[extropy-chat] Impeachment of President Bush What odds amIoffered?

[spike]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-
> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Brett Paatsch
> Sent: Tuesday, December 20, 2005 3:05 PM
> To: ExI chat list
> Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Impeachment of President Bush What odds
> amIoffered?
> 
> Spike, this is a binary proposition, either President Bush will be
> impeached or not. Every thing except him being inpeached falls
> into the category of Not.  You are a maths guy, so the proposition
> must interest you from a maths standpoint...
> What do you say Spike? What odds? Brett Paatsch

Brett I have been away on a business trip so I am
behind on the posts.  As for making bets on the
odds of Bush's impeachment, that is a political
wager having little or nothing to do with math.  I
confess to being puzzled by the behavior of the
proletariat masses, which is doubly disturbing being
that I myself am a proletariat mass.  Or masslet,
whatever one of a mass is.  A micromass?  

I went to Ideas Futures to get an idea of how the
masses estimated this possibility.  Being as this
bet is available, there is no need to search for
people to take up a wager with you.  All you need
to do is find someone who will cover Ideas Futures
with real money.  The IFX bet is at 22 cents on the
dollar for Bush being either impeached or resigning,
which sounds pretty reasonable to me.  If I were
to buy into that bet, I would need to think for
some time to decide if I wanted to buy a yes for
23 cents or a no for 77 cents.

http://www.ideosphere.com/fx-bin/Claim?claim=BuImp

I trust you are familiar with Ideas Futures, the
brilliant brainchild of one of our own ExI posters,
Robin Hanson.  In political matters, I understand
there are plenty of opportunities to set up real-
money bets online, altho I do not personally have
the links.  Anyone?

Regarding the taking of bets, I always prefer
something I can actually calculate.  I made a
ton of play-money on IFX for twice estimating
the time interval until the next record prime
number.  Now I cannot play that game any more,
for those who make those kinds of bets realize
I know how to do this calculus and will not bet 
against me.  With no one willing to bet against 
me, money cannot be made wagering.  This is
fortunate for me perhaps, because my formula
recently failed: we have found the densest cluster
of Mersenne primes seen to date.  

Prime numbers are delightfully weird, but political 
matters are completely incomprehensible.

spike