Be Good at Math
People who are bad at math go broke and die young. It's true!
Go to Las Vegas and look around. Big, fancy hotels that charge no more for a room than your local Courtyard Marriott. How do they do that? Well, here is a clue: you are not likely to win at the tables or with the one armed bandits. Look at the many rituals that gamblers perform and you will see desperate people trying to control the laws of chance that are stacked against them. Yes, it is possible to do better with more skill and knowledge (some card counters have done well in blackjack), but you are not that talented.
Many times I hear from patients (yes, DocBrain is a doctor) "Smoking doesn't cause lung cancer. People who never smoked die of lung cancer and people who smoke 3 packs a day can live to be 100, so it is all just luck, all a 50:50 chance. You get it or you don't, so quit hassling me about smoking."
In the great wheel of fortune that is your life, you are statistically better to keep the wedges of the wheel that lead to bad outcomes as small as possible so that when the wheel spins, you are likely to have a good outcome that day. Bad outcomes include: disease, injury, poverty, ignorance, punishment for violating laws, having nothing to live for and having nothing to die for. Unfortunately, you cannot take the bad wedges off the wheel entirely. Using the presence of bad wedges to justify activities that increase the size of the bad wedges or justify avoiding activities that decrease the size of the bad wedges is not really statistically smart. One day, your wheel will stop on black. One day, you will get the dreaded double zero. I am not telling you not to enjoy life, as a life without enjoyment is really no life at all. Try to pick the enjoyments that enhance your life's quality and duration. You can do this and still not worry and have a good time!
Go to Las Vegas and look around. Big, fancy hotels that charge no more for a room than your local Courtyard Marriott. How do they do that? Well, here is a clue: you are not likely to win at the tables or with the one armed bandits. Look at the many rituals that gamblers perform and you will see desperate people trying to control the laws of chance that are stacked against them. Yes, it is possible to do better with more skill and knowledge (some card counters have done well in blackjack), but you are not that talented.
Many times I hear from patients (yes, DocBrain is a doctor) "Smoking doesn't cause lung cancer. People who never smoked die of lung cancer and people who smoke 3 packs a day can live to be 100, so it is all just luck, all a 50:50 chance. You get it or you don't, so quit hassling me about smoking."
In the great wheel of fortune that is your life, you are statistically better to keep the wedges of the wheel that lead to bad outcomes as small as possible so that when the wheel spins, you are likely to have a good outcome that day. Bad outcomes include: disease, injury, poverty, ignorance, punishment for violating laws, having nothing to live for and having nothing to die for. Unfortunately, you cannot take the bad wedges off the wheel entirely. Using the presence of bad wedges to justify activities that increase the size of the bad wedges or justify avoiding activities that decrease the size of the bad wedges is not really statistically smart. One day, your wheel will stop on black. One day, you will get the dreaded double zero. I am not telling you not to enjoy life, as a life without enjoyment is really no life at all. Try to pick the enjoyments that enhance your life's quality and duration. You can do this and still not worry and have a good time!
posted by DocBrain at
4:22 AM
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