“How Much Shall We Bet?” At first I thought the story by Italo Calvino was about gambling. How interesting could this possibly get? Yeah, ok, life’s a gamble or something like that. Then the first four words hit me. “The logic of cybernetics.” What does that have to do with gambling? Nothing, I soon found out. “How Much Shall We Bet” is not only complex within the word choice, but also within the concept. Why is the concept so complex?, I couldn’t tell you, because I don’t know what the concept is. Almost the entire story resists interpretation, and one has to look instead, for the parts that don’t resist interpretation. All the points one can possibly make about this story are speculation(which is ironic, seeing as the whole story is speculative in and of itself). One part that I felt I could possibly understand was when Qfwfq started losing bets, even though he hadn’t miscalculated. To me, this represented the uncalulable nature of humanity. No matter how many “components” are brought together to make a prediction, noone can predict anything about humanity, because humans are always logical, except when they are not. To me, Qfwfq got caught in a paradox. His words had more meaning than he knew when he said, “correct myself how? On the basis of what?” There isn’t a basis, there is no rationale behind the actions of humans, except when there is.
There are so many questions, this story leads to, but none of them are really answerable, which is why this story is so captivating. Anyone could bet anything about everything, but no matter the odds, there will never be a sure victory, because human nature crushes all reasoning.
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