Brinens and Things

[Substack; Wayback] (by Matt Glassman)

At the heart of the book is a simple proposition. Imagine I offered you a choice. You can have $500 no questions asked, or you can roll a die. If you choose the die and it comes up any number but 6, you get nothing. But if it comes up 6, you get $5000.

This book is not about the people who take the $500. But it’s also not about the people who think for a couple of minute and choose to roll the die.

This is a book about the people who instantly grab the die, can’t imagine not instantly grabbing the die, and think anyone who doesn’t instantly grab the die is somewhere between irrational and insane.

The me of a month ago, when Scott Alexander asked this hypothetical, thought about it for a bit, didn't come to any satisfying conclusions, then took the $500 with a vague sense of this being the Objectively Incorrect Decision and some self-loathing.

The me of today has been through quite a bit more training on this subject! The me of today has practised taking appropriate risks!

The me of today thinks about it for a bit, pulls out an arcane-looking calculator, types some numbers into it, then says--

"That's above the half-Kelly wager for my bankroll."

--and walks away with $500 and a clear conscience.

[...this post definitely should *have* content warnings, but I'm not sure how to phrase them. Probably your best bet is just to read the OP and decide whether you want to read a discussion of the kinds of things likely to come up in response to it.]

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by kkujo)
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[k-punk; Wayback] (by Mark)

Came across this on the Marginalia search engine.

It's intriguing, not just the way he rhapsodises about songs (many people do, even if *I* would struggle to generate so many words in response to what I thought of a song), but *which songs* he deems worth singling out. There is *almost no* overlap between which songs from Tusk he talks about and which songs I thought were worth keeping in shuffle rotation. He doesn't bother to talk about Mirage at all, while pound for pound I thought Mirage was better than Tusk: 6/12 songs were worth keeping, versus 7/20.

---

When I was a child, sometimes I would listen to a song on the grocery-store radio and wonder whose favourite song it was. Which person, or people, out there in the world, could...match the resonance of it, perceive it at its best, unlock the joy hidden within a song that to my ears seemed merely okay. (Certainly, most people have never heard the transcendant ecstasy in "Follow You, Follow Me".)