Not quite the same, since in my scenario the player loses everything after a loss while in the St. Petersburg Paradox it seems they keep their winnings. But it does seem relevant in explaining that expected value isn’t everything.

I’m looking at the game as a whole. The player has a 1 in 8 chance of winning 3 rounds overall.

But the odds of the player managing to do so are proportionate. In theory, if 8 players each decide to go for three rounds, one of them will win, but the losings from the other 7 will pay for that player’s winnings.

You’re right that the house is performing a Martingale strategy. That’s a good insight. That may actually be the source of the house advantage. The scenario is ideal for a Martingale strategy to work.

Well, they have to start over with a $1 bet.

I don’t know if that applies to this scenario. In this game, the player is always in the lead until they aren’t, but I don’t see how that works in their favor.

You’re saying that the player pays a dollar each time they decide to “double-or-nothing”? I was thinking they’d only be risking the dollar they bet to start the game.

That change in the ruleset would definitely tilt the odds in the house’s favor.

Right, and as the chain continues, the probability of the player maintaining their streak becomes infinitesimal. But the potential payout scales at the same rate.

If the player goes for 3 rounds, they only have a 1/8 chance of winning… but they’ll get 8 times their initial bet. So it’s technically a fair game, right?

I feel like he was working up to a punchline about haven mistaken a toy for an electric school bus, but for some reason failed to get there.

I’ve seen other comics where Everett rejected the concept. One was when he told a woman he believed in it (in the sense of wanting it to happen) and threatened to kill children, and another when he told a man who brought it up that he was introducing him to race homicide. (I guess the term “genocide” hadn’t entered the vocabulary.)

Also videos that weren’t intended for kids but superficially looked like they were got involuntarily flagged as such and had their comments removed.

A separate site would have been a much better solution.

Yeah, I can’t speak to the behind-the-scenes drama, but I agree that Pierce was at his best in Season One, where he was a little bit grandiose and a little bit of a jerk but still had moments of wisdom and humanity. I always liked the talk he gave Jeff in the boating episode.

Turning him into a total buffoon villain from season 2 onwards was a change for the worse.

What’s going to happen in the long run? Is that part of the country simply going to become uninhabitable? If so, why isn’t the real estate market reflecting that?

(Genuine question)

Like the Klingon dish gagh?

Taiwan had the same concern. What they did is make it so that receipts also work as lottery tickets, to encourage people to ask for them and hold on to them.

Yeah. I mean I agree that focusing on change at the systemic level is more effective than changing individual habits, but what people don’t realize is that the systemic change we need is the kind that will force those individual changes.

Taxing or regulating the oil companies will help, but it will help by making energy more expensive so people are forced to make do with less.

I found it on Know Your Meme: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/pondering-my-orb

That was my first thought too. What’s this orb pondering business everyone’s on about?

What I usually love about musicals is the variety of songs and subject matters, and with the exception of the Klingon song, the songs all felt the same.

True, the complexity argument is usually given in bad faith. But I’ve seen even people who advocate RCV get confused about how the rounds work and how this affects the voting strategy.

Looks too big to be an aphid. Most aphid species are tiny. Ladybugs eat them whole. The largest aphid species would be barely noticeable on casual observation.