I Told You So

The BBQ Pit
401

I’m trying to establish the parameters around certainty and wagering. Bricker continues to assert in various ways that if one is really certain about something, the only thing that should get in the way of wagering is a moral opposition to gambling. I equate a child’s surgery and a presidential election only as two elements of a category - serious things that it does not seem appropriate, to me, to be wagering on. Certainly, for me anyway, the outcome of the election is associated with serious consequences for the world.

By the way, I raised two other examples previously of elements of this category: wagering on the next terrorist attack and wagering on the number of people who will slide into poverty next year. We can discuss these as well.

I simply want to understand and/or challenge the simple-minded assertion that certainty should lead to gambling (excluding those morally opposed to gambling).

402

Well, here’s the difference between an election and surgery as I see it. The election is based on the outcome of what over 100 million voters do on election day. It’s a gamble on the odds, with no immediate personal consequence. A child’s surgery is life or death, right now, and personal to the extreme. Would an election cause deaths? Well, that’s subjective. If Kerry had won, we’d still be in Iraq and people around the world would still die every day. And the morality of gambling? Us Catholics are the kings of Bingo! :smiley:

getting tired from all the Halo 2 play, and have to get back to it soon before I slump over from exhaustion

403

My point is not to argue the similarities or differences between these two elements of a group I have proposed. Rather, it is to probe the parameters of the link between certainty and wagering, and perhaps illustrate for Bricker that one need not wager on something to yet be certain about the outcome, regardless of whether one holds gambling as an acceptable (i.e. moral act).

If you don’t hold the two referents as elements of a group (i.e. you are arguing that even if my construct does exist, one or the other of these items is not a referent for it), that’s fine, but can you still allow that someone else might make a decision about wagering that is both independent of certainty and independent of whether gambling is okay? If not, why not?

404

It’s probably just the hours put into the video game, but I’m having trouble figuring out the question. I keep getting hung up on the wagering being independant of both certainty and moral stance. For now, I’ll just have to say that wagering has always been taking a chance on being right. In sports betting, that’s why we have over/under and spread betting.

Big difference between taking the 58.5 point ‘over’ last night (haha, 'Queens, I made money) and betting on whether or not Dr. Smith will be successful transplanting a liver to your 4 year old daughter.

405

You know, it’s questions like this that just embarrass me to death to be on your side. Get some perspective, will you?

As for wagering on the election, it panned out for Bricker. I handed him a bottle of dry Riesling, and by way of reciprocation he bought me sushi. I can also report that he possesses neither horns nor a tail–although the black cape and signing the check in blood were a bit dramatic. :slight_smile:

406

I apologize for the lack of clarity. Let me put it this way: If someone does not agree to enter into a wager, does that necessarily mean that they are not confident in their opinion?

Is the only possible reason why someone would not wager with you, despite their confidence, their stance on the morality of gambling?

407

I have all kinds of perspective. Do you agree with Bricker that I must not have been confident if I didn’t wager? Well then, don’t suck my dick!

408

Were you offering?

I at least was willing to bet something concrete on the outcome of the election. I lost, but still the principle is sound.

409

No, just a feeble joke. As a married man, however, you start to wonder if you should be passing up any opportunities… :slight_smile:

ARRRGH! This is reminding me of the arguments I would have in elementary and high school with some dullard foisting twisted logic in an effort to taunt someone else. For me, you wager a six pack on a football game. This election was more important than that to me! Why is that so fucking hard to understand!! I was fucking confident, but I wouldn’t fucking gamble on it because it struck me as fucking inappropriate!!

Goddammit! I wouldn’t wager on it for the same reason that others probably would not wager on a loved ones surgery, a terrorist attack, on how many people enter poverty or lose healthcare, etc etc. No, they are not the same! However, you may be confident things will come out in one direction or another, but you (or at least I) only wager on trivial matters because it seems to fucking cheapen things. SHIT! FUCK! GODDAMN!

Am I the only one who understood the indignity of Randolph and Mortimer Duke wagering $1 on Eddie Murphy and Dan Ackroyd’s lives? :slight_smile:

410

There are some people on this board who are so completely idiotic and so divorced from reality that they cannot even comprehend how idiotic they are.

Hentor needs to work to catch up to those people.

Let me explain to why men are not potatoes, why checkers is not a fight to the death, and why wagering on an election is not in the same category as wagering on a child’s surgery.

When two people wager on an election, or a football match, or the results of a checkers tournament, each takes a position on the outcome. At the end of the event, one person’s prediction is vindicated and the other’s repudiated.

However strongly the loser wanted to win, so, too, did the winner. Since these events produced one (1) winner and one (1) loser going in, and since each participant understands this, the outcome of the match is morally neutral: you win and someone else loses, and the result is a zero-sum game. Your ire at your team’s loss is offset by my joy at my team’s win. Your team was not morally entitled to beat mine; your chess men were not advancing the superior philosophical position.

The child’s surgery is not a zero-sum game. It’s true that one outcome produces a winner: the child lives and the surgery is successful. But the reverse outcome produces no winner: no person will cheer the death of the child if the surgery is unsuccessful. Wagering on an event that produces no winner on one side is inappropriate, and when only one side involves the death of a human being with no similarly severe balancing weight on the other side, a wager becomes ghoulish.

Now, because you are really utterly stupid, you may now commence mewling and whining that the election falls into this category: that Bush’s re-election will cause deaths and Kerry’s would not, or some such nonsense. That is simply not true. It’s wrong, and it’a a measure of how deeply you are mired in the denial of considering that only your side has the right answer.

Or you could just be a chickenshit, and using this as an elaborate excuse not to put anything on the line besides your overblown rhetoric. (See “Talk, Cheap”) I can’t really tell with you, because dishonesty oozes from your every pore, and while that makes it easy to see when you’re being deceptive, the slime does obscure exactly what you’re trying to hide WHEN you’re being deceptive.

411

Okay let’s see. I apparently differ from those who have expressed an opinion here about where the line of wagering on trivial versus important events is drawn, so that I include presidential elections among the things that I wouldn’t wager on. This makes me a really utterly stupid, mewling, cowardly chickenshit from whose every pore flows slimey deception and dishonesty?

I guess there is little I can say to that.

412

As for the wagering thing, I will admit that I was kind of wondering if Bricker has a little gambling problem with the way he’s been going off about how one must not be sure of their prognostication unless they wager on it. Of course we’re not sure of our prognostications…if I were really psychic I’d be playing the lottery every day. The problem is that, while I have no moral objection to gambling, I don’t gamble. I’ve just never felt the need or the desire. And I don’t understand a mindset that basically insists that one must do so if one is sure of their position or prediction.

I certainly don’t begrudge Bricker the sudden influx of fine booze that he’s going to be getting soon, but the ardor for wager he’s shown in the latter part of this thread is kind of offputting…

413

Well, this is one area in which Bricker and I are in perfect accord. I’m not a gambling man and have no use for wagering on horse races, poker and the like. However, if I believe strongly in something, I should have the strength of my convictions to risk something concrete on the outcome. YM clearly V.

414

Nah. Betting on shit is as human as anything else, its perfectly ordinary, I don’t begrudge that. Haven’t they already bet their asses? And ours? Whats a couple buck, couple bottles of wine, compared with that?

Say, Bricker, how’s that splendid little war of yours coming along? I say “yours” because, well, now it is, isn’t it? You ratified it, you approved it, it belongs to you. Hearts and minds flocking to our banner, are they? Approval and approbation flowing like a tidal wave in our direction? Beloved of the nations, are we?

Figured out a way to blame this on Clinton yet?

415

Hey, for what it’s worth, I think the decision whether or not to bet on something is a personal decision. If someone’s unwilling to make a bet on elections because he finds it distasteful, well then, I’d respect that. I try to respect other people’s boundries, and acknowledge that the decision to bet on something can involve more than mere conviction.

If someone else decides that’s a clear indication of that person’s wishy-washy wussiness, well, what can ya do?

I guess it’s clear who has the biggest dick.

416

Curse you, my western European heritage! :mad:

417

No, no, not at all.

There may be a few unsullied pores. Anything is possible.

418

Since we can’tr go back and unstart this war, this sort of rhetoric doesn’t really help. We need to figure out the best course for the US to take. Do we pull out and leave chaos in our wake? Do we prosecute the war to its fullest? Do we work out a half-measure in which we pull out but “lend” troops to Allawi’s government?

From what I’ve read (and I don’t know how accurate this is), the insurgents in Fallujah are not patriotic Iraqis fighting the US invaders, but foreign Islamofascists allied with Al Qaeda. As much as the Iraqis don’t need to be victimized by us, they also should not have their secular culture replaced with a new Taliban-style dictatorship.

I don’t know whic course is the correct one, but I will support any strategy that will enable the Iraqis to live in peace and security at the end od the day.

And I want Zarkawi, Bin Laden, and all their followers dead.

419

Earnestly said, and worthy of an earnest reply.

Friend Gobear, we are creating chaos by our very presence. However distasteful Saddam’s regime was, and it certainly was, it wasn’t chaos. And for all our proud (arrogant?) words about “staying the course”, there is a price we will not bear. There is always a price we will not bear. Have you considered what that price may be? Has anyone?

You’ve probably hit the nail on the head. We will install a strong man governance, its about the only thing we can do. Surely no one here is going to pretend that we will permit a free and fair election, if that election is likely to return a government hostile to America and American interests? We’re likely to be there for years. 1,000 of our best and brightest, 200 billion dollars? Just for starters, my friend, just for starters.

Well, yes, of course. Who wouldn’t? Do we have any such strategy? Free and fair elections, the “democracy” we pretend to offer in pious tones, will turn Iraq over to the Shia majority. That’s what democracy is, no? Does anyone imagine that we have endeared ourselves to them? So, there is a very good chance, is there not, that if we follow through on our promises, we will have a government in Iraq even more hostile than the one we displaced.

Think that through carefully. Very carefully. Are there more followers now, or less? And how many, do you think, over the entire Muslim world. Myself, I wouldn’t hazard a guess, but surely in the hundreds of thousands. Going to kill them all? How? And how will you know? Will we rely on the word of a government which has already shown itself perfectly capable of lying on a spectacular scale?

What will happen? I’ll hazard a guess. We will install a strongman. We will cobble together some pretense of an election which will fool no one but us. Then one of two things: first option: hand out a bunch of medals, declare victory, and hope the whole thing doesn’t come unglued into bloody chaos before the next election. Get the hell out of Dodge. Or second, make a deal with our puppet to base our forces in Iraq until …until…God only knows. The forseeable future. And having assured the Islamic world of our unflinching enmity, proceed to harvest the results.

Have I a better plan? Nope, and no one else does either. I am only trying to salvage what little benefit can be gleaned from this shitstorm: that those who will not learn from history are doomed to make the rest of us repeat it. And to insist that the authors of this madness never again hold any position of reponsibility. Ever. I believe they like to call that “accountability”.

Is that a good result, acceptable, worthwhile? Not by a million miles. Scant comfort, and cold as death. But its all we’re going to get, and probably not even that.

And brother? I am mad as hell.

420

How about stop our cronyism and Halliburtonism and go with a Kerry-esque plan whereby the UN would be invited in to both the military/political as well as the economic side of recovery? It would require a lot of bowing and scraping on our part, but in the end, the future of the entire middle east may rest on the Palestinian-Israeli and the Iraqi questions.

Well, we don’t need to worry about a Taliban style dictatorship. If it came to it, we’d ‘just’ see militant balkanization and civil war. Most likely no single faction would control the country, at least not for very long.

Agreed.
But having witnessed the prosecution of this war, do you honestly think that the current administration has, ever, taken into account what was necessary for peace and security?
Do you really think they’re going to ramp up the ‘humanitarian’ phrase of this lil’ global adventure?

Well… we could’ve killed Zarkawi a few times, but that would’ve eliminated one of our pretexts for invasion…
And Bush seems to think that it doesn’t matter if we get Bin Laden, so do you really think we will in the next four years?

Honestly… I don’t see what’s wrong with laying this at the feet of Bush supporters. This is what they voted for, and they have nobody to blame but themselves each and every single time bush’s administration makes an error in tactics or strategy and American and Iraqis die, needlessly, as a result.

For the love of the Gods!
The man has a track record.
They supported that.
And although I offer my heartfelt prayers for the speedy and peaceful end to all conflicts in Iraq, I will reserve the right to say “I told you so.” Every time their golden boy fucks up, again, the same way he has been.

Mission Accomplished.
Indeed.