daenerys comments on Call for Anonymous Narratives by LW Women and Question Proposals (AMA) - Less Wrong

20 [deleted] 09 September 2012 08:39AM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 12 September 2012 02:15:08AM 6 points [-]

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!

Comment author: [deleted] 12 September 2012 02:31:54AM 6 points [-]

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.