OT: The Throwing vs Hitting Tennis Bet

[baronzeus]

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bz,

el d's point still stands. How is it immoral for him to do it, but not for you and ken to do it when you think you're essentially taking some sucker's money? Again, my retarded aunt would see the holes in this logic.

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Let me use an analogy.

If you have ever been to a big city like SF, you've seen certain guys on the street. They play this game with a ball and 3 cups, where they move the ball around in front of you, and you get to put money down on which cup you think it's in. They even give you 1:1 on your money.

Many suckers believe that they have better than a 50/50 chance to win this game. After all, how hard can it be to track the cup with the ball?

Stopping right there, do you think they have committed an immorality by accepting this "great deal"? No, the street party put out the deal and knows FULL WELL the consequences.

But what the visitor doesn't realize is that the street gambler is very good at what he does, and in fact he has probably a 1 in 3 chance of guessing the cup.

So now by my logic it should be immoral for the performer to play such rigged games, right? Wrong: I only find it immoral if it is IMPOSSIBLE for the visitor to win a given game. That is, if he slipped the ball into a different cup when the visitor guessed--that would make it immoral. But since the visitor has a 1 in 3 chance, it's moral.




I think this is a pretty good analogy, since it is almost an identical situation. The only difference is the actual chance that the "sucker" has.