Replying To Daniel Negreanu

[Jim T]

"If the odds are in favor of God's existence, why would believing in him require a "leap of faith"? Not trying to antagonize anyone, and I apologize if this subject has been covered before."

Maybe in DN's case, it's more like a "'hop' of faith".

[PairTheBoard]

[ QUOTE ]
"If the odds are in favor of God's existence, why would believing in him require a "leap of faith"? Not trying to antagonize anyone, and I apologize if this subject has been covered before."

Maybe in DN's case, it's more like a "'hop' of faith".

[/ QUOTE ]

What Daniel said was this:
DN --
"Based on both my faith and the literature I've read, I'd say the odds favor God's existence. "

He makes the odds after he makes the leap of faith. He does not base his faith on the odds.

The whole "odds" thing is a joke anyway. Which is better than Sklansky's probabilty percents which are just plain Crap.

PairTheBoard

[bodie]

Daniel wrote,
"That's not really a knock on you at all. Not everyone excels at the same things. For example, I spend much less time worrying about the mathematical side of the game and much more time thinking about things like, "With John Doe being recently divorced, how is that going to change the way he plays the river?"


I'm curious about this idea, because it seems that no matter how analytical I try to be regarding the math of the game, things seem to go better when I'm mentally in the "flow" of the table as far as the various players' styles and tendences and "personalities". I don't consciously think these things through, it just seems to affect decisions the same way those characteristics would affect what you would say in a conversation with a person.
The size of the pot and the possibilities of the cards in my hand are always in my mind as well, but not in a mathematical sense.

I'm wondering if it's possible to be successful this way, because I'm so weak at actual math that it's worried me all along that I'm really missing a large part of the game.

[Cyrus]

[ QUOTE ]
The Vietnam argument is logical nonsense.

I believe it was argued that the soviets were intent on expanding slice by slice (the salami approach), the Vietnam war was required to make them understand they weren't going to be allowed to easily get away with it and that this objective was achieved.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, it's your Vietnam argument that's nonsense - both logically and historically.

WE NOW KNOW not only, as David Sklansky put it, that killing 50,000 Americans was not worth it, but also that American fears were unfounded : This was not a "revolution of the communist proletariat" trying to strom no Winter Palace! It was a honest-to-God national liberation struggle, one that started against the colonial French and then continued against their inheritors, the Yanks.

Suffice to say, that Washington at the time feared Red China engulfing the whole peninsula - and the planners and straegists and advisors all ignored the huge, deep, historical hostility between the two nations, China and Vietnam. WE NOW KNOW those fears were bunk! (The subsequent Chinese invasion of Vietnam pretty much sends this to the trashcan.)


..Did I say "American fears"?? How careless of me. The American side knew full well the extent of the (non-existent really ) "domino threat" and whether the drug-dealing kleptocrats of Saigon could ever hope to be "the bastions of democracy" in the South.

The US was simply trying to be a good imperialist.

[warlockjd]

[ QUOTE ]
Actually Daniel is the first person on this forum who seems to admit that in his opinion, the chances for God's existence is above 50% but below, say 95%.

That's OK if the God he is thinking of doesn't require absolute belief in him (or lets say above 99% cetainty) for entrance into heaven. But some religions believe that God is this "strict". We will call that god, GODX.

Imagine the plight of someone like Daniel who is honest enough to realize that he pegs his certainty that GODX exists at 92%.

[/ QUOTE ]

Can't Daniel the believer believe in God 100% but Daniel the bookie estimate that there is at least a 15% chance his belief is wrong?

I think both (edit) can coexist simultaneously.

[chezlaw]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The Vietnam argument is logical nonsense.

I believe it was argued that the soviets were intent on expanding slice by slice (the salami approach), the Vietnam war was required to make them understand they weren't going to be allowed to easily get away with it and that this objective was achieved.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, it's your Vietnam argument that's nonsense - both logically and historically.

WE NOW KNOW not only, as David Sklansky put it, that killing 50,000 Americans was not worth it, but also that American fears were unfounded : This was not a "revolution of the communist proletariat" trying to strom no Winter Palace! It was a honest-to-God national liberation struggle, one that started against the colonial French and then continued against their inheritors, the Yanks.

Suffice to say, that Washington at the time feared Red China engulfing the whole peninsula - and the planners and straegists and advisors all ignored the huge, deep, historical hostility between the two nations, China and Vietnam. WE NOW KNOW those fears were bunk! (The subsequent Chinese invasion of Vietnam pretty much sends this to the trashcan.)


..Did I say "American fears"?? How careless of me. The American side knew full well the extent of the (non-existent really ) "domino threat" and whether the drug-dealing kleptocrats of Saigon could ever hope to be "the bastions of democracy" in the South.

The US was simply trying to be a good imperialist.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think you missed the point, logically it doesn't matter what the historical facts are. DS is arguing: look at Vietnam now, because the USA lost the war it wouldn't have been any worse if the war hadn't been fought and it can't be enough different from how it is now to justify 50000 American deaths.

This isn't logically valid. Its possible that Vietnam (and/or the rest of the world) would have been a lot worse if the war hadn't happened. To deduce the war wasn't worth 50,000 lives we have to compare how it would have been without the war to how it is now. This is impossible.

chez

[David Sklansky]

Technically speaking it is true that an unfought war gives different results than a lost war. But there is no reason to believe they would have been monumentally different. And they would have had to be monumentally different for that war to have been worth it.

In any case the point is that lost wars would tend to give historians a better idea if they were worth fighting (not if they were the right "play") than won wars.

[chezlaw]

[ QUOTE ]
Technically speaking it is true that an unfought war gives different results than a lost war. But there is no reason to believe they would have been monumentally different. And they would have had to be monumentally different for that war to have been worth it.


[/ QUOTE ]

If there was a reason for the war then there must be a reasonable chance that a brutal 20 year war achieved its objective, whoever ended up as the winner.

So don't you, at least, need to take into account the objective and whether it was achieved before you can decide the war wasn't worth it?

BTW we don't get taught much about the vietnam war in England (somehow we missed out on that one) so I have almost no idea on the facts of the matter.


chez

[ QUOTE ]

If there was a reason for the war then there must be a reasonable chance that a brutal 20 year war achieved its objective, whoever ended up as the winner.


[/ QUOTE ]

so theres a resonable chance that the allies objectives will still be met even after their surrender to nazi germany in 1959.

[chezlaw]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

If there was a reason for the war then there must be a reasonable chance that a brutal 20 year war achieved its objective, whoever ended up as the winner.


[/ QUOTE ]

so theres a resonable chance that the allies objectives will still be met even after their surrender to nazi germany in 1959.

[/ QUOTE ]

Suppose the allies surrendered in 1959 and the situation in the world afterwards was basically okay, which is the analogous situation. That would mean that the war would have been a waste (by DS's original argument) or that during the 20 year war the objective of stopping a monsterous future was achieved.

If the monsterous future had still happened then it would be fairly clear that the objective hadn't been met but that's not the point here.


chez