neq1 comments on Is Rationality Maximization of Expected Value? - Less Wrong

-23 Post author: AnlamK 22 September 2010 11:16PM

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Comment author: neq1 22 September 2010 11:31:39PM 9 points [-]

In the first example, you couldn't play unless you had at least 100M dollars of assets. Why would someone with that much money risk 100M to win a measly 100K, when the expected payoff is so bad?

Comment author: Will_Newsome 23 September 2010 12:27:31AM 2 points [-]

Yeah, uhm, I figured I'd misunderstood that, because my second hypothesis was that someone was trolling us. Looking at the poster's previous comments I'm more inclined to think that he just missed the whole 'Bayes is god' meme.

Comment author: AnlamK 28 September 2010 05:51:00AM 0 points [-]

Sorry that talking about money lead to confusion. I guess the point I was making was the following. See my respond to mattnewport, i.e.:

Suppose you have a gamble Z with negative expectation with probability of a positive outcome 1-x, for a very small x. I claim that for small enough x, every one should take Z - despite the negative expectation.