
Stories I share with my nephews, so they take risks and follow their curiosity - stopachka
https://stopa.io/post/228
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tsycho
I liked the post overall, but story # 1, taken to an extreme is basically
lottery tickets.

I understand that this was for the OP's nephews, but to actually apply it in
practice, you need at least a rough sense of expected value, whether the
"games" are iterated or one-shot, and opportunity costs.

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klmadfejno
I also disliked it. Both of them actually.

For story 1, the expected value of game 2 is like $100,000. A kid might not be
able to calculate it, but it's obviously a good deal. So obvious that, when
the bad part of the story is that other people think you're dumb, it just
comes across that your detractors are then dumb ones because it's obviously a
good decision. It's awkwardly trying to mix a lesson about shrugging off
irrelevant social consequences with a lesson about expected outcome being
different than the most likely outcome.

Story 2... I just don't think the premise is all that interesting. As a former
high school track captain who didn't work all that hard to get there, I'd
think it was vastly more impressive to give a speech at the United Nations.
The lesson is fine, but the reasoning feels weak.

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Sideloader
You are teaching your nephews to be greedy and to value individual ambition
over everything else. In other words, encouraging them to internalize the
values of the society in which they live.

This is not very bold or novel, but rather ordinary.

Given all the problems that are coming to light in societies that have have
taken individualism to absurd and self-defeating extremes, this is exactly the
opposite of what is required if these places are to avoid collapsing into
failed states, technocratic dictatorships or banana republics run by and for
delusional oligarchs.

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staticman2
That's a very ungenerous take on that blog post.

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name920username
I'll definitely re-read this in the future. Thank you.

