The USSR had a policy of no first use because it served their propaganda purposes and convinced western stooges that the Soviets were morally superior to us, this after exterminating 20+ million of their own people. No first use cost them nothing, gained the admiration of weak-minded individuals, and, most importantly, could be discarded any time they saw fit to attack.
The level of historical and political sophistication on/. is appalling. I expect and excuse this stuff from high school freshmen, not from educated adults.
Re:Nothing to see here, move along
on
When Beige Won't Do
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Am I the only one that has noticed the proliferation of meaningless posts like the one above, of late?
I've tried Intrade. Tradesports is a division of the same company. You might want to run a few practice transactions on Intrade without putting up any money -- just so you can learn some of the pitfalls:
One is the idea (which I shared for a while) that the majority on any contract position is almost always right -- read the news stories, after all, they all suggest the prediction markets are damn near infallible. But the majority position may be all wrong for most of the life of the contract and then readjust in the space of a few trades, leaving you holding some worthless contracts if you had bought with the market. For example, the Republican gubernatorial hopeful in Virginia was the favorite on Intrade for months, then the market reversed itself very rapidly. Likewise Bush's female Supreme Court nominee was strongly favored to win approval until Arlen Specter voiced his misgivings and her contracts fell from the sky. I guess Intrade racked up wins on both predictions -- but in both cases the markets were wrong until it became dead obvious to everyone that Kaine would win Virginia and Harriet Miers would have to drop out.
The market is not liquid -- usually only a few contracts trade every day. Look at the most popular contracts -- such as will Hillary become the Demo nominee -- just a few thousand contracts outstanding. If you want out of a contract immediately, you may have to drop your asking price markedly below the last traded price.
New information is factored into the pricing with breathtaking speed -- you are going to outsmart this market only by accurately predicting the outcome well in advance of expiration. You can't count on being able to keep pace with the change of pricing, unless you hover over a computer screen and clear all your contracts before you go to bed.
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The level of historical and political sophistication on /. is appalling. I expect and excuse this stuff from high school freshmen, not from educated adults.
Am I the only one that has noticed the proliferation of meaningless posts like the one above, of late?
I've tried Intrade. Tradesports is a division of the same company. You might want to run a few practice transactions on Intrade without putting up any money -- just so you can learn some of the pitfalls:
One is the idea (which I shared for a while) that the majority on any contract position is almost always right -- read the news stories, after all, they all suggest the prediction markets are damn near infallible. But the majority position may be all wrong for most of the life of the contract and then readjust in the space of a few trades, leaving you holding some worthless contracts if you had bought with the market. For example, the Republican gubernatorial hopeful in Virginia was the favorite on Intrade for months, then the market reversed itself very rapidly. Likewise Bush's female Supreme Court nominee was strongly favored to win approval until Arlen Specter voiced his misgivings and her contracts fell from the sky. I guess Intrade racked up wins on both predictions -- but in both cases the markets were wrong until it became dead obvious to everyone that Kaine would win Virginia and Harriet Miers would have to drop out.
The market is not liquid -- usually only a few contracts trade every day. Look at the most popular contracts -- such as will Hillary become the Demo nominee -- just a few thousand contracts outstanding. If you want out of a contract immediately, you may have to drop your asking price markedly below the last traded price.
New information is factored into the pricing with breathtaking speed -- you are going to outsmart this market only by accurately predicting the outcome well in advance of expiration. You can't count on being able to keep pace with the change of pricing, unless you hover over a computer screen and clear all your contracts before you go to bed.