How 財神, Caishen, God of Wealth has screwed countless Oriental-Religious Chinese over

2 Jan 2019

Fun fact: google auto-correct actually wants to change "Caishen" into "Cavendish", as in the Cavendish potatoes.
Chinese folk religion is a peculiar thing. Chinese have been long known to be mercenaries, meaning that they work for money, and will serve whoever makes them richer. Chinese immigrants are also very rich in South East Asia because of their supposed propensity to save, compared to the South East Asian propensity for largesse and subsequently corruption, which is another story. This mercenary nature also extends to religion, whereby they believe in a certain god only if it promises to benefit themselves, as can be shown in the conversion of the majority of chins to Buddhism, with an added Chinese flair, a long time ago; as well as the current phenomena that many Chinese are becoming Christians because it is supposedly more popular and will benefit their prestige.
But still, the Chinese hold their folk religions close to heart. Chinese Buddhists have incorporated Folk Deities into Buddhist lore, which is amusing at best.
I mean, its not that I am un-accepting of Chinese folk religion, because I myself have also been indoctrinated to believe in traditional Chinese deities. And religion in Singapore is pretty iffy, its the epitome of religion shopping among youth, due to the multi-religious make-up of Singapore and most people being quite peaceful even when proselytizing. I think I'm officially/legally a Buddhist? But even if I were to be "into" religion, I associate more with Secular Buddhism and even the original Indian form rather than the bastard child that is Chinese Buddhism. I know the name's all wrong. 
(I really don't know what I'm saying right now, I'm having a fucking headache.)
Chinese belief in Caishen, which includes the God of Gambling, makes each person think that they have some special luck on their side and will win as long as they pray hard enough. Its been happening for so many generations that gambling has been ingrained in Chinese culture. Even though fucking math says that not everyone can win. FUCKING LOGIC DUDE. So all Chinese people who gamble believe that they are somehow devout and pious than other Chinese gamblers and hence have more luck. Fucking Singapore has institutionalized gambling with the Singapore Pools, and if most gamblers are fucking religious Chinese people, how can anyone claim to be any more religious than another Chinese?
To hell with religion and gods. Its fine if you want to believe in a deity because it brings you peace. But believing that you can win at gambling just cause you are a religious prick is fucking bullshit. Virtually everyone is a religious prick. And the adults have the gall to claim that teenagers are more prone to participating in risky activities due to their supposed "acceptance for uncertainty" or other bullshit. When they themselves willingly participate in an activity that is risky while not knowing it, while looking through rose-tinted glasses.
Fucking math, geddit. My grandpa is exactly right. Educated people, even people who have a stable job, can do some really stupid things sometime. I get it. Life in Singapore is tough. Your ancestors come to a fucking foreign land and they want to get rich, but the fucking government taxes every single thing until we are all broke. But hell, if everyone believes that they can rely on striking the lottery to become rich, there isn't enough lottery to go around.
Kids, don't believe your parents when they claim that they alone know the magic numbers to the 4D or TOTO. Don't "lent" them your savings if they want to spend it on gambling. According to math, they are likely to make a loss. Heck, humans are predictable monsters. Math shows too, that by using a true random number generator to choose numbers for 4D and TOTO, is more reliable as a Money earning strategy as compared to choosing your own numbers, due to the fact that humans are similar and tend to choose the same numbers, such that if those numbers are correct, each person's share will be less, as compared to random numbers.
For gamblers, congratulations for being fucking kind. You are giving back to society and helping to fund public projects.
The Tote Board which Owns Singapore Pools, is a grant organisation which makes profits of a few billions a year, and then gives out that money to public projects and charities. Good fucking patriotism. By gambling, y'all are on average helping to fund the nation's development. Hence if people are on average loosing, one cannot claim to be earning money from gambling. Math.
And there is also the sunken cost fallacy, which makes people believe that since they have already "invested" so much money into gambling, they might as well continue gambling in hopes of earning back their loses. This ties in to the perceived averaging effect whereby people believe that their number will be chosen, and soon since it has not been chosen in a long time, eventually since statistics says that there is an equal probability that all numbers will come out. But again according to math, each lottery draw is an independent event and has an independent probability of numbers chosen. The conditional probability of your number being chosen does not change however many times you have played the lottery.
Fuck, you were once a double math student. Damn.

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