From: tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)
Date: Mon, 22 Apr 1996 14:18:19 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Betting  (Re: [Yadda Yadda Yadda]....)
Message-ID: <ada040ff090210048622@[205.199.118.202]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 5:28 PM 4/21/96, Sandy Sandfort wrote:

>This is not extropians.  We are more anarchic, less ideological
>and more goal oriented.

I suspect we also delete more messages, too.

By the way, my hunch is that virtually none of us know very well what Bell
and Uni are saying to each other, so who would possibly agree to be the
judge? Maybe Sandy, you will volunteer. Let us know how it turns out, if it
turns out and $100 actually changes hands.

...
>And you like endless cross-talking better?  In any event, the

No, I prefer to delete arguments I have no interest in. This includes Bell
and Uni ranting at each other, or other ranting at each other (and I don't
hold myself blameless here, natch), etc.

My memories of the Extropians experiments were that I deleted most of the
"polycentric law" court cases and "decision duel" wagers. I recall there
were wagers involving Mike Price, Perry Metzger, Tim Starr, Eric Raymond,
and others, though I don't recall what the issues were about, nor who won,
nor if any money was actually transferred on _any_ of these wagers. What I
remember is what James Donald also remembers, that large amounts of
bandwidth got consumed in debates about the terms, about the conditions for
payout, and about weaseling out of judgments. If Harry Shapiro is reading
our list, he can perhaps shed some light on things, as he was a sort of
List Judge and Executioner at the time.


>> At $500, our problem would become much worse, rather than much
>> better.
>
>Here we agree, 100%.


By the way, I recall that bets on the Extropians list rapidly escalated to
"serious" levels. I recall one apparently-serious [see below] bet of
$10,000.

I say "apparently serious" because the bettor did not appear to be joking.
However, it also seemed likely he was using the outrageous size to "bluff"
his opponent into backing down, just as James Donald alluded to. My "bet"
is that the issues in ever formulating such a large bet would ensure that
it never got realized...precisely the desired result of absurdly large
bets. I'll bet $10,000 that no bet of $10,000 or more ever actually gets
settled on this list.

(By "absurdly large" I mean in this context. I have many times placed
"bets" much larger than this on stock market expectations, but not on "bar
bets." Such a bet would never be collected, would in fact be tied up in
waffling, finessing, backing off, dissemmbling, shuffling, and, of course,
would never be collected upon.)

But, again, if Sandy is volunteering to judge, and both Jim Bell and
Unicorn accept him and the terms....well, I won't stop them.

Let me know what happens, but please include a tag like "[Final Bet
Outcome]," as I'll be skipping the likely back-and-forth posturing.

--Tim May

Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software!
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
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