6 ms·

/r/wsb is kind of insanity, but I’ve come to think that maybe young person can YOLO a bit against the odds somewhere in life. If something returns poorly on ave

by ollifi 6y ago

/r/wsb is kind of insanity, but I’ve come to think that maybe young person can YOLO a bit against the odds somewhere in life. If something returns poorly on average, but has high payouts at the top it might just work out. Your life won’t be the average case but single sample. Lottery is too improbable but some other things ”no rational person would do” can be ok. Main thing is to get over with it soon and protect the downside. Of course if you get lucky you need to be contempt with the nice head start and switch strategy to doing the boring rational things. Not sure if these qualities are often found in one person.

55555 6y ago
> I’ve come to think that maybe young person can YOLO a bit against the odds somewhere in life. If something returns poorly on average, but has high payouts at the top it might just work out. Your life won’t be the average case but single sample. This is indeed, after all, a website about founding startups.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  The only difference between being a founder and gambling is the social signaling. In both cases, luck is a larger component than grit (lots of amazing folks have failed through no fault of their own). No shame in gambling your way to wealth if you don't care about the social signaling.
  - kyawzazaw 6y ago
    I bet there is some sort of positive social signaling in gambling your way to wealth as long as you succeed
  - silexia 6y ago
    Anyone else notice that WSB reads like a religion? And that Trump supporters have faith without evidence, just like religion? Perhaps most humans cannot truly be atheists, but will always be caught by something to believe in.
  - whythre 6y ago
    I am going to push back on this. Creating something of value is better than gambling, which is why founders have more prestige than lotto winners. Even if luck is a significant component to success, it isn’t the only component.
    - toomuchtodo 6y ago
      Value is subjective. Wealth is objective and tangible.
  - RhodoGSA 6y ago
    Social signaling must come from the person doing the signaling. In my experience people who've made life changing money off crypto this last couple months say they are 'investors' or have a couple of 'business'. Never would they say it was all luck or I gambled my way to the top. They saw a trend, they bet one it and they were payed for voting with their wallet. Although you call it 'gambling' someone else might call it 'insight' or 'Voting with your wallet' in the case of crypto.
    - toomuchtodo 6y ago
      All good points. In the end, sentiment is a shared delusion.
gchamonlive 6y ago
I think I understood your use of the word `contempt` because it is similar to `contente` in my mother-langauge (portuguese). However, I don't believe `contempt` assumes the meaning of `satisfied`, instead it is defined as `having a strong feeling of disliking and having no respect for someone or something`. In any case, I have mixed feelings about in which direction society is heading. On the one hand, I think this game of social ascension is the same as before, only the dream changed: we have no illusions of having a well paid job that affords us house, cars and a big family, at least not without acquiring a huge debt. On the other hand, on average, we have much more access to information. The average joe is much more educated and have higher buying power than 100 years ago. I think we can't really look at the present comparing with what once was, because we live in a time of its own. We have to reassess the current configuration, fight to keep what we acquired in terms of freedom and equality, but try to fix the perceived feeling of separation, loneliness and helplessness together.
- enigmo 6y ago
  it's probably just a typo, in context this reads like `content` not `contempt`.
  - gchamonlive 6y ago
    True, I didn't know this word existed like that. I would have been skeptical to use it, since it is so similar to the word in portuguese.
gruez 6y ago
>If something returns poorly on average, but has high payouts at the top it might just work out. Your life won’t be the average case but single sample. This almost certainly results in a worse average outcome, because of diminishing returns on income. Winning a 10M jackpot won't bring you 10,000 times the happiness compared to finding $1000 on the ground.
- glazyrin 6y ago
  I think this is a truism which doesn't always apply. Suppose that there are 1,000 basement-dwelling redditors (okay, it's a caricature). Each has their basic needs taken care of, but not much money, and not much scope to improve their lot in life. What little money they have doesn't get invested, but spent frivolously. Suppose 1,000 such people could all put in $500 and give it to a randomly selected one of them. That person wins a life-changing amount of money. They suddenly have their prospects upgraded - they can travel, buy a house, live in some comfort, pursue a dream career. Couldn't it arguably be rational for all 1,000 to participate in that game? Doesn't it make sense that the utility curve is convex, not concave - that $500,000 is more than 1,000 times better than $500, when compared to $0? After all, suppose that $500 was a year's spare income. Even saving for most of a lifetime would only yield $20-30,000, nothing like enough for many of the opportunities that half a million would make possible. And a lump sum at age 65 could be much less useful than one at age 25. Losing the $500 might barely make a difference to one's quality of life. Now suppose that to participate in this lottery, they have to pay 10% of the money to Wall Street, or high frequency market makers, or whoever. Couldn't it still be a rational choice for each of the 1,000 to participate?
  - kbenson 6y ago
    This is just the flip side of why people support progressive taxes. If you believe that a flat tax is unfair because the people at the lower end of the spectrum have much less free money that isn't taken up by base needs, then it follows that different amounts of money affect people in different circumstances differently. To the person with 10 million dollars, doubling their wealth is nice for them but likely won't result in a major change in lifestyle and what they could or couldn't do before. Maybe they go from a large house to a larger house. For the person that makes 30 thousand a year, doubling it makes a huge difference in how they live. The disposable income amount doesn't double, it's likely many many times higher, because it was such a relatively small portion before. The same thing applies to one-time payments. It would make sense in your example even if the payout was much less (like $10k) but still affected the group similarly (i.e. if they had less disposable income). That amount of money is a huge to people that have little disposable income.

by ollifi 6y ago

55555 6y ago

> I’ve come to think that maybe young person can YOLO a bit against the odds somewhere in life. If something returns poorly on average, but has high payouts at the top it might just work out. Your life won’t be the average case but single sample. This is indeed, after all, a website about founding startups.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
toomuchtodo 6y ago
The only difference between being a founder and gambling is the social signaling. In both cases, luck is a larger component than grit (lots of amazing folks have failed through no fault of their own). No shame in gambling your way to wealth if you don't care about the social signaling.
- kyawzazaw 6y ago
  I bet there is some sort of positive social signaling in gambling your way to wealth as long as you succeed
- silexia 6y ago
  Anyone else notice that WSB reads like a religion? And that Trump supporters have faith without evidence, just like religion? Perhaps most humans cannot truly be atheists, but will always be caught by something to believe in.
- whythre 6y ago
  I am going to push back on this. Creating something of value is better than gambling, which is why founders have more prestige than lotto winners. Even if luck is a significant component to success, it isn’t the only component.
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    Value is subjective. Wealth is objective and tangible.
- RhodoGSA 6y ago
  Social signaling must come from the person doing the signaling. In my experience people who've made life changing money off crypto this last couple months say they are 'investors' or have a couple of 'business'. Never would they say it was all luck or I gambled my way to the top. They saw a trend, they bet one it and they were payed for voting with their wallet. Although you call it 'gambling' someone else might call it 'insight' or 'Voting with your wallet' in the case of crypto.
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    All good points. In the end, sentiment is a shared delusion.

gchamonlive 6y ago

I think I understood your use of the word `contempt` because it is similar to `contente` in my mother-langauge (portuguese). However, I don't believe `contempt` assumes the meaning of `satisfied`, instead it is defined as `having a strong feeling of disliking and having no respect for someone or something`. In any case, I have mixed feelings about in which direction society is heading. On the one hand, I think this game of social ascension is the same as before, only the dream changed: we have no illusions of having a well paid job that affords us house, cars and a big family, at least not without acquiring a huge debt. On the other hand, on average, we have much more access to information. The average joe is much more educated and have higher buying power than 100 years ago. I think we can't really look at the present comparing with what once was, because we live in a time of its own. We have to reassess the current configuration, fight to keep what we acquired in terms of freedom and equality, but try to fix the perceived feeling of separation, loneliness and helplessness together.

enigmo 6y ago
it's probably just a typo, in context this reads like `content` not `contempt`.
- gchamonlive 6y ago
  True, I didn't know this word existed like that. I would have been skeptical to use it, since it is so similar to the word in portuguese.

gruez 6y ago

>If something returns poorly on average, but has high payouts at the top it might just work out. Your life won’t be the average case but single sample. This almost certainly results in a worse average outcome, because of diminishing returns on income. Winning a 10M jackpot won't bring you 10,000 times the happiness compared to finding $1000 on the ground.

glazyrin 6y ago
I think this is a truism which doesn't always apply. Suppose that there are 1,000 basement-dwelling redditors (okay, it's a caricature). Each has their basic needs taken care of, but not much money, and not much scope to improve their lot in life. What little money they have doesn't get invested, but spent frivolously. Suppose 1,000 such people could all put in $500 and give it to a randomly selected one of them. That person wins a life-changing amount of money. They suddenly have their prospects upgraded - they can travel, buy a house, live in some comfort, pursue a dream career. Couldn't it arguably be rational for all 1,000 to participate in that game? Doesn't it make sense that the utility curve is convex, not concave - that $500,000 is more than 1,000 times better than $500, when compared to $0? After all, suppose that $500 was a year's spare income. Even saving for most of a lifetime would only yield $20-30,000, nothing like enough for many of the opportunities that half a million would make possible. And a lump sum at age 65 could be much less useful than one at age 25. Losing the $500 might barely make a difference to one's quality of life. Now suppose that to participate in this lottery, they have to pay 10% of the money to Wall Street, or high frequency market makers, or whoever. Couldn't it still be a rational choice for each of the 1,000 to participate?
- kbenson 6y ago
  This is just the flip side of why people support progressive taxes. If you believe that a flat tax is unfair because the people at the lower end of the spectrum have much less free money that isn't taken up by base needs, then it follows that different amounts of money affect people in different circumstances differently. To the person with 10 million dollars, doubling their wealth is nice for them but likely won't result in a major change in lifestyle and what they could or couldn't do before. Maybe they go from a large house to a larger house. For the person that makes 30 thousand a year, doubling it makes a huge difference in how they live. The disposable income amount doesn't double, it's likely many many times higher, because it was such a relatively small portion before. The same thing applies to one-time payments. It would make sense in your example even if the payout was much less (like $10k) but still affected the group similarly (i.e. if they had less disposable income). That amount of money is a huge to people that have little disposable income.