HonoreDB comments on A sense of logic - Less Wrong

13 Post author: NancyLebovitz 10 December 2010 06:19PM

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Comment author: HonoreDB 10 December 2010 09:24:37PM 3 points [-]

Ditto for car insurance commercials that boast that they don't penalize people for having accidents--they just reward people for not having accidents.

Comment author: Strange7 11 December 2010 11:04:12PM *  1 point [-]

That one might actually make sense.

Instead of a cumulative per-wreck penalty, which nearly negates the point of buying insurance at all, a 'safe driving award' system means that there are only two tiers of pricing (based on #accidents, at least - other factors are still open for discrimination), which caps the potential adverse selection without forcing the company to ignore a valuable piece of data about the client's skill and driving habits.

Also, it could be taken as a signal that quoted prices don't reflect an unrealistically idealized customer.