Life is a gamble, every day, all day, in a most greedy casino with unwritten rules and players rewriting the rules, re-interpreting them if you accidentally won too much without having the right friends, putting you back in your place. How do people of different smarts gamble?

1) Stupids gamble their money away in stupid ways such as listening to smart people. They look back on a life of hard work and lost savings. Smarties laugh at them, about how stupid the stupids were, having lost their money to the bankers instead of investing, or having invested in a bubble, or having saved enough to not be eligible for welfare, unable to pay medical bills.

2) Smarter stupids have come to understand that smarties are not so smart, that the smarties’ pretending about having others' welfare in mind is self-deception if not deception. Smarter stupids party their paycheck away, turn alms straight into spirits, because they evolved to be rational actors that maximize happiness short-term, on the solid foundation that they are not so smart long-term, and living in a background of smarter, greedy humans.

3) Semi-smarts fool themselves about being smart, imitate smarty talk, and have sophisticated superstitions such as science, always distorted to confirm their beliefs. They make themselves feel good by telling stupids not to gamble but instead to save money to maximize future utility and long-term happiness.

Bigger than 3) Smart, very smart, then wise perhaps? Would I know? All I know is that there are still interesting differences. Some understand averages, <x>, and that the shiny glitzy gambling casinos obviously win. They may make some money by card counting or selling win-strategies to stupids, but they do not buy lottery tickets.

Then there are people who understand averages of deviations, Δx, too. Some understand many world/mind (MW/M) theory. They may play the national lottery in order to create more futures where they find themselves having won, and in those many futures where they lost, they are still happy because they expected and prepared for this.

How does a wise man gamble? MW/M gambling is not gambling in the sense of hoping for a certain future – all futures consistent with your past choice are. And choice is illusion. I just find myself with what already just happened, my thoughts, my “decisions”. Zen knows that you cannot do nothing either. We cannot but find ourselves with having done something. So, what to do?

The example of gambling in a casino is most easily understood. Do you want to do the usual and lose most days in the hope of winning big some day? This strategy suits most people, as their whole life is like that. They disregard the average outcome, holding on to the hope of now perhaps winning. It is the dopamine during “come on, this time the jackpot, come on” which makes us feel alive and forget about all else.

Or do you want to win most days, have many happy days, but sometimes lose big and drown those days in whisky? How to play these strategies? On average, <x>, we lose, but how to tweak Δx so that I win most days and lose only seldom?

This is almost the same as asking for that in most futures, I win some amount needed on top of what I already have for a life-saving operation. In a few futures, I will therefore lose it all, but I do not care because I cannot have the operation anyway without gambling. This is another application for MW/M thinking, a more widely acceptable justification than the desire for happy days – I have a few increasingly more serious ones.

On average, we lose, but how to win most days and lose only seldom? This I discuss here!