brazil84 comments on Outside the Laboratory - Less Wrong

63 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 21 January 2007 03:46AM

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Comment author: brazil84 15 December 2013 10:37:30PM 2 points [-]

Yes, I agree. Part of my brain does not understand the difference between a small chance of something happening and a really small chance of something happening. Probably the same thing is true of most people, including PhD economists.

It's doesn't seem unreasonable to spend $10 a year to humor one's inner moron.

It might be a different story if those same PhD economists were spending thousands of dollars a year on lottery tickets. But even then, the most likely explanation is that the PhD economist has a gambling problem. And like most addicts, he knows that he's behaving irrationally; he just has a hard time controlling himself.