[ExI] My review of Eliezer Yudkowsky's new book (UBI)

[spike at rainier66.com]

...> On Behalf Of Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat
Cc: Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [ExI] My review of Eliezer Yudkowsky's new book (UBI)

On Mon, Oct 6, 2025 at 3:45 PM spike jones via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>>... My prediction is that they will flap around for a while, then opposition unity will crumble.  They only need a few more senate votes and they will get funding for the month of October... spike

>...Prediction markets are betting pretty heavily on this lasting until at least October 15...

Ja and the whole thing is killing me.  I am currently out of that market, but watching others cash in.  I bought shares of long-march (after 31 Oct reopen) then chickened, sold at a small profit, bought into 15 October reopen, price went down, lost most of my profit, chickened, sold at a net gain of one dollar.

Now I am currently out of the market, and it is killing me to watch other people make money while I am not.  Had I just held my original long-march shutdown shares, I woulda been 17 bucks ahead by now.  Damn.

>...Personally, I'd put the 50% odds mark somewhere near the end of October...

Ja I am about there too.  Current price for After-10/25 is 42 cents.  

>...and more likely that the Republicans in Congress will back down than the Democrats...

With that I disagree.  I predict the stay-closed team will crumble first, then they pass the bill in its current form and reopen.  The risk to the stay-closed team is too high that the voters will see nothing has changed all that much during the shutdown.  Adrian is the current government shutdown causing you any heartburn?  The LIGO project, sure.    

>...Trump is just too stubborn on this sort of thing to give up any time soon, and the polls are giving Democrats positive ratings for pushing this so they don't have a reason to back down.  That leaves the Republicans in Congress as the relatively weakest point.

Ja, by that line of reasoning, the shutdown will be a long march.  The current POTUS and his team (Republicans) want to reopen government.  The opposition team wants to stay closed.  If either the Republicans crumble or both might dig in, the shutdown continues.  

If so, I will rebuy shares of the long-march-to-reopen-government and I will make money.  I will struggle to not think about the other 27 bucks I could have made had I had I grown a spine and held my shares.  Had I not been such a damn pusillanimous chicken and sold my shares, I coulda cashed in bigtime.  Or smalltime, but cashed in just the same.  Sigh.

spike

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