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You can't become a billionaire by betting on hundreds of thousands of events via "survivorship bias". It's about as likely as getting 1000 monkeys typing on typ
by pakitan 2y ago
You can't become a billionaire by betting on hundreds of thousands of events via "survivorship bias". It's about as likely as getting 1000 monkeys typing on typewriters and producing Shakespeare's works in 10 years.
- brudgers 2y agoYou might win a billion USD in a single lottery draw. https://www.nytimes.com/article/lottery-jackpot-record-powerball-megamillions.html https://www.nytimes.com/article/lottery-jackpot-record-power...
- pakitan 2y agoYes, you can. Not sure how that's relevant to the discussion though.
- bryanrasmussen 2y agoit's a typical HN Gotcha of which I myself am often guilty, given hundreds of different chances, and one of those chances can make you a billionaire, then you can become a billionaire by betting on hundreds of different chances - but of course horse race gambling doesn't give you that billion in one shot chance. on edit - well I guess it technically does it give it, but at such a high rate of investment it isn't really that worthwhile either. The point about the lottery is that a single ticket which costs little can return a billion. A horse race that returned a billion probably needs at least a 100 million to be bet, which is probably not even possible.
- brudgers 2y agoDo you think the probability of a working system are lower than the probability of laundering money at the racetrack? If you start with two billion, it’s relatively easy to walk away from the track with one.
- bryanrasmussen 2y agoit sounds to me like you think I've said something about the likelihood of a working system, and also that you think I am somehow in opposition to your second sentence, and require setting straight on the matter? I admit I am at a loss how either of these suppositions could actually come to be, based on what I wrote, so I suppose I am mistaken.
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- brudgers 2y agoYou mentioned getting real money to make a system work. I pointed out an ordinary mechanism by which a person could find capital. A winning system could offer better rates to customers of a money laundering service.
- toast0 2y agoI think only the top one of those was actually a billion. Sum of payments is poor financial math, and I really wish news agencies would grow some standards and not use them in the headlines.
- Mountain_Skies 2y agoThe lottery commissions are major purchasers of advertising so don't expect the media companies to bite that hand any time soon.