“Well, there is another way to make $300,000,000. Start with $30,000, and using a quantum random number generator, gamble it on the forex markets at a 10,000:1 ratio. Then in the branches where your gamble pays off, start an AGI company, hire the best people and build an FAI yourself”
This is kind of glossed over, but I don’t think it works at all. Here is what I think you mean to do:
construct 10,000 trades that each pay off 10,000:1 and combined cover the entire possible future potential prices of some set of currency pairs, so that no matter what, one of them will pay off.
roll a quantum die to decide which one to bet on.
make the bet and sit back to collect your quantum winnings.
If that is what you meant, then you are wrong. You certainly can make bets with a payoff of 10,000:1 or greater with forex options, for some scenarios, but probably all those scenarios are much less likely to happen than 1 in 10,000 because sane people don’t take the other side of bets like that without a lot of edge. And there is no way that you can make bets that levered in the more plausible scenarios. For instance, how would you bet on the EUR/USD (or whatever cross you want) not moving in the next year, or next few years? You could sell a shitload of strangles or straddles, but no one will let you sell $300M of strangles with only 30K of capital, because any movement (or just an unfavorable settle) will cost all your capital and a hell of a lot more.
Three spins of a roulette wheel should do it. (1/60)^3 is 1⁄216,000. (59/60)^3 > 0.95 - so the casino’s cut would be around 5%. You might have to visit multiple casinos, but the fees would not do much damage to the project. This all seems managable—so your assertion seems implausible.
agreed. typically roulette wheels pay 35 to 1 with either 37 or 38 spots but that doesn’t change the vailidity of your point. The only difficulty would be finding a place where you could place such a huge bet on a roulette wheel. I don’t think that there is a casino where you could place even a $1M bet on a single number.
I see no reason in principle that it should be unreasonably difficult to become a quantum billionaire, I just didn’t think that the specific plan Roko presented would work, though when he explained it more it did seem more plausible to me. And I think that you’ll have to give up a decent amount of expected value to do it. Maybe powerball should move to a quantum mechanism for picking numbers to attract more many worlds believers!
Use leverage and iterate the bets. GBP/JPY has 2-3% daily volatility. Leverage by a factor of 25, and within a week you will be wiped out in half the branches and have doubled your money in the other half. If you win, repeat. If you lose, end. Iterate 14 times.
eToro or any of a number of highly advertized online trading programs make this so easy anyone can do it. They even give you 25% free bonus-money so your expected value is positive. There are web-services that give you qbits for free.
“Well, there is another way to make $300,000,000. Start with $30,000, and using a quantum random number generator, gamble it on the forex markets at a 10,000:1 ratio. Then in the branches where your gamble pays off, start an AGI company, hire the best people and build an FAI yourself”
This is kind of glossed over, but I don’t think it works at all. Here is what I think you mean to do:
construct 10,000 trades that each pay off 10,000:1 and combined cover the entire possible future potential prices of some set of currency pairs, so that no matter what, one of them will pay off.
roll a quantum die to decide which one to bet on.
make the bet and sit back to collect your quantum winnings.
If that is what you meant, then you are wrong. You certainly can make bets with a payoff of 10,000:1 or greater with forex options, for some scenarios, but probably all those scenarios are much less likely to happen than 1 in 10,000 because sane people don’t take the other side of bets like that without a lot of edge. And there is no way that you can make bets that levered in the more plausible scenarios. For instance, how would you bet on the EUR/USD (or whatever cross you want) not moving in the next year, or next few years? You could sell a shitload of strangles or straddles, but no one will let you sell $300M of strangles with only 30K of capital, because any movement (or just an unfavorable settle) will cost all your capital and a hell of a lot more.
Three spins of a roulette wheel should do it. (1/60)^3 is 1⁄216,000. (59/60)^3 > 0.95 - so the casino’s cut would be around 5%. You might have to visit multiple casinos, but the fees would not do much damage to the project. This all seems managable—so your assertion seems implausible.
agreed. typically roulette wheels pay 35 to 1 with either 37 or 38 spots but that doesn’t change the vailidity of your point. The only difficulty would be finding a place where you could place such a huge bet on a roulette wheel. I don’t think that there is a casino where you could place even a $1M bet on a single number.
I see no reason in principle that it should be unreasonably difficult to become a quantum billionaire, I just didn’t think that the specific plan Roko presented would work, though when he explained it more it did seem more plausible to me. And I think that you’ll have to give up a decent amount of expected value to do it. Maybe powerball should move to a quantum mechanism for picking numbers to attract more many worlds believers!
Good idea. I wish I had thought of that! Casinos are the perfect place to cheaply and quickly make high-risk almost-fair bets. Tim, I love you <3
Use leverage and iterate the bets. GBP/JPY has 2-3% daily volatility. Leverage by a factor of 25, and within a week you will be wiped out in half the branches and have doubled your money in the other half. If you win, repeat. If you lose, end. Iterate 14 times.
eToro or any of a number of highly advertized online trading programs make this so easy anyone can do it. They even give you 25% free bonus-money so your expected value is positive. There are web-services that give you qbits for free.
Are you doing this? If not, why not?