Think of it as ROT-n encryption of random data, where n is the key

If you choose the wrong n, you'll still get blob of random data back, just not the correct one.

Now, the tricky part is in making sure the incorrect keys returns data that's hard to distinguish (meaning it can't be done automatically and/or quickly) from the correct plain text, when the plain text ISN'T random looking, but something like passwords, SSN, credit card numbers.

The money you pay in this kind of insurance is ALWAYS more than the expected cost for an individual (ie. the chance they actually have to pay you times the average cost of a canceled holiday)

That's how insurance companies make money. If it was any different, they'd go broke.

So, the payout is basically your own money, and on average, you'd have more money if you had just saved it.

If one has the ability to back up that risk, (...) it is on average better to not get insurance.

I don't get why this concept is so hard for people to understand.

Like people taking out insurance for canceling a holiday trip. If you have paid up front for your vacation, then pretty much by definition you can afford to lose that money without ill effects worse than "I won't get to go on holiday this time"

I'm not sure about other countries, but in the Netherlands only liability insurance is mandatory for car owners, and those will not pay for any damage to your own car in any case.

There exist people less smart than me that can kill me. Yet I don't go around solving that problem by killing them.

Why would the AI be different?

It might just have been a shit player.

I'm pretty sure he is. Note how he stands still to aim...

Can't I have a god that's nice to people?

Seriously, which one would that be?

bees are not cute and cuddly, so no.

probably a misspelling of iniquity:
in-iq-ui-ty
Noun: Immoral or grossly unfair behavior.

sounds about right

That was not my point at all.

JoeMerchant was implying his crypto method was perfectly safe against cryptanalysis because it's a one-time pad. However, in the same post he tells us he's not using a one-time pad at all, but a stream cipher.

You just told all of us your method, and we didn't even need to use a wrench.

One time pads are only unbreakable when they're generated with a true random source. What you described is a stream cipher, and as long as you know the key to initialize the keystream, it can be forced from you.

Of course, if you do have a true one-time pad, the location of your copy of it can be extracted just as easily. I'd say the only way to protect against that is to make sure no-one knows you use crypto at all.

I recall that the NULL pointer is not numerically 0 on some systems.

No idea which systems those were tho.

If I'm wrong, I loose nothing. If I'm right, you lose everything.

Pascal's wager is bullshit. What if you happen to believe in the wrong god, and the true god happens to be a vindictive psychopath?

Somalia does this, except they use git.

They're exactly the same as the casino owner: the house always gets its cut.

Not quite. The casino sets the rules of the game, making sure they know EXACTLY what the odds are, thereby turning long-term profit into a statistical certainty. The insurer has to guess the odds, and can actually guess wrong, so there's a lot less certainty. That's why there are reinsurers, who insure the insurers against unexpectedly large payouts.