Woman makes $420k by buying insurance on flights she predicted would get delayed

Re:Woman makes $420k by buying insurance on flights she pred... by nkingsy on Monday June 15, 2020 @09:37AM (#23527152)

Gambling is taking risks with an expectation of possible gain.

In this case, the risk of never needing insurance is balanced by the gain of whatever is insured if it is lost.

One could argue that this is decreasing risk in exchange for less gain, but that’s still using a tool for balancing risk and gain, aka gambling.

Go too deep and life is gambling.

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Re:Woman makes $420k by buying insurance on flights she pred... by JeffL on Monday June 15, 2020 @10:59AM (#23527977)

Gambling at a casino is trading expected value for more variance of outcome. Insurance is trading expected value for less variance.

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Re:Woman makes $420k by buying insurance on flights she pred... by nkingsy on Monday June 15, 2020 @12:07PM (#23528916)

I come from a poker background, so I would only ever increase variance in order to also increase my expected value. I call that gambling.

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Re:Woman makes $420k by buying insurance on flights she pred... by jefftk on Monday June 15, 2020 @04:02PM (#23532295)

If something decreases both expected value and variance, it's pretty hard to call it gambling.

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