to SVB for safe keeping was gambling

Technically some of them were merely complying with the terms of their loan contract in which they got a 5 million dollar zero interest loan from SVB in return for banking with SVB.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

DDM, you are a moron and your reasoning and examples read exactly like the drunken ravings of a gambling addict, you are obsessed with that story about that one time ever this worked for that one movie about the lottery scheme, like a gambling addict is obsessed with the one mythic story of the perfect sure thing that happened once and justifies their insane self destructive gambling "system" which is what you have.

You are IMPERVIOUS to WORDS much less math, reason and explanation. Hopefully at this point others have noticed this, but I don't think there was ever much risk of people following your stupid investment advice since it DID require them to start with infinite money.

[PseudoStupidity]

Any company that handed all its money to SVB for safe keeping was gambling

Technically some of them were merely complying with the terms of their loan contract in which they got a 5 million dollar zero interest loan from SVB in return for banking with SVB.

I consider that to be a reason they knew they were gambling. SVB was powered by bullshit loans, and that should have been obvious to the companies who were getting the bullshit loans. I don't feel bad if somebody loses the deposit they gave to a bank that is clearly a shitty bank for liars and frauds.