Observations

14. “First Do No Harm” Can Be Harmful. Those readers who are advantage gamblers certainly realize where I am going with this. If the “expected value” of a medical procedure is significantly higher than doing nothing, it is malpractice to settle on doing nothing just because doing something occasionally does harm. Undoubtedly most doctors know this. Unfortunately, lawyers pretend like they don’t.
15. Fake Cameras and More Lawyer Nonsense. There was a car break in, in the parking garage of the smallish casino I consulted for. There were no cameras since it wasn’t deemed worth the cost. But fake cameras would undoubtedly deter most future break ins. Our attorney nixed the idea. Though they would stop most crimes they would be an admission that we considered the garage dangerous, yet we didn’t take full precautions. We risked a lawsuit that we wouldn’t get if we did nothing. That makes sense?

25. Commercials That Depend on the Placebo Effect. Why else do you think your TV is infested with ads for ED pills, memory enhancements, and other vitamin type pills that that the FDA is not allowed to comment on? At least 30% of buyers will give them a good review because of the strange tendency of the brain to produce real physical effects for no discernable reason.

29. Billionaire ex Poker Pro, Asks Me 8 Card Stud Question. Even though there is no such game. It helped Jeff Yass zero in on regular stud in the days before he became an options trader superstar. This and #27 are just two examples of the point I make in #28. Jeff apparently agrees and his subsequent financial success could well be partially due to that.

32. Those Who Would Give Up Liberty for Safety Deserve Neither? Supposedly a profound statement from Benjamin Franklin. And I have never heard anyone say he was wrong. Even though he clearly was. Had he said “should expect” instead of “deserve” it would be fine. His actual words, however, are simply evil.
33. If You Don’t Believe in Equality for All, I Don’t Want Your Vote? I have heard versions of this spoken many times by many candidates, including our present president. Maybe the reason no one calls them on it is that it is such a blatant lie that it’s not worth the time or ink.

35. Is “We Will Match Competitor’s Price” Sometimes Surreptitious Price Fixing? In a small town, why would I lower a price below yours if you automatically match it?

37. Is Solipsism Ridiculous? Clearly, I am not a solipsist, or I wouldn’t be wasting my time writing this list for others to read. However, one simple adjustment would change everything. Suppose I am dreaming. And interacting with “others”. Are we not all solipsists in our dreams? (Note: After writing this, I found that I wasn’t the first to think of the idea.)
38. A Way to Tell If You Are Dreaming. If #37 worries you, I thought up a way. Do a physics experiment where the result can be both measured and also predicted by a formula you know, but is too complex to calculate in your head. Measure your result and see if it coincides with the answer you get with pen and paper. I realize it’s not foolproof. But at least it partially refutes the statement that there is nothing you can do to verify whether you are dreaming or not.

41. Ill Conceived Market Research. Our hotel gave its guests a choice of one of five gifts. One became unavailable. Two new possibilities were tested for guest preference. But they were erroneously tested against each other. That procedure might pick a gift that was almost always 2nd choice among the five while the other prospective gift might be usually fifth but sometimes first. There are many analogies including elections.

46. Best Use of Floorspace, Misunderstanding. Several casinos decided against poker rooms when their research showed that slot machines make more money on the same number of square feet. But in non super crowded casinos, the poker revenue is simply extra money since it’s easy for someone to move their slot play to other spots. Plus, the poker room may bring customers through the door who would otherwise go elsewhere. The error is probably made by other businesses as well.

52. The Odd Connection Between Placebos, Peeping Toms and Babe Ruth Autographed Baseballs. Do you see it? If you are the victim of a dishonest doctor who takes advantage of your susceptibility, a pervert outside your window, or a thief/forger who steals the baseball and replaces it with a counterfeit, you are only harmed if someone tells you it happened. Should they?
53. Call in The Next Ten Minutes/ Denying the Antecedent. Hopefully you get that those TV commercials that promise that you will receive something extra if you call within ten minutes, will still give it to you even if you call later. One reason is that there is usually no way they know which ad you’re responding to. And if you reply that it’s illegal to lie in commercials, I’m forced to tell you that you don’t understand fallacies as you don’t get that if “x implies y” it doesn’t mean that “not x implies not y”. So, they are technically not lying.

55. Interesting Evidence That I am a Control Freak. I always kind of knew it since I could never stand depending on people, even “experts”, since I know how many screw up. That even included airline pilots, which was why I was never comfortable flying even though I knew the odds. Thus, when it became necessary to fly in a small private jet. I was even more nervous than usual, since I didn’t think those pilots are quite as good as commercial. But once in the air I wasn’t nervous at all and tried to figure out why. I realized it was because I sat right behind the open cockpit and could both talk to the pilots and see out the front window!

61. The Two Kinds of Probability. To be expounded upon later. For now, think about the difference between calling a baseball team 60% to win their game and calling a weightlifter 60% to lift more weight than his opponent. That 60% comes from two different kinds of uncertainty. In the case of baseball, it comes from the luck of the bouncing ball and quarters of an inch on the bat. And if the underdog wins, the original favorite will still be favored if they play again. In the case of the weightlifter uncertainty stems from your lack of complete information. And if that underdog wins today, you would make him the favorite tomorrow.

63. Lemons to Lemonade Anecdote. We had just built a 20 story addition to the casino/hotel I consulted for. We desperately needed more rooms so Bob Stupak was disappointed that each floor contained a room about 60% of normal size and thus wasn’t big enough to use as a guest room. Until I pointed out that that you could in fact fit a circular bed in it and get some customers to be OK with it by putting a mirror on the ceiling, plus some other stuff. It worked.
64. Even Better Lemons to Lemonade Story. We also desperately needed a third restaurant but required several weeks to build one from scratch. The vacant room near the back door (which opened to a seedy neighborhood) had no kitchen. I came up with a crazy idea, probably illegal, but actually somehow not. Across the street from the back door was a Chinese take-out joint. We built a fancy restaurant and no one knew that their food orders were called in and wheeled up the street through that door.

67. Might There Be Genes That Control How Likely Other Genes Tend to Mutate? Since I first wrote this, scientists have discovered a syndrome similar to my speculation. I originally thought of this because some biological changes seem to occur faster than standard evolution would appear to predict. But if there was a sort of “second derivative genes” that kicked in when the environment was quickly changing, that could explain why evolution is sometimes speedier than expected.

69. People Who Resist Adding Math to Their Decision Making Invariably Can’t Do the Required Math. #68 above is just one of a myriad of situations where an endeavor that doesn’t usually require math sometimes does. But if the person in charge of that endeavor (e.g. a football coach) isn’t good at math, it is my experience that he or she tries to find a reason why the mathematical conclusion is wrong. You should take their argument with a grain of salt.
70. A Dumb Analogy Between Poker and Stock Trading. I sometimes see an article talking about how pro poker players can make good stock traders because they can take losses when they realize the game was tougher than they thought. They don’t try to “get even”. But that strategy does not extend to buying stocks because your losses, while similarly implying that your initial assessment was wrong, also means that the stock is cheaper and now often worth holding.
71. Emotions Depend More on “Acceleration” Than “Speed”. Another way of saying it is that what makes you feel good is usually not so much how things are going but rather how they are going compared to what you were expecting. Sometimes that can even mean mere normalcy if you were worried about something bad happening. Badly stuck poker players who get most of their money back know what I mean.
72. Don’t Blame Lack of Opportunity If it Wouldn’t Have Mattered. I recently read an article that stated something like “children of rich people are 6% to acquire a patent but only 1% of poor children are”. That’s a shame. However, those poor people who claim that it is this fact that is the reason they have no patent, need to acknowledge that poor people in general have a 94/99 chance of owning no patent for reasons unrelated to inequality of opportunity. And, of course, there are many other examples unrelated to patents.

77. Nevada Representative Dina Titus Owes Her Stature to My Decision to Print Scandalous Story About Her Opponent. Other newspapers wouldn’t print it though they knew it was true. But they also knew it would change votes and give the election to Titus who otherwise had little chance. I think it’s pretty hard to make a case that it was me that was wrong.
78. Did You “River” the Flush in Your Dream? This thought of mine applies to everyone but is probably most easily seen in dreams of poker players. You are playing hold em and need a spade on the river. In your dream, you are hoping for that spade, not “knowing” whether it will come. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t. But wait! You are not actually at a casino or internet site that determines whether you make that flush. Your brain does. The same brain that is hoping that the outcome is to your liking. So, what is going on here?

81. Spending Ten Million to Eliminate Skepticism Brings In 300 Mil. Stupak needed 50 million to build his tower but only had ten. He needed investors but couldn’t get any because they were skeptical that he could get the tower built. I asked him how much it cost to build it 80% of the way up to the bottom of the “pod”. When he said “ten million” I persuaded him to spend it without having the rest. Sure enough, once it could be seen rising into the air someone (Lyle Berman) came along not only with the 40 million but also another 260 or so to build an adjoining hotel. Perhaps you can think of similar (smaller) situations in your own life.
82. Prescription Drug TV Commercials Have Concerning Implications. Since they are targeted to patients rather than doctors, and are as numerous as they are, it must mean that they sometimes succeed in getting a patient to persuade their doctor to prescribe it when they otherwise would not have. But that means either that the doctor is incompetent or is unethical enough to prescribe a drug he wouldn’t normally, to keep someone’s business.