What makes a happy society?

Many of you may have heard of a classic ethical dilemma: You are standing at the switch for a train which cannot be stopped and on whose tracks lay 5 people on the right switch, and 1 person on the left switch. The switch is currently set on the right, and the train will kill 5 people if you do nothing. The train cannot be stopped, and no outside-the-box tricks can be used. You either throw the switch or you don't. Easy... you throw the switch and let a single person die instead of many.

Now the dilemma is altered: You are on a bridge above the tracks and the train is still heading towards the 5 people. You can however throw a passerby off the bridge onto the tracks and derail the train, saving the five people. (Once again, you cannot jump off the bridge yourself or use any other tricks of logic... either you throw a passerby off and save the people—and that will work every time guaranteed—or you do nothing and the five people die.)

The second dilemma, when asked to groups of people, gave far more varied answers. Whereas the first situation was very clear, many people seem to have reservations about the second situation because we are involving a person who was not involved in the situation to begin with. What this means is that any rational discussion of ethics must concede that the optimization of the utility of an individual or group does not necessarily create the happiest society.

(It should now be noted that I consider the field of ethics to be the study of how to promote happiness or unhappiness among creatures that are capable of feeling it to any degree. Thus, ethics does not concern rocks, highly concerns humans, and to a very tiny degree concerns individual flies and bees.)

You often see in movies stories about a squadron of soldiers going into enemy territory to rescue one man, killing many in the squadron in the effort, because “we don't leave anybody behind.” In sheer numbers and utility of soldiers, this is a terrible idea. But do the soldiers perform better because they know that their buddies truly have their back when it counts? Are they more willing to die in the field knowing they were helping to save another person? Are we as a society actually better off with a mentality like this? Can we and should we be proud that damn the numbers we will do the right thing?

It may be so that society as a whole is better off (in terms of overall happiness) if we allow people to harm themselves and do things which look in theory to be awful.

But there are certainly gray areas and considerations. Take the second example of the train and standing on the bridge. How many people would have to be on the tracks for you to consider it ethical to throw an innocent passerby off the bridge? What about in the first example if the one person on the left tracks was a baby, and the five people on the right tracks were the baby's parents and grandparents begging you to let them die so that their child may live? Are we better off, happier people, if we live in a society that saves babies in that situation? I don't know, but I certainly think it's possible. And it makes for an interesting discussion.

This was sparked by none other (and really, what better source is there for ethical dilemmas...) than Star Trek. The situation proposed in the show was somewhat different, but an interesting dilemma nonetheless. Our part of the galaxy is at war with another part of the galaxy. Projections which are deemed to be 99.9% accurate state that no matter what we do, we will lose the war and be enslaved for approximately 150-200 years (before we revolt and reclaim our portion of the galaxy).

The war just cannot be won—we don't have the man power or resources. Furthermore, the projections say that if we continue fighting the war, approximately 900 billion people will die in battle. (Also, it should be noted that the enslavement will not be concentration camp type enslavement—the conquered peoples will still have a decent amount of freedom of action and not entirely unhappy lives. The conquerers really just want claim over the territory and will not interfere with day-to-day life except as it pertains to larger territorial politics.) However, there is a small group of people who can give over our battle plans to the bad guys in order to force us to lose the war sooner rather than later, at a cost of only a few billions lives (as opposed to the almost trillion lives that would be lost in a long drawn-out battle). Many high ranking people were asked about this, and they all unanimously said something along the lines of “damn the numbers, we're not going to lose this war!” indicating that they would prefer to go down fighting. One man was left to decide whether or not to stop the “traitors” from giving up our battle plans... he was left to decide whether a long war or a short war was best.

In the end he decided that part of being in a free society is the freedom of action, the freedom to fight, and that it was wrong to hand over his people to the bad guys without a fight. I think he was wrong, but only because of the size of the difference in numbers. So many hundreds of billions of people, many of them innocent civilians on other planets, are going to die just because he feels that the society is better off if people are allowed to fight.

I can see his point, but not to the tune of 898 billion extra people that are going to die. Surely at least a few billion of them would rather surrender. Who's right? (Obviously, I think I am.) It's at the very least, worth pondering how many people this situation would need to involve before the scale tips one way or the other on how much the freedom to fight and die in a lost cause is worth. And it's worth noting (and the point of this whole thing) that letting people destroy themselves can in fact make a better and happier society because it makes them feel so much better off to know that they have such freedom of action. (I'm still against hard drugs, since I feel that their addictiveness takes away that freedom, but that's a whole other blog post...)

Wow, really Fox News, really??....

For those of you not up to date, a few of the major internet providers were wanting to be able to regulate what their customers could and could not view on the internet. This included blocking certain sites, throttling torrents, etc. The FCC recently took them to court trying to legally prohibit them from doing so, and won.

The phrase "net neutrality" means quite literally keeping the internet neutral. That means unrestricted. So anybody who says "net neutrality" is referring to the concept that the internet should be unrestricted to all. If they do not mean that, they are getting the term wrong.

This is a clip from Fox News about that recent court ruling and they get it entirely wrong. They believe (incorrectly) that the FCC is trying to regulate the internet, when in fact the FCC is trying to PREVENT the internet providers like (Cox and Comcast) from regulating the internet. The FCC is trying to keep the internet free and unrestricted by stopping the corporate internet providers by blocking things from customers and/or charging for different parts of the internet. The FCC is the good guys in this one.

Fox News not only got this outright wrong, but blatantly stopped the guy from defining it and then closed the segment. They spun it off as some kind of difference of opinion, but in reality they simply got their facts completely and utterly wrong. Fox News has always been insanely biased and full of shit, but apparently they have now stopped even attempting to hide their disregard of facts and logic.

It's just... WOW. "Wow" is the only appropriate word for it. Well that and "disturbing" and "dismaying" I suppose.

Remember, BOTH people on the two "sides" of this want unregulated internet. One simply doesn't know that that's what he's getting and is upset due entirely to his own misunderstanding (and refusal to take the time to understand).

Jesus Christ. It's amazing.

Plutonomy, poker, imigration

Plutonomy/Plutocracy: goo.gl/BmdL

Poker over the past few days 4-tabling: goo.gl/cjLv

Immigration Effects: goo.gl/d3ag




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How crazy would Americans today get if they heard these verdicts?

Edit: These have nothing to do with my thoughts on immigration; I just laugh thinking about how crazy people would get if these laws were recent. Also, as a note, just because they aren't recent doesn't mean they aren't Supreme Court rulings.


Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886)

"Nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws," applies to all persons "without regard to any differences of race, of color, or of nationality," and to "an alien, who has entered the country, and has become subject in all respects to its jurisdiction, and a part of its population, although alleged to be illegally here."


Wong Wing v. U.S. (1896)

Citing the first case I listed, in the case of Wong Wing v. US, The Supreme Court further applies the citizenship-blind nature of the Constitution to the 5th and 6th amendments, stating "... it must be concluded that all persons within the territory of the United States are entitled to the protection guaranteed by those amendments, and that even aliens shall not be held to answer for a capital or other infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law."


Plyler v. Doe (1982)

In Plyler v. Doe, the Supreme Court struck down a Texas law prohibiting enrollment of illegal aliens in public school. In its decision, the Court held, "The illegal aliens who are plaintiffs in these cases challenging the statute may claim the benefit of the Equal Protection Clause, which provides that no State shall 'deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.' Whatever his status under the immigration laws, an alien is a 'person' in any ordinary sense of that term… The undocumented status of these children vel non does not establish a sufficient rational basis for denying them benefits that the State affords other residents."


Thanks to this page, made by the research of Robert Longley for pointing these laws out.

How outraged would modern Americans be...???


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Capitalism: Idea vs. Application

I saw news story about a large medical insurance company, which through a programmed computer algorithm, would search for errors in the paperwork and application process of women who just got breast cancer. This way, they could get the monthly premiums from the women up until the point at which they needed coverage, and then they could drop them via a legal technicality. The “investigative report” done on this looked into the cases of 90 women recently dropped, and found that EVERY SINGLE ONE had a policy cancellation that was ridiculous. None of the drops of the admittedly small sample of women were legitimate. Even if that's a skewed number, which it undoubtedly is, it still shows at the very least that the large majority of women who are dropped from their policy are highly likely to deserve to keep their policy. The newscaster was outraged at the insurance company. I was simply confused by his outrage.

What did he expect? Insurance companies lose money on sick patients. They are in the business of making money. Ergo, it is in their best interest to find a way to not cover people when they get sick. This is a very simple logical fact. It is also one of the LOGICAL DEMONSTRATIONS of why anarcho-capitalism (completely unregulated free market capitalism) does not work.

The idea of the completely free market is a very good one on paper; or rather, it seems like it should be. By pitting companies against each other in the marketplace of the public opinion (which translates into the public's dollars), the poor ones must necessarily fail, and the good ones will do well, which will allow them to hire people (including people form the failures), produce products cheaper, donate more to charity and public good, and generally raise the level of well-being of the society in which they are a part. And even though it leaves a disparity between the best off and the worst off, “a rising tide floats all ships.” Win-win.

That's the idea. But even on paper, it doesn't work. Even on paper, there are variables missing which pollute the idea from the inside. Those variables, along with the problems of practical application of the good aspects, are the reasons why a truly free market cannot work.

The first crack in the free market dam is that of the problem of monopoly. Once a company has passed the economist's “survival of the fittest” test, it is now dominant in its industry and it has resources and a loyal customer base which its potential rivals do not. Therefore the playing field, which initially started level, is now forever skewed. If a small company can still buck the odds and rise up any significant amount, the bigger one has the means to buy the small on out or to squash them before they present a meaningful threat.

In short, after the initial settings of the free market “game” (in the Game Theory sense), the playing field cannot ever be level again. This is why we have developed anti-trust laws against the formation of monopolies. If a company gets too big, it is required by law to break itself apart into competing factions.

This law fails in two blatant respects, and possible more. The first failure of that law is that companies will always break themselves apart in the most profitable way. They won't make the M1 division compete with the M2 division. They will simply tear off the arm that is the R&D department, and then subcontract out to that “new company” for their R&D. Now the company is legally smaller, but with no actual breaking up of the monopoly.

The second major failure of anti-monopoly laws is that there is a limit on how you can prove collusion between companies. If two companies suddenly alter their prices to maximize net profits between the two, but Company A benefits and Company B looses, but Company A sends a check over to B to more than offset that difference, it's pretty clear what's going on. But if the top oh let's say five health insurance companies slowly alter their prices and products and “happen” to meet at a optimal equilibrium, and pay each other in other ways not covered by legal regulation, they haven't broken the law and you cannot prove what their intent was. After all, companies will reach equilibrium naturally on their own. And mathematical models which estimate the time this will take only give probabilities, and the estimates can be a very wide range. It would take centuries and hundred or thousands of companies to even begin to have what might constitute statistical proof. And at what point can you say well there's enough companies that they can't stifle a new startup in that industry, so it's no big deal. It seems intuitively to me that it would be more than five or six.

Maybe they're just getting lucky. Maybe it's just a sign that the American Public is really concerned about their health when the insurance companies are showing record profits during the second worst economic crisis in the history of the United States. But I doubt it.

The second crack in the dam of the free market theory is time. Even if it could be shown that it worked on paper, (which I maintain that once all the variables are in place, it doesn't), it only works in the “long term”. Any good gambler will tell you that the long term is the only term to play for. Even if the short term sucks, you are better overall playing the correct long term strategy. The problem with this implementation into the free marketplace is that the longterm is a minimum of thousands or tens of thousands of years. And almost nobody cares about anything except the next 60 (or less).

If a drug that can cure AIDS is developed by one company, the proper strategy of selling it (or selling anything for that matter) is to sell at a price at which a large percentage of the population cannot afford it. They do a simple calculation which assume X% of people can afford the drug at the price of $Y, do some remedial calculus to find the optimal price, and maximize profit. If they sell more than that, they lose money due to the costs of overproduction; if they sell less, they lose money because they miss out on selling to people who are ready to buy and can afford it—the company is just not producing enough.



With something miraculous like an AIDS cure, this translates into an initial price which is unfathomably high, such that almost nobody can afford it without going into large amounts of debt. This is the right price because these people and their families will generally choose to go into debt if it means prolonging their life or the life of a loved one. It may take decades (or longer) before enough of the cure has gotten around to where the “correct” price is low enough that most people can afford it. And in the meantime, tens of millions of people will die horrible and painful deaths. The time it takes for the market to normalize is far beyond the scope of the individual who needs the drug. He lives and dies for the short term.

Even if it worked on paper, we must play the market for the short term. (And of course there is regulation for this type of thing--but that's my whole point, regulation is very necessary.) This is something the economists don't want to hear. It hurts us overall they cry. If 200 people needed $1 to live out their lives, and 1 person had 700 dollars, and it cost $100 to transfer 200 of his dollars across the population, even though that population is left with a net of $600 (as opposed to the previous 700), that sacrifice and redistribution is worth-while to the population at large. Even if that 1 guy is super pissed.

Now that sounds horrible and communist and blah blah blah, but the fact is that is merely a description of what taxes are. Society needs roads and schools and police and firemen, and somebody has to pay for it. And the guy making $10K a year or less just can't afford his fair share. He may be a drain and you may resent him, but don't you want to live in a society that has a minimum standard for its poor? Or do you not? The problem with those of you who do not is that if you let him die, the “poor” class doesn't go away. They have kids. And even if all the poor people died off, the class structure would simply alter to make somebody else defined as poor.

Hoarding your money doesn't help anybody or fix the problem. It takes that money out of the economy and hurts other people. That's why we have taxes. If you make $10, you have to give away $3 or $4 so that there are roads and police and schools, and if you ever lose your job and have no money, that $3 or $4 that other people pay will help you out. It's about setting a minimum standard of quality of life and being a part of a functional society.

The problem is that even that (horrible communist blah blah blah) way of doing things isn't even what happens. The richest people in the world PAY FAR LESS TAXES THAN THE MIDDLE CLASS. This is because corporate law is setup differently than the laws for people. If you are a person and you make $10, you get $7 in your paycheck, and you have that $7 to spend on food and necessities. If you are a company and you make $10, you buy your food and necessities FIRST, and then you pay taxes on what, if any, is left after you spend that $10. This is actually how the law works. I don't remember what year is was, but it was '05 or after, fairly recently, that Exxon Mobile paid NO TAXES to the U.S. government. (Edit: it was 2009)

As I explained with simple math earlier, if you take and take and take out of the pool that is the economy and don't give any back, THE POOR RUNS DRY.

There are many, many more variables and logical outlines of why unbridled, unregulated capitalism simply cannot work. Myself and other liberals get a rap about hating capitalism, but that's not true. We simply understand that it can only function and be a force for good in the world with tons and tons of regulation. We understand there is a line to be drawn, and that an ungodly amount will prevent innovation and keep companies out of the market, but we recognize that no regulation is also extraordinarily disastrous. Many people, smart people, don't. They haven't thought past the simple model and the fact that the long term is generally the right way to play the game. I like capitalism and recognize it can be a force for innovation and a tide that rises all boats, but facts are facts, and as the Freakonomics authors put it, people respond to incentives.

This is why I was surprised that the newscaster was outraged. What do you expect? This is also why all fundamental rights of man MUST BE SOCIALIZED to an extent. Not entirely, but to an extent.

Socialized health care works. Period. That's a fact. It cannot be disputed. If you disagree, you are wrong plain and simple. Please go look up all the countries in the world with socialized health care, and aggregate their social welfare statistics and length of life. I have done this. Yes, I actually did the research. So until you have, shut it.

Aren't you glad that there are police and roads and schools and on and on? Have you even taken the fucking time to wonder why ALL OF THE BASIC NECESSITIES are either run by the government or have a government component, a public option. You can use UPS and FedEx, but you have the option of using the U.S. Postal Service. You may not like the lines at the post office, but you can't dispute its cost or results. It works. And it works cheaply. Because there is no profit incentive.

Capitalism needs regulation in order to work. It just can't work left to its own devices. Nobody likes giving away their hard earned money, but that's the cost of being a part of society. There are many arguments to be made about how much regulation, but the current system doesn't work (and the system proposed by TV republicans can't work). Of course health insurance companies are going to cancel policies of sick people. Of course companies are going to try to buy lawmakers. Of fucking course. It's in their best interest. The system is fundamentally flawed and needs a complete re-haul. Basic human rights NEED a socialized component. Profit incentives need to be regulated when they interfere with the public good. Long term ideas that royally screw the short term need to be altered even if it is at some long term cost, for the well-being of current society. The fact that the rich have more power to control and buy legislation that helps them is a problem for the rest of society.

I'd be happy to hear ideas and arguments against anything I've said, but I have to be honest: I've been arguing about this sort of thing for years, and not one person has been cognizant of the facts and stayed logically consistent (and kept their position when it differed from mine). I'm open to the possibility though, so let's hear it. But don't expect any respect if you haven't done the research or fail with logic.

I have a facebook page

I have a facebook page. http://bit.ly/duHwuQ



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And it's JANUARY by a nose!

By a margin of about $50, January just beat out August as my worst poker month ever (professionally), with me winning just under $400 for the entire month. Ugh!

After a minor freakout, and with the help of a friend, I have reflected about how well I am doing even in the face of yet another 20+ buy-in down turn, and happy and confident, starting anew, I am rushing head first into February ready to play (and win!) my butt off. I have to put in a lot of hands because I am taking a 2.5 week trip near the end of February and my semi-pipe dream of ever moving up in stakes has still not happened, so I can't afford to be out of work very long.

So I'm playing like mad, and looking forward to an excellent month, and leaving the disgusting past few weeks behind!!!



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Man I hate bad runs

They're so mentally disturbing. With each bad day it becomes harder and harder to get myself mentally ready for the next day of play because i just expect to get pummeled. I have had one winning day in the last nine days (20K hands) that I've played. I just can't win. It really fucking stinks to work hard for over a week straight and be down $500. I'm still up $450 for the month, but I'm gonna have to dip into my bankroll/savings a little bit to pay bills which really sucks. I guess I've been running pretty well for a few months now so it's bound to happen eventually but god it just screws with my head to just lose all in after all in, small pot after small pot. You know those days where your blue line is about even and your red line goes steadily down because your semi-bluffs never hit and you opponent shows you the best hands he can have... over and over and over.

I hate it when people tell me bat beat stories so I won't ramble on about this much longer. But this is my blog and I want to vent!

I miss the good old days....

.... when 1200 hands per hour was considered a lot.

http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/rush-poker




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I'll get there when I get there

About a year before I graduated college, I did something which I didn't think too profound at the time, but which has helped me a lot since then. I had arrived at school in my car, and I was stressed about potentially being late. I sat for a moment in my car, breathing consciously and attempting to relax my worrisome and useless thoughts. Then I held the 'Clock' button down for a few seconds until the time display was blinking, placed my fingers on the hour and on the minute buttons, closed my eyes, and pressed repeatedly, fast enough so that I lost count of how many times I had pressed each. I then went to class without looking at the result. For a few weeks after that, I would continually glance at my car's clock and get negative reenforcement.

Now, I only look at it when I am tuning the radio. I don't know if I'm going to be 5 minutes early or 10 minutes late. After a while, I stopped caring. Sure I might have been able to speed up a bit, run a “yellow” light, or otherwise get myself to Point B two minutes sooner, but the necessity of doing so is virtually non-existent, and the stress I inflicted upon myself by worrying about it was higher than I had known. It was extremely liberating to simply accept that I would get there when I got there. Most places have a clock, and the cell phone in my pocket has one too. I would find out what time it was soon enough.

There is a statistic listed in Poker Tracker with which I am constantly concerning myself. I worry about it and look at it constantly during my sessions. I am pretty good at getting a rough estimate of what it is and what it should be on average, but I want to know the exact details of it, to two decimals. My friend Edals told me not to concern myself with it—it is after all one of the most useless statistics there is, and it takes hundreds of thousands of hands to even begin to approximate what it's true average value should be. But I can't seem to stop worrying about it, so I took a lesson from all of my car rides over the past few years...

This morning, I configured Poker Tracker to not show me how much money I won or lost.


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A belated Christmas thanks

It is right now the time between Christmas and New Year's. I am up in Seattle visiting my mom, and I have had a very pleasant and relaxing Christmas, the best kind!

I often update my blog when I'm upset or going through a rough time, because it's when I'm most upset and anxious that I feel a need to vent... so I write. But I want everybody to know that I am very happy to be back in Vegas and that things are going well. The past 8 months have been some of the most difficult and scary of my life simply because it's kind of the first time I've been out on my own, and doing that itself is scary, but doing that by gambling and on top of that being a person who is very risk-averse and likes to know what's coming up (things which I must say gambling does not promote) has made it all the more difficult.

But I am finally getting set in. It has been rocky because all of it was so new and scary, but I've been at it for a while and am now sure of my success. I am not worried, and although I haven't saved up very much, I know it's because I was so scared and not playing my best, nor was I putting in enough hands. But all of that has changed, and I am very confident that I will be playing at a limit I can make real reasonable money at within half a year. So trucking ahead, happy and confident, I would like to offer my thanks to all the people in my life who helped me get here, because here is where I want to be. It's going to be incredibly cheesy as I'm sure most spill-your-heart-out letters are, but hey it's Christmas, I'm happy, and I don't care how cheesy it is!

My parents are the first and most obvious choices. Neither my mom nor dad were thrilled when I first mentioned I had started to gamble many years ago, and my dad still tries to get me to go back to school for a degree that isn't useless, they were as supportive as they could be when I told them this was what I wanted to do and showed them that it was actually possible to make money at it. But more than their support was how I was raised. I have instilled in me a want of doing what is right for me and a want to make my own way in the world. And if I wasn't raised with the courage to follow through with my heart, I wouldn't have been raised to be happy and fight for what I want. So I am thankful not just for learning to accept what I'm doing, but for giving me to courage to do it in the first place.

The next step is the live groups I meet with in Las Vegas (rarely at the moment I'm sorry to say), the NLDG and WPDG, and in particular Jan Fisher and Linda Johnson. The live groups showed me a bunch of reasonable and responsible adults who gambled responsibly and who were able to make it a positive force in their lives. I had grown up thinking, merely by the programming of society, that gambling was wrong. Not evil, but just a vice like smoking and drinking--something that is inherently bad and has no virtue other than to entertain. And while that is true for the most part, these people showed me that not only could they gamble responsibly but that they could learn from it and use it to help themselves. Linda and Jan even organize charity events, and in that way make gambling help other people as well. Now of course it IS a vice, and it DOES harm a portion of people who can't handle it responsibly, but these people showed me that that is not a necessary outcome and that I wasn't crazy for being so intrigued by it. Jan Fisher in particular took special care to encourage me, which really helped me break out of my shell and embrace my passion, for which I am extremely grateful.

Jim Leitner, also a member of the groups, also was important in that he was the first person to introduce me to a higher level of thinking in poker. I had reached a peak in my poker knowledge before his way of looking at the game infected me with the urge to study it from new angles. Most people in the group know he's smart and better than they are at poker, but few of them realise just how MUCH better he is. I haven't seen to much of him, but every chance I get to talk with him, I learn something groundbreaking.

Finally of course, I have one of my closest friend, Erik, who is also my poker coach, and I guess somewhat of a life mentor. He has taught me how to properly think about the game, how to contextualize all my thoughts and reads and experiments, and how to better learn more. He is solely responsible for my going from an average player to an excellent player (and I am pretty damn excellent), and he has also helped me through many difficulties in my life. He is a fantastic coach and friend, and I am very grateful for all that he has done for me. (And I would put money on him over Jim Leitner in a poker match, and those who know Jim know that's saying a lot!) I lucked out amazingly in finding Erik as a coach, but hey, as I always tell him, I run like God when it comes to poker, and this is no exception.

(See I told you it'd be cheesy.)

Of course I have many other friends who have shaped me life and personality and view of the world, and I am truly thankful to have them in my life. But this is a poker blog--or at least it's supposed to be--and those people above are the ones who shaped my poker career. I am thankful to everybody good in my life, those mentioned and those not, and I hope I have been able to show my thanks and love before now. But if not, thank you all! I am very lucky to have you in my life.

And I hope you had a wonderful Christmas!


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I love shortstackers

A lot of poker players around here, and a lot of low limit players, abhor short stacking. Especially at the lower limits, this boggles me. It is true that a smart shortstacker can be a thorn in your side when he sits behind you (and plays properly), but by and large, at low limits, most shortstackers are fucking terrible at shortstacking and are the easiest money on the table.

They don't ruin the game or make it so you can't play poker. You simply have to adapt and recognize how they are going to affect the game. If that means you can't open as many hands to isolate the fish on your right, that sucks, but it's part of poker. (And incidentally, if they are hurting you but helping themselves, doesn't that mean they ARE playing better poker?)

The unwarranted loathing of shortstackers is going to seriously hurt the game. FTPDoug has said in his latest "FTP Answers" thread on the Internet Gambling forum of 2+2 that Full Tilt has plans to take action against the "shortstacking problem." So congratulations, you are getting rid of the shortstackers. You want to play "real poker" instead of make the easiest money in your life.

Instead of sitting at the 50bb minimum tables, you've fucked yourself and the community.

This is not a problem for me thankfully, because I have little enough ego in my poker to simply go where the money is. If they move sites, I will move sites. If they play lower, I will play lower. In short, I will do what I always do when I encounter a shortstacker: I will figure out how best to take his money, and then I will take his money.

So take a lesson from me: Let go of your ego, respect shorties for what they are, and put on your big girl panties and learn to deal with it.


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A common criticism I get...

A common criticism I get about my apparent vocal and flagarant religion bashing is that religion is not the main problem. All the horrible things happening would happen anyway because of the situations people are in or because people are just violent, and on and on and on.

This is true, but it misses a very important problem: religion IS the cause of much more than it gets credit for.

South Park got it right in their "Go God Go!" set of episodes when Eric "Time Child" Cartmen went into the future, a future composed entirely of atheists who were waging a horrible world war sparked by differences in opinion about what name organized atheists ought to call themselves--well that, and who gets Hawaii.

I am under no delusions that religion is the MAIN source of the world's problems. But my criticizers are under the horribly inaccurate delusion that religion is not the cause of any of the problems.

The reason I attack not just religion, but belief in god at all, and faith as a somehow virtuous doctrine, is because of the harm that it does do, and because of the harm which is done in its name. I promise that I do understand that most of the evils would be committed anyway, but that's one of my points--I want to strip away the false pretense of religion so that evils are shown for what they are.

Many evils go unnoticed because they disguise themselves in religious ritual or morality.

The Middle East might still be in conflict without religion. Good people would still be going to Africa to give out food and help heal the sick. Parents in Texas would still fight over how to educate their children.

What would not happen without religion however is that Sharia law would not be allowed in Britain because it's a religious right. The good people in Africa would not propagate the spread of AIDS because they preach to teenagers that while premarital sex is bad, condoms are far worse. The parents in Texas who want to teach fairy tales in the bio9logy classroom would not have any pretext for getting a foothold for their craziness.

From this site

In the 1300s, the Aztecs would make human sacrifices to the Sun god.

Hearts of sacrifice victims were cut out, and some bodies were eaten ceremoniously. Other victims were drowned, beheaded, burned or dropped from heights. In a rite to the rain god, shrieking children were killed at several sites so that their tears might induce rain. In a rite to the maize goddess, a virgin danced for 24 hours, then was killed and skinned; her skin was worn by a priest in further dancing. One account says that at King Ahuitzotl’s coronation, 80,000 prisoners were butchered to please the gods.

And...

When Puritans settled in Massachusetts in the 1600s, they created a religious police state where doctrinal deviation could lead to flogging, pillorying, hanging, cutting off ears, or boring through the tongue with a hot iron. Preaching Quaker beliefs was a capital offense. Four stubborn Quakers defied this law and were hanged. In the 1690s fear of witches seized the colony. Twenty alleged witches were killed and 150 others imprisoned.


Most people see the above quotes and think that that doesn't happen any more--we know enough about how the world works to not resort to these horrid rituals. Well those people are half right... we do know enough now to not need to do horrible things because we just don't know what else to do in order to get rain or make our crops come up full. But disgusting crap like that STILL GOES ON IN THE WORLD TODAY.

Once we strip away the protective cloak of religion, we can see many things for what they are. Here are a few harmful things done only in the name of religion (and even non-religious personal belief) and which could not possibly have been done otherwise:

1. Genital mutilation as a common practice and commitment to spirituality (as opposed to a possible medical benefit)
2. Rampant antisemitism in Western "liberal" countries
3. Telling teens in AIDS-ridden Africa not to use condoms
4. Telling school children blatant inaccuracies about biology, geology, history, astronomy, physics, and chemistry because it contradicts a book you like
5. Human sacrifice--not bad people or people you are at war with, but people you love specifically for the purpose of having better fortune

Also, there is often a logical fallacy of my critics which I would like to briefly point out: If you claim that religion does a lot of good, you MUST concede that it does bad as well. If you claim that religion does good, you are implicitly saying is does some form of good which could not otherwise have been done. So you must admit that either religion is unnecessary in order to do good, or you must take responsibility for the bad it does in its name as well. I would like to put forward a question Christopher Hitches came up with, which succinctly makes the point: Can you name a moral action taken, or a moral statement made, by a believer that could not have been made by an atheist?

What about an immoral action or statement?

Game, set, match.

So please stop telling me that religion plays not part. I understand that there are other forces at work and that people will always find ways to fight. But don't tell me that teaching them to believe condoms are evil has no consequences at all. Don't tell me that every now and then an otherwise good and tolerant person doesn't develop a dislike of gays or Jews because he was taught they are evil or wrong. Don't tell me that in this modern day and age, adulterers would still be stoned if believing myths wasn't encouraged.

It all happens. And it happens directly as a result of not just organized religion, but faith itself. Once you convince yourself that believing things which you cannot possibly know is acceptable and a path towards some form of knowledge, you open the door for all kinds of nonsense, both good and bad to enter. The reason I argue against religion and belief is because I want to close that door. I want to enable people to tell right from wrong, because many of them simply can't do that--and we let them get away with it under the guise of political correctness and tolerance. So I will continue to point out errors in logic and beliefs which have no basis, because otherwise people will continue to do things -- right and wrong -- for the wrong reasons, and it is important that we as a society strip away the cloak of irrationality in order to move forward and teach people to do good for the sake of doing good in and of itself, and we teach them not to do bad things that they THINK are good because they believe crazy shit.

In the words of Steven Weinberg: With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion.


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JUDGEMENT

I got into an argument with a friend of mine recently, and he said something that many of my friends, and many people in general, say often: "Stop being so judgmental."

I'm sorry? Could you repeat that!? Because it sounds an awful lot like you just said that you feel I am incapable of distinguishing right from wrong. That is what that statement means, is it not?

In fact, usually when people say this, they do not actually mean it as an attack on my abilities, usually they say it as a mental defense to shift attention away from what they are doing--that is, they know what they are doing is wrong, but they want to be able to continue doing it, so they justify it by simply not thinking about the consequences and sending their attention elsewhere.

It is true that there are many many gray areas in the plane of ethics and morality, and a plethora of situations which are clearly right sometimes and clearly wrong other times. It is also true that I have often made judgments which turned out to be wrong in the light of new information. But there are also black and white areas, and many grey areas that are almost black or white, and as any good poker player will tell you, you have to work with the information you have.

The old biblical axiom "Judge not, lest ye be judged" is in error--society does, and rightfully so, uses the correct axiom "Judge, and be prepared to be judged."

I have done, and I'm sure will continue to do, many bad things. But there are very few reasons why I do them:

1. I thought it was right but I was in error, which is usually an outcome from a mistake of the following reason.
2. I thought the special circumstances in my situation allowed for the action to be justified. For example, my stealing food would be wrong but a beggar on the brink of starvation would be morally justified in stealing it. So "stealing food" could go either way on the right/wrong scale, even though usually it leans towards the "wrong" end.
3. The action is wrong and I know it is wrong, but it benefits me personally to such a high extent that I toss my morals out the window and do my best to live with myself.

Universally, when I am told to stop being judgmental, it is in the face of somebody using Door Number Three. But rather than own up to the obvious, they instead tell me I am morally inferior for daring to make an assessment of the ethics of the situation.

Well I'm sorry. As much as I've made some mistakes in my judgments, and as much as I've even lost friends due to my judgments (because they turned out not to be people I wanted to continue to associate with), I have yet to see a reason why judging is wrong. Most people consider rape and murder wrong, but here's a secret: There are other things that are not nearly as damaging which are still wrong!

As my friends I would hope that you'll tell me when I am doing wrong. Actions and intentions have consequences, and I would hope you would trust and respect me enough to know that I want to be told when I am doing things that are harmful to the world. When I am choosing Door Number Three, or I am mistaken in thinking that I am in Door Number Two, I need a friend to snap me back into place and help me be the better person I want to be. You are my friends, help me!

And I will return the favor.


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