Discussed at the time: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10216338" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10216338</a>A related thread: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=9570713" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=9570713</a>Links to the 2003 documentary mentioned in past threads are now dead, but it is here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=o75teVHwkT8" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=o75teVHwkT8</a>

In a way, this is very much a story of a classic hack: the victims build a system that they belive to be foolproof without proper proof. The hacker manages to find a weakness through careful analysis and then goes on to exploit it in a spectacular and kind of fun way that isn&#x27;t all that harmful. I don&#x27;t think CBS was harmed that much by that amount of price money.

Had he done the same thing in Jeopardy!, by studying the most common categories, figuring out common clue patterns and how they lead into responses, and practicing with a buzzer, he&#x27;d be considered a smart player, as opposed to a power-gaming asshole who munchkined his way into money.

Where do you fall on the Phil Ivey edge sorting incident?

Michael’s run on PYL is often called a “scandal” as if he cheated. The only scandal was that CBS tried like hell to figure out a way to deny him his winnings.

Sounds like he missed his calling as a politician.

He also committed unemployment fraud before his TV appearance and ended up creating a Ponzi scheme in his later years.

It&#x27;s funny how a picture of him has the caption &quot;Michael Larson was never interested in following the rules&quot; when, actually, he was the only one who bothered to figure out the rules.

Well, dying at the age of 50 to throat cancer is not exactly on my list of expectations for life.

Yeah, it doesn&#x27;t really seem like he had a downfall, besides dying, which isn&#x27;t exactly an unexpected event for any person..

&gt; tended to rely on illicit schemes that never worked out for him.I mean, they found one radio one that failed, but almost all the others actually did work out for him?

To me it seems more like his beating the system gave him false confidence that he could find flaws in systems which would be lucrative but he tended to rely on illicit schemes that never worked out for him.

The article keeps making it sound like he met his comeuppance, even as they finally reveal that he ran off with $3M and died of natural causes before he was caught. They never seem to substantiate the pervasive tragic tone. The whole whole thing reminds me of the existentialist treatment of the &quot;Touch of Death&quot; in Men Who Stare at Goats... His schemes were often successful, but ultimately meaningless because death comes for us all?

This is such a fun story. It’s how I commonly introduce common folk to the importance of true random numbers in cryptography. Glad to see it come up here again.

&gt;For example, when playing board or card games, I always try and discover some dominant, completely broken strategy that is definitely not in the &quot;spirit&quot; of the game. (...) isn&#x27;t this how games are supposed to be played?IMHO, there are 2 necessary criterion on whether or not a game should be played in a certain manner:1. Is it fun?
2. Will people continue to play with me if play this way?The first is obvious, don&#x27;t do things that aren&#x27;t fun. The second has to do with exhausting the people who might want to play with you - after all, if no one plays with you it&#x27;s unlikely you&#x27;ll be able to keep playing the game.I don&#x27;t imagine these criterion are complete, however. A dog might want to &quot;play&quot; by chasing a cat, and the cat might continue to &quot;play&quot; if it fears for its life. This is not a thing I allow. There needs to be some criterion for consent, or for the game being &quot;good&quot; for all parties involved.In the case of card games, I&#x27;ve been very turned off of them before because of broken strategies. I&#x27;m not in principle against discovering new strategies that happen to be much stronger than intended ones, but if the game that comes out of that discovery is no longer fun, then I have no incentive to learn how to play the game.

Maybe this is a necessary evil in a day and age when a society is not all on the same page with respect to morals and values. It sure would be nice to have everyone proactively choose to act in a way that matches the &quot;spirit&quot; of the law or rules, and maybe this did used to happen in more homogeneous&#x2F;authoritarian societies? But without that synchronization it seems to fall to the legislative bodies to codify as much as possible of the various moral behavior which is very hard in practice and easy to exploit.This is hard to discuss with precision because there is a lot of subjective judgment involved. Cutting lines is not against the law, so should you do it to avoid wasting time waiting? Occasionally a rightmost lane is in practice used mostly for right turns, but marked as both straight and turn. Majority of people seem to understand it&#x27;s a jerk move to block that lane for the turning traffic, so it&#x27;s usually empty, but every now and then some greedy SOB takes it to overtake the herd. Personally I find this kind of thing despicable and do what I can to prevent it.I&#x27;m sure there is some evolutionary biology connection to fairness and why we behave&#x2F;feel this way.

Games should be played so everyone playing has fun. These angry people were right and you were fooling yourself.
Think of it as a short-term pleasure instead of long-time winning friends.

This seems pretty hard, or at least tedious. Much bigger time investment than a normal 9-5.&quot;He began to spend every waking minute in front of a television, watching infomercials and game shows, in hopes of identifying some kind of opportunity to get rich quick.&quot;

&gt; I don&#x27;t think exploiting loopholes is dishonestWhat is &quot;dishonest&quot;? It&#x27;s a word. That&#x27;s all; just a word. The meaning it has is based solely on the context in which you use it. There is not an ontological reality for the meanings of words. It means what you want it to mean.We could argue what is and what is not dishonest. We could go back to the etymology of the word. We could see how it came to be. We could see how most people have used it. We could argue what meaning would be least surprising for most people. But in the end, when you utter the word &quot;dishonest&quot;, you have a meaning in mind and, for you, the word has that meaning.In fact, this is just the same as every other game you play. It&#x27;s just a loophole. It&#x27;s an advantage you can hold over others. You spoke. It is your meaning. I can misinterpret what you said, but it is forever my fault for not understanding your meaning. I can argue until the cows come home that I don&#x27;t think it should mean what you want it to mean, but it&#x27;s useless because the sentence you spoke is meaningless unless it has the meaning you intended it to have.Most of your post is a tautology - I do not think it is &quot;wrong&quot; because I do not define &quot;wrong&quot; as being this. Discussion is not necessary.&gt; but I&#x27;m sure some would disagreeAnd this is where life gets interesting. &quot;Some would disagree&quot;. Isn&#x27;t that how games are supposed to be played? With others? Isn&#x27;t the goal of a game to enhance everyone&#x27;s well being, not just one &quot;winner&quot;. Aren&#x27;t the rules there to coax the maximum possible extraction of fun for all involved? Wouldn&#x27;t be an extreme debasement of this concept if we abused the intent of the rules simply because we could?You can do what you want, but don&#x27;t be surprised if I have more fun than you even if I don&#x27;t &quot;win&quot; ;-)

What is good, hard, honest work, exactly? I certainly work hard, but is it honest? I&#x27;m not sure. I certainly don&#x27;t intentionally go around breaking all the rules I can, but I do try and use my brain to figure out every possible loophole and advantage I can. I don&#x27;t think exploiting loopholes is dishonest, but I&#x27;m sure some would disagree.For example, when playing board or card games, I always try and discover some dominant, completely broken strategy that is definitely not in the &quot;spirit&quot; of the game. Some people have gotten very angry at me because of this, but isn&#x27;t this how games are supposed to be played? The same applies to life, I think.

True, I think the mindset that &quot;hard, honest work is for fools&quot; has become self-fulfilling.People have become so intensely focused on becoming rich that the mechanisms for getting money have become completely divorced from value creation behaviors which money was supposed to encourage. Detaching money from the gold standard was the straw that broke the camel&#x27;s back IMO; it systemized deception.If the financial system is deceptive at its foundation, all the ventures which succeed within it are going to be of a deceptive nature as well.Value creation is on its death bed. In our complex, unfair and unequal system, most winners are tricksters, cheaters or just born into it (in which case their parents were probably cheaters&#x2F;tricksters).I think it&#x27;s only getting worse over time.

I don&#x27;t know of anyone who got rich by good, honest, hard work without also getting insanely lucky. I know of people who got insanely lucky without being good or honest.

1. What do you consider &quot;rich&quot;?2. Do you honestly not know of anyone who has gotten rich by good, hard, honest work?EDIT: Let me rephrase question 2: Do you honestly feel that most &quot;rich&quot; people got that way by being dishonest or gaming the system?

&gt;&quot;He didn’t understand the value of good, hard, honest work,&quot; his older brother, James, later bemoaned. &quot;He thought those people were fools.&quot;I wouldn&#x27;t call people like that fools, and pretty certainly the world would fall to pieces without them. That said, I don&#x27;t think I can really blame anyone too much for not valuing good, hard, honest work in this world where many people are simply born rich and many others become rich by gaming the system and&#x2F;or screwing people over.

A documentary on this story: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=o75teVHwkT8" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=o75teVHwkT8</a>

The attention it brought to the game show may have been worth more than CBS paid out. They quickly changed the game mechanics so it couldn&#x27;t be so easily exploited a second time which made it a one time cost. Wonder if there was a ratings boost after the episode, even if short lived.

The Man Who Got No Whammies*Technically he did get one Whammy.

If you watch the actual show, he did, in fact, get a warranty on the first spin.
Didn&#x27;t affect him though, as he didn&#x27;t lose any money to it.

The Man Who Got No Whammies (2015)