Really, really, really annoying sentences
Aug. 29th, 2022 04:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitout“The impact would be analogous to your learning that your personal chances of winning the Powerball lottery on any ticket purchase have risen from one in five million to one in five hundred. Wouldn’t you rush to buy tickets?”
This is from near the end of _Super Forecasting_, which has been worth reading, while simultaneously being a remarkably bad book in several ways.
What’s annoying about the sentences.
First, if I were to learn that my personal chances of winning the lottery had changed, I would be asking questions like, well, why? Why did they change? Because I can think of basically _a_ way that they could have changed, and that would be if someone was Doing a Crime. And I would conclude that _no_ I don’t want to participate in or benefit from that crime. Thank you, I Do Not. WTF.
Second, if we are in a fictional situation like, blue thing came out of a lamp and delivered the news or whatever, _also no, I do not_. I don’t want to win the Powerball lottery.
I don’t want to attempt to benefit from what is probably a crime. And I don’t want the “benefit” anyway.
This isn’t why the book is bad. I’ll get to that later.
This is from near the end of _Super Forecasting_, which has been worth reading, while simultaneously being a remarkably bad book in several ways.
What’s annoying about the sentences.
First, if I were to learn that my personal chances of winning the lottery had changed, I would be asking questions like, well, why? Why did they change? Because I can think of basically _a_ way that they could have changed, and that would be if someone was Doing a Crime. And I would conclude that _no_ I don’t want to participate in or benefit from that crime. Thank you, I Do Not. WTF.
Second, if we are in a fictional situation like, blue thing came out of a lamp and delivered the news or whatever, _also no, I do not_. I don’t want to win the Powerball lottery.
I don’t want to attempt to benefit from what is probably a crime. And I don’t want the “benefit” anyway.
This isn’t why the book is bad. I’ll get to that later.