I knew a lot of gamblers when I lived in Vegas.
Of course, motivations were mixed. Some people did gamble even
though they had an accurate idea of the odds, just for the fun of
it. However, this was a rare case. Nearly all gamblers had an
overoptimistic view of their odds (they knew the odds were against
them, but didn't want to face just how badly); and the casino
structures games specifically to induce this kind of overoptimism.
For instance, people will routinely choose
-- a $10M slot machine with odds x, instead of
-- a $5M slot machine with odds 3x
because $10M looks funkier to them ... and this even though in terms
of their actual life, winning $5M would usually do them about as much
good as winning $10M. Dangling huge numbers in front of people has a
kind of mind-boggling effect on them.... And there are many subtler
tricks up the casinos' sleeves, of course...
Your view of humans as accurate probabilistic reasoners is definitely
not borne out by the Heuristics and Biases literature in cognitive
psychology.
Ben
On Feb 7, 2007, at 8:40 PM, Charles D Hixson wrote:
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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