> What is about HN where numerous posters do not believe that investing in the US or EU stock markets is better than completely random outcome, like roulette red/black?

Err, you could start by not making wild inferences and replying to assertions that weren't made.

A single investment is basically gambling. Where it moves is largely impossible to predict or (for a nobody like me, who wouldn't have the means to engage in market manipulation) control. You can reduce the randomness/risk by spreading out your investment across multiple stocks. That's just the central limit theorem. For the market as a whole, on a long enough timescale, the historical aggregate trends upwards, but is still effectively random.

> What the fuck are you investing in for retirement if not stocks?

I can be critical of something and still acknowledge the reality that I am effectively forced to engage with it. I generally invest in a few index funds to reduce the variance and mental overhead, but it's still there.

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In one way it's much worse than "mainstream" gambling: its value depends on society holding the shared delusion that stocks (both in general and yours in particular) are actually worth something. That leads some people to become incredibly invested in maintaining that delusion, since they know what's at stake for them. This thread could be considered an example of where that mentality leads.

And as you said yourself:

> The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.