The Search for the Dice Man

The Search for the Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart

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of which alternatives would decrease its value. We discussed ways of selling short the south east but could think of nothing better than shorting the stock of Disney whose Disney World in Orlando, unless convened to an underwater theme park, would suffer a pronounced decrease in both gross and net. Cotton prices would soar. Companies involved in building bridges would do well. Perhaps boat-building would make a comeback.
    We were soon as deeply engrossed in our speculations about how to play the greenhouse effect as we had been earlier in our lovemaking, the only difference being we reached no climax in our discussion. Instead Honoria suddenly found our speculations the most boring and unproductive thing she’d done in weeks and announced she was going to sleep. I made a few tentative pokes with various parts of my anatomy at various parts of hers, but receiving nothing more encouraging than a rather unsexy mooing sound, I soon rolled over to go to sleep. However, I spent the next fifteen minutes daydreaming about cornering the market in sugar beets just before the millions of acres of sugar beet fields were flooded, thus becoming the richest man in the world since the Hunt family. Vaguely, just as I fell asleep, I remembered that the Hunt brothers had recently declared bankruptcy.
     
    FROM LUKE’S JOURNAL
    In the beginning was Chance, and Chance was with God and Chance was God: of this much we and sophisticated twentieth-century scientists are certain. While the old physics saw purpose, the new sees chance. When the old saw reassuring and ubiquitous causal nexus, the new sees ubiquitous randomness. When the old probed deeper they always found cause; when the modern physicist probes deeper he always finds chance.
    ‘Was God playing dice when he created the universe?’ The
New York Times
asked a Nobel Prize-winning biologist.
    ‘Yes,’ was the reply.

17
    The next day we ploughed on. Crossing the flat heartland of the central valley of Virginia I concluded that after you’d seen one cornfield you’d seen them all – unless of course I was long or short corn futures, in which case I’d have gotten out of the car every thirty miles to measure the height of the corn.
    After two hours I took over the driving and Honoria settled back into the passenger seat. But I continued a silent brooding that had begun at breakfast and Honoria apparently noticed it.
    ‘You know,’ she said, ‘the reason you’re all hung up about your father is the old cliché that you’re probably more like him than you admit.’
    ‘I’m nothing like him,’ I said.
    ‘Not in any way?’ she persisted.
    ‘I suppose we both like the excitement of taking risks,’ I finally said. ‘That’s the only thing we have in common.’
    ‘Taking risks?’ said Honoria with a frown. ‘How so?’
    ‘That’s my job!’ I said with some exasperation. ‘You know that. There are two kinds of trading in futures. As you know, the whole purpose of hedging is to reduce risk – a kind of insurance policy against other positions one has in other markets. But I’m not a hedger. Jeff is our firm’s hedger. My job is to make money for clients by pure speculation.’
    ‘Gambling, you mean.’
    ‘It’s not gambling!’ I shot back, taking a hand off the wheel to gesture emphatically. ‘It’s intelligent risk-taking. I suppose you could call it loaded-dice risk-taking. Gamblersat something like roulette or craps rely totally on chance, whereas I rely on knowledge, skill and analysis to overcome chance.’
    ‘But if your knowledge always beats out chance then there’s no risk,’ said Honoria with annoying reasonableness.
    ‘Damn it,’ I said. ‘It’s still risk-taking! I sometimes lose millions in a week! It’s just that in the long run my knowledge and skill beat out the pure diceplayer – beat out chance.’
    ‘You don’t have to get so excited,’ Honoria said, reaching forward to retrieve a map that had fallen on to the floor.
    ‘Look at

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