SIDHTFN

I do a crappy job of finishing posts to  my blogs. Here's one reason: I want to be omnipotent. Really.

God is omnipotent, but I don't want to be God. I'd like the power, but don't want the responsibility. And I'm not crazy about the people who would want to hang out with me. But I do want omniscience. I want to know everything. Always have. Always will. Until I die, of course.

Here's the pathology in action.

Yesterday I started writing a post on "pot odds." Pot odds is a rational poker betting strategy. Most poker players are poor, and they bet on whether they feel lucky, or on how much they're already put in the pot. Pot odds tells you to bet based on the expected return (the pot) on the investment (your next bet).

The post, which I started, and intend to finish after this meditation, will explain it in more detail. Assuming that writing this helps me get it done. If it does, I'll update this post with a link to it, that will go here.

Anyway.

There's a lot to betting on a poker hand. First there's the cards. Based on what you know, you  can estimate the probability, of your winning the hand. So can your opponent. You can also estimate what they might estimate, for all the good that might do you.

Then there's bluffing. You can estimate the probability of a bluff based on your opponent's past behavior. So can your opponent. There are optimal strategies for bluffing, assuming that the other player is also following such a strategics. There are more complex strategies where you play one way, hoping to bias your opponent's perception of how you play. So can they. If you're playing face-to-face, there's body language, and spotting a 'tell'--an unconscious reaction that lets you know how good their hand is, and whether or not they are bluffing. Things can get even more complex. How should the number of chips you hold affect your strategy? What if a your goal is not making money, but maximizing your enjoyment, based on some combination of the value you put on money, and the value you put on the emotions that you experience when you play.

And how does all of this relate to non-poker pay-to-play decisions.

I start researching and thinking about these deeper and deeper levels of strategy. Eventually I think that anything can expand to include at least the entire subject of human behavior, and often a great deal more.

That's a bad habit.

It happens a lot.

So having identified the problem I have a solution: when a post starts to get complex, or I start feeling that a reasonably good post could be improved by editing it, again, and again, I will identify what I am not going to do in a section at the bottom of the post.

I'll call the section SIDHTFN, which stands for Shit I Don't Have Time For Now.

SIDHTFN
Editing this any more.
Grammar checking (Google has spell checked)