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Comment by cheschire | Hacker News Reader

Little did you know at the time that your father was also gambling. His bet was against you. His reward was that you would align to his views.

Had his gamble failed, you would’ve been addicted at a young age to that rush, and his authority on many life matters would’ve been diminished in your young eyes.

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Not only is this baseless cynicism as another comment said (and, hey, I'm one hell of a cynic), but it also makes wild assumptions, based on absolutely nothing, about how the father would've handled the situation had he won.

That's not really an A/B scenario, there are a variety of outcomes there.

I have a 7 year old, and I think the parent is right. It would be very hard to unwind the winning experience from the psyche of a kid. They'd be talking about it for months - maybe even years. My kid still talks about the run-of-the-mill soccer goal he scored three weeks ago.

Parent is dramatizing it, and one event probably wouldn't make _that_ much of a difference in life outcome, but I think there's a valuable lesson here. The dad was gambling.

Many choices in life have some risk and some odds of failing. Calling them all gambling is plain wrong. Are you gambling that you will not be implicated in an accident every time you leave your home? There's definitely a risk, and a significant number of people lose every day.

Or maybe the odds do matter, as does the existence of a house that manipulates them.

This is baseless cynicism.

In the loosest sense. And the parallels between that and the type of gambling being discussed here are nonexistent.

Besides, it was hardly gambling. He knew those games are rigged.

I'm a little more concerned about the withholding food from a child because they couldn't throw a ball well enough

One lunch. Let’s not exaggerate.

A 99% probability of winning is a gamble I would take any day.

Pure comedy, I love it

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