Unnamed comments on What Cost for Irrationality? - Less Wrong

59 Post author: Kaj_Sotala 01 July 2010 06:25PM

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Comment author: Unnamed 02 July 2010 12:07:52AM 4 points [-]

If we're talking about small amounts of money (relative to people's incomes) the utility of money should be extremely close to linear. It seems very implausible that this effect would be big enough to account for the results of the study.

I have also seen many studies which are designed to directly rule out this kind of possibility (e.g. some people have a chance to get $30, others get $30 and then have a chance to lose $30), and they consistently find similar results to studies that don't take that extra step (e.g. some people have a chance to get $30, others have a chance to lose $30).