The First Amendment

This morning, I randomly came across a series of tweets from Richard Roeper (best known for his work as a film critic). Apparently, Roeper had made some comments (not necessarily via Twitter) defending the legality of an employee getting fired for making racist comments on her Facebook page. (The fact that she got fired is only relevant is background information, which is why I'm not getting into specifics.) Roeper must've taken some heat from people, and they must've said something like "the First Amendment protects our freedom of speech" or something like that. That, in turn, led to this tweet.

Amazing how many people don't understand the First Amendment. Have they even read it?

— Richard Roeper (@richardroeper) April 5, 2012

Roeper implies that a reading of the First Amendment is sufficient to understand one's constitutional right to free speech. Okay, that sounds reasonable enough. Let's all read it together:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." (source)


Okay, that wasn't too painful. So, according to our close reading of the text, Congress can't make a law that abridges the freedom of speech. That must be the limit and extent of our constitutional right to free speech, right, Mr. Roeper?

Of course, it's not that simple. For example, did you know that, in addition to Congress, States also can't make laws that abridge our freedom of speech? How could you, if all you did was read the First Amendment? (The First Amendment, like most of the Bill of Rights, applies against the States just like it applies against Congress. I touched on this concept, known as "incorporation", in an earlier post.)

Also, guess what: Congress can make laws that limit our right to free speech! You wanna drive a sound truck around at 2 AM? The government can stop you. Want to falsely advertise your product? The government can stop you. Want to wear a jacket that says, "Fuck the Draft" into a courtroom? Turns out the government can't stop you on that one. But of course, you already knew all these things, because you read the First Amendment and were able to infer from that one sentence the contours of your right to freedom of speech. Right, Mr. Roeper?

I'm not taking issue with Roeper's arguments concerning the legality of firing the employee. I don't know one way or the other whether he's correct, because I haven't looked into the dispute or even read the facts anywhere. I do take issue with his suggestion that a person need only read the Constitution to understand the extent of his rights. It's more than simplistic; it's plain wrong.

Post-Hoc Lottery Thoughts

[First: I don't like using footnotes in these posts because it's annoying and distracting to scroll down to find 'em.  I couldn't help it here, though.  I encourage you not to worry about the footnotes until the end; they usually just address technicalities that you're probably not concerned about anyways.]


The Mega Millions jackpot reached a record high a few days ago.  It was estimated to be worth $540 million, but with late-minute sales driving up the number, the final jackpot turned out to be $640 million.  (That's if you take an annuitized payment, of course.  If you take a lump-sum, you "only" receive $462 million.)  Your odds of winning are 175.7 million-to-one.  The price of a ticket is $1.  Therefore, it was +EV to play the lotto, right?

Well, that answer is a bit complicated.  I think the concept of EV gets oversimplified too often.  When you're playing a game like poker, it makes sense to do whatever's necessary (within the bounds of your own morality, of course) to maximize your winnings.  That's because the way you beat poker is by getting more money than your opponents.  As a result, every EV consideration begins and ends with a calculation of how much money you stand to win/lose over the long run with each available option (bet, call, raise, fold).  There are no other factors brought into the calculus.  Again, this is because the way to "win" poker is to make as much money as possible.

Is that really our goal for life, though--to win as much money as possible?  Of course not.  So, it logically follows that our EV calculation would take other factors besides the economic ones into consideration.  Here's an example:* you've just been hired out of college to start your first full-time job.  When discussing salary, your boss offers you a choice: you can take $60k a year, or you can choose to gamble.  You get to flip a coin--if it comes up heads, you get $120k a year.  If it's tails, you get $20k a year.**  Obviously, if you're only looking at economics, the flip is the +EV play.  Just as obviously, it almost certainly doesn't make sense for you to limit yourself to economic factors.  The difference between $60k and $20k is enormous--you'd almost have to move into the YMCA on $20k a year.  The difference between $120k and $60k, however, isn't as large.  You'd have a slightly nicer apartment and a slightly faster car.***  For many people, taking the guaranteed $60k is the +EV play.

So, back to the Mega Millions.  First, let's get the simpler question out of the way.  Even if your only goal is to maximize your money, playing the Mega Millions a few days back would have been -EV.  Here's a great article that explains why.  When taking subjective factors into play, however, maybe it would make sense.  It's almost impossible to make this calculation, though.  You'd have to assign numbers to concepts like happiness, frustration, etc.  That's not easy to do, despite what Jeremy Bentham would have you believe.  Also, people have trouble conceptualizing just how slim their odds are.  I'm guilty of this, too, sometimes.  "It could happen to anyone."  "Someone's gotta win."  Sound familiar?  There's a psych term for this, but I didn't take enough psych courses to learn/remember it.

I don't really have a neat way to wrap this all up, so enjoy this Simpsons clip instead.







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*This example comes from an economics textbook whose name and author I never learned.  I came across this hypo while shelving books at the NU bookstore.

**You're not allowed to quit, ask for a raise, etc., because you're signing a one-year contract.  Okay, technically, you could quit but then you could get sued for breach of contract and that'd be -EV.

***remember, in this example you're straight out of college.  If you're married with a large family to support, it's conceivable that the difference between $120k and $60k is indeed bigger than the difference between $60k and $20k.  Also, yes, I realize that some people who are straight out of college are married with a large family.  Sorry for my imprecision.