If this post is breaking any rules, then it should of course be deleted. If not, I will probably repeat it on NVG unless there is a rule against putting it in two places.

I have compiled a list of observations, anecdotes, ideas and suggestions that I have sprinkled in several books and other places over many years. I wanted them all in one place. The list is about many subjects. About a third are directly related to gambling and many others are indirectly related. A few are new.

There are very short explanations of each idea that usually don't do them justice and usually don't go into enough detail. Soon there will be longer explanations but only after the list is culled down and I include points about the ideas that I haven't thought of, but hopefully some of you will. You can make your comments either on this thread or via a PM. I will give you credit, if you want it, if I include your thoughts in the explanations

The list is what you see if you go to www.sklansky.com. There is nothing else there and no way to comment on that site.

The underlying principle behind #5 is very old hat. The Model Penal Code has been around for many, many decades, and it generally does not take the outcome of criminal behavior into account. For example, under the Model Penal Code, murder and attempted murder carry the same punishment.

David, interesting stuff... thank you

I think on much of the legal thinking that you are wrong, GIVEN THE CURRENT SYSTEM......... I think the legal system needs to be massively restructured. of course, that would lead to much less demand for lawyers and their services..... I generally supported Obama and Clinton but one big pet peeve I had with them is they never did anything about legal reform. of course, they are lawyers themselves....

read about a financial restructuring with 300+ lawyers at video meetings. or my friend went to court for 11 days to adjust his alimony payments (already agreed to) because his ex-wife was now a drug addict. and they repeated basic testimony from original alimony hearing (i.e. the court time wasn't tightly focussed on drug addict ex-wife)

I agree on very expensive parking meters... I've heard of rich asian students and major property developers here in vancouver, BC as looking at parking tickets as a basic daily expense (personal or business), including presumably occasionally getting someone to go and get their car at the impound lot.

the "murder free roll" and "exonerate someone else" and "take luck out of drunk driving manslaughter" are tricky.......... I think they can all work dependent on circumstance and common sense. i.e. look at alot of factors....... but letting a heinous mass murderer (google Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka in Ontario) go free because they exonerated someone else won't fly at all. Bernardo/Homolka is very different but it is classic case to show how much hatred "cutting a deal" can cause..... EDIT: I do think judges already factor in many things when sentencing convicts i.e. were you .11 or .35 DUI?

sunk cost and "sorry/thank you" horns are good/obvious........ sunk cost is tough psychologically.

agree/disagree on football stuff.... 2 point convert, yes.... coach's decision late affect point spread or O/U. trust me, coaches don't care about the spread. it would be fine but what would the rule actually be? or would you have some sort of "true/fair score panel"? just doesn't seem workable.. and people often don't realize that if I was "protected against backdoor cover", then the $$$$ payout would be different.

1. tax cripples or tax able bodied people who steal their spots?

2. utopian impractical

3. welcome to american ****show

4. seems reasonable but i personally think this means we should greenlight to execute more and with less process in clear cut caught in the act situations where there is no sliver or doubt

5. agreed and probably feasible - really upsetting that one teen in florida who hit a woman goes to jail whereas the other teen doing the same exact thing at the same time and location racing against the other guy but didn't have a pedestrian in his chosen lane got no punishment at all

6. ok????

7. i legit used to joke with college roomate about creating electronic boards to put on the back of cars allowing you to quickly choose various messages - want to found a startup together

8. sure...

9. what's your point?

10. so you're arguing that the fg should be assumed here or that the coaches should try to beat the spread? i'm guessing you bet on the Rams -3.5 last week right?

11. you should visit the crypto/nft threads and explain see how this flies

12. isn't this standard?

13. are there murder freerolls? if so how would you eliminate them? torture? removing a digit for each additional murder?

14. agreed, it's absolutely ludicrous that a doctor saving someone's life gets sued if they make a slight error which are bound to happen - people ignore that risks are inherent in medical procedures and only go for upside - the AMA is a strong ally here but insurance companies have better lobbyists so glgl with that

15. both positions seem reasonable

16. agreed

17. wait, what?

18. ummm...

19. context?

20. is this genuinely a thing or a cherry picked thing because it makes for good headlines

will go into the rest at another time

I assume it therefore must be against all capital punishment. Because surely it doesn't ever advocate the death penalty for attempted murder.

Does it agree with me about drunk driving vs equally drunk driving manslaughter?

And on the other end of the spectrum what about the unarmed bank robber who unwittingly causes a heart attack. Does the Model Penal Code cut him some slack?

The confessor would only get amnesty for that crime. A crime he would almost never have been caught for. Obviously,
many career criminals would be afraid that such a confession would open the door to other prosecutions so they wouldn't do it.

My drunk driving thought presumes equal degrees of drunkeness. In fact, my method might result in a lesser sentence for a slightly drunk killer than a greatly drunk non killer.

I don't care what the details of last second decisions should be as long as they are standardized so the coach on make his decision based on the spread (which I'm sure some do sometimes care about.

That Raiders player that killed someone while drunk driving was also doing 90 in a residential or something with a complete disregard for laws and safety. Even if he didn't kill someone he should get more time than someone twice as drunk that was doing his best to get home and only got pulled over by bad luck.

2. There will admittedly be several ideas that deserve this comment. But you never know.

13. I was thinking more of a reward for sparing rather than extra punishment for not.

+infinity

that doesn't necessarily mean they aren't good talking points

btw i know my answers are curt but i'm not trolling you just don't want to text wall it so trying to sum up thoughts in single words whenever possible and a bunch of it i either don't undestand what you are trying to say or don't understand why it's something worth talking about but the rest are really good imo and definitely coffee table book material (and I don't mean that in a bad way)

I believe that the MPC is against all capital punishment at this point, although it was not always so. I don't remember, but I assume that earlier versions on the MPC provided for capital punishment only for particularly heinous forms of murder (e.g., multiple murders, murder for hire, etc.)

I don't remember. Nuances around drunk driving aren't typically part of criminal law classes in law school

The MPC doesn't have a traditional felony murder component.

Generally speaking, the MPC doesn't operate exactly as I described. But it mostly does. The easiest way for me to conceptualize the MPC was to remember the very few instances in which the MPC departed from the "right" answer. (For the purpose of my statement, I am defining the right answer as the answer that ignores distinctions predicated on the outcome of criminal conduct.)

7. If used in NJ it would probably just make the other driver angrier. Or people would use it sarcastically while giving the middle finger.

32. I disagree because the people who trade liberty for safety put others at risk of losing their liberty.

35. Lowering price could be done if you have higher margins than the price-matching competitor, and be used to get them to stop price matching. Although generally speaking I think getting into price wars is a terrible business strategy.

46. The broader point is don't make a business decision based on only considering some of the variables.

56. This could include the quote from Richard Feynman: "If you cannot explain something in simple terms, you don't understand it."

63. How did they end up designing it where every floor had a room 60% of normal size? Also, I'm almost afraid to ask, but what was the "other stuff"?

76. I don't understand what you mean for this one.

81. I can see where this strategy can work but I'm not sure I'm a fan of it. The problem is if it doesn't work out you are busto. I hate bets where you can get wiped out, even if the probability of that happening is very small.

I didn't make myself clear if you think I implied that I would disagree with this.

Pleasantly surprised with the responses so far. Even if I disagree, they will help me improve the presentation. So thanks.

Clearly my brain works weirdly. Because the first thing that came to my mind when reading this (about one of the few topics that I would put in the category of "matter of opinion") was "what are the chances that chezlaw would agree with you?" I make it 40%.

I guess I finally found out what the "Chinese Children" method is:

I'm not seeing the method here though, just the answer. There is actually a very neat and intuitive method of calculating this sum, requiring only the formula for geometric series.

Yeah, I didn’t think anyone would disagree with what I said, it’s just not obvious from what you’ve written.

But overall I think the reducing luck problem with DUI is hopeless because so many people do it, get lucky and don’t get caught. So if you want to make drunk drivers relatively indifferent (morals aside) on whether they kill someone vs just getting pulled over, you’ve created a far greater variance fest in terms of who happens to get pulled over for a busted tail light etc while they happen to be drunk. Worsening the very problem you’re trying to fix.

is this why asians are better at math?

I guess you mean that you know the sum would be one if the numerators remained one. The excess over that is 1/4 + 2/ 8 + 3/16 +4/32. THAT would add up to 1/2 if the numerators were all one. The excess is 1/8 +2/16 + 3/32 + 4/64 ....Which would add up to 1/4 if the numerators were all one. etc etc . So, if you continue this process, you get 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/16 .......= 2.

You made my day since I had never seen this technique in my life and at age 74 deduced it within three minutes based on your hint. Tell Trolly he will have to wait awhile to celebrate my dementia.

The number of children is 500 mil from one child couples, 500 mil from two child couples, 375 mil from three child couples then 250 mil then 156.25 mil etc. etc. which we know must add up to 2 billion since there will be one billion boys. Divide all these numbers by a billion.

The fact that drunk driving is a crime that rarely gets caught is a different issue. (One that I touch on in #40 and in other writings where I lament the fact that punishment for rarely caught crimes run into the US Constitution if you try to ratchet up the punishment to the point that the crime is negative EV.)

Also, I did not give a recommendation whether as to whether drunk driving punishment should move up toward drunk manslaughter or the other way around. I simply don't think they should be that different ASSUMING the other aspects are equal. That would mean that my idea should not be implemented unless the blood alcohol level of the non-killer was as high as the average killer. Even then it's not completely fair since, as you pointed out, the mere fact that the driver killed someone is evidence that it was NOT just bad luck that got in his way. Given two equally drunk drivers, the killer was more likely to be driving recklessly rather than simply with slower reflexes. I need to make that clearer.

Sort of, I think. The one I was thinking of is this - write 2/4 as 1/4 + 1/4, write 3/8 as 1/8+1/8+1/8 etc. Then arrange the sum like this:



The sum of every row is 1/2^n (we count the first row as the zeroth row) by the geometric series formula. That leaves us to sum the sums of the rows, which is just your second series of 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 etc. which is 2, again, by the geometric series formula. This method can also be formalised in double summation notation.

I'd call it the same thing.

Get it now. I was missing that there will be 1 billion boys.

Yeah, pretty much I think. Just easier to visualise when you lay it out like that. Well done for getting it, I'll give Trolly the good news at our next troll conference.

Since you enjoyed that so much, can you find the sum of 1/2 + 1/6 + 1/12 + 1/20 + 1/30 + 1/42 etc. up to a given term, k? It doesn't need much more than basic algebra.

Hint in spoiler.