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Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Call for Anonymous Narratives by LW Women and Question Proposals (AMA) - Less Wrong
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I have a (male) friend who answered $500 to this question. He teaches math (at the middle school level). It was a sad day.
Of course it's not just women! Women (outside the community, that is) are more likely to respond that way than men, but that's from a study on both risk aversion and hyperbolic discounting which showed that "Women can't take small risks and men are creatures of the now", with both effects diminishing as scores on the Cognitive Reflection Test increased.
I now wonder what would happen if I asked a man on the street to choose between $500 immediately or $1 million in 10 years (= 113% annual interest) - a version that extreme wasn't in the original study, just the extreme version of the risk-aversion Q. I wouldn't expect it to work, but then I wouldn't have expected it to work with risk aversion either!
I would expect that to depend a great deal on their confidence that you would in fact provide $1 million in ten years.
Likewise, the original question depends on their confidence that you're not overestimating/lying about the probability they will get the $1,000,000.
Yes. EY's introduction of "immediately" is what changes the equation for me.... I might well choose $500 in my hand right now over the promise of $1million in ten years, whereas I probably would not choose the promise of $500 in an hour over the promise of $1 million in ten years.
Would you also choose $1 million in ten years over $1000 in an hour?
And would you choose $1000 in an hour over $500 right now?
If the answer to both questions is yes (and I think both are reasonable) then we may have an example of circular preferences on our hands.
Probably.
Ooh. That's a toughie.
I suspect in practice it depends critically on all kinds of subliminal aspects of the situation... that is, which way I choose can probably be manipulated by the exact choice of words, what the person is wearing, yadda yadda. My guess is that I choose $500 right now for most versions of the choice, but $1000 for a substantial minority.
Single point of evidence- I would have to fight my inner self REALLY hard to choose the 15% chance at a million. (Inner turmoil!! Logic says Do Thing A, but I really Don't Want To!!).
OTOH, the million in ten years is intuitively obvious to me and choosing it would be what I would've done even PRE-rationality.