Peter Schiff vs. Bitcoin 😲

It looks like there's a debate today, moderated by Tone Vays!

That's one of the links that's ready before it actually airs. I'd assume that link will continue to be good.

I wonder if Peter will ever give it up.

I guess there's no need to give it up. He's fairly good at it. He's tough to nail to a wall in these debates.

It's basically like he and the other guy will mostly think a lot of the same stuff, in terms of like philosophy and economics and what money is, but then basically Peter has the assertion that money needs to be physical. And while that's totally debatable and what the whole thing should focus on, he usually does a good job of pretending that it's evident or not something that should even be challenged or whatever.

So then it's a circular thing where if you assume money has to be physical, of course he can connect the dots in a way where gold is money and Bitcoin isn't.

But he seems to avoid being challenged on why money has to be a physical object.

And he'll probably do the thing where he pretends Bitcoin has no scarcity because he ignores the network effect concept.

But it's cool that he does these. Peter is a fair debater (he doesn't do scummy tricks or anything), so it gives people something to listen to and weigh and decide.

And Bitcoin price is already up 50,000% or so since he first declared it a bubble, so what would another 10x or 100x matter from here. He can probably just keep insisting "the bubble has gotten bigger" into perpetuity.

Why not, if he's done it this far, lol.

Also on the docket today is Jeopardy!

There's a new champ in town. A sports gambler from Las Vegas.

He plays the game effectively, with things like math and logic and common sense and strategy involved.

Basically he's great at using the buzzer, which is a critical part of the game, given that most people who get on the show usually know most of the answers.

And he skips around the board optimizing his chances to hit the daily doubles, rather than go down the categories in order like a conventional player would.

When he hits a daily double, he wagers large, whatever amount the game theory dictates.

(He considers it a +EV wager, since he knows the answer more often than not, so he'll wager as much as he can, balanced only against wanting to win the game and what totals the other contestants are at.)

So often he routs people, and it's totally foreign to what Jeopardy! traditionally looks like.

#RevolutionizingTheGame

And while most people enjoy it and appreciate it, of course there are a few cry babies, like those seen on CNN:

The former contestant tries to cover himself with stuff like "hey I don't blame him for doing it", but clearly there's a stick up his ass and he generally has an attitude of not liking it and suggesting that there's something to besmudge or feel upset about.

The fakenews host, unsurprisingly, seems also butthurt.

Hard to root for winners when you're full of shit.

It's funny too that the former contestant tries to say nobody wants to watch this, when actually ratings are way up and there are lots of people like me who are planning to watch Jeopardy! for the first time in years.

To the contrary, I consider it kind of dull and "who would want to watch" a bunch of bookworms regurgitating pointless factoids.

Reflexes and wagering and risk-assessment makes the game deeper and more interesting. If knowing the most trivia was the only layer of strategy, it'd be really boring and not as popular.

And watching someone play effectively against a tide of people who play poorly is interesting in its own right.

The "it isn't fair, no one can beat him" thing is just stupid. People might have to level up and also play effectively with a good strategy. People might have to also be good at using the buzzer.

You have to be good at the game you're playing to have a good shot at winning-- Imagine that. Lol.

#FakenewsCrybabies

And there's enough variance in a game of Jeopardy! where of course he can be beat, even by a dinosaur player.

I'm very familiar with this reaction from fantasy sports.

People will have some idea in their head about how the game is "supposed" to be played, and if you do anything that breaks an unwritten rule that existed in their mind or isn't consistent with how they want or expected the game to be played, they bitch and moan.

But of course can't articulate a good or real reason why there's a problem, because playing a game according to the rules that currently exist is of course the point of the game and exactly what everyone is supposed to be doing.

The only problem is that they wish the game was different and that they could win by playing the way they want to.

They'd rather whine and try to be socially manipulative than change their ways, or accept what the game really is.

There are a lot of the same ironies too, where they say now the game is boring and you just found a loophole. But really it's boring otherwise. To me it's pretty one dimensional and not that interesting to know who the best baseball players are (you could even just look up an expert list of rankings), and then select people and passively see who accrues the best stats.

Anything that involves deeper strategy and more constant decision making makes the game actually interesting, even if it isn't exactly how you expected the game to be played.

It only seems boring to the extent that you continue to play really poorly while other people play effectively, and rout you.

James is just demonstrating what Jeopardy! game play should actually look like.

If you don't want his tactics to work, you should want Jeopardy! to be different. Such as harder questions, so that contestants less often know the answer and it's less of a buzzer contest.

(But I think you'll be sorely mistaken that anyone would tune in and watch that. The appeal of knowing many of the answers yourself at home is why it's a TV show.)

Is what it is.

Jeopardy! is a buzzer contest, with some trivia mixed in. Not what you wish it was.