gts wrote:
On Wed, 07 Feb 2007 10:57:04 -0500, Ben Goertzel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
The dramatic probabilistic incoherency of humans is demonstrated by
human behavior in casinos.
You mean something more stringent than me by the word incoherency,
then. Human betting behavior in casinos is stupid but it is not
incoherent in the De Finetti sense as I understand it.
It's easy to prove incoherence: one need only show how a dutch book
can be made against the allegedly incoherent person. Vulnerability to
dutch books is how incoherence is defined under the theory.
Casino gamblers are stupid in so much as they place bets with
unfavorable odds, but they do not by virtue of those stupid bets make
themselves vulnerable to dutch books. One sometimes wins against
unfavorable odds but it is never possible to beat a dutch book. In
fact casinos do not even offer such betting situations.
-gts
I suspect you of mis-analyzing the goals and rewards of casino
gamblers. I don't personally know any of those addicted to gambling,
but I know people who buy lottery tickets every week. They derive
pleasure not only from winning, but also from dreaming about winning.
Then there's the matter of "expected marginal value". I may suspect
that winning would have much less of a positive result than they expect,
but this hardly matters as almost nobody will actually win. Therefore
most of the benefit must be derivable without winning.
Perhaps most gambling is not a zero-sum game. (Actually, I suspect
that winning the lottery may well be a negative result. I'm not
certain, but many reports indicate that such a person is more likely to
be bankrupt 5 years later than a person who did not win. [Reliability
of such reports? Unverified.])
I'm not sure whether or not this speaks to the points that you are
attempting to raise, but it certainly calls into question comments about
"stupid bets". Well, the lottery isn't a casino, so perhaps you are
correct, but I would be suspicious about calculating values based solely
on the money.
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