bobappic wrote:
>I have never understood the "purists" scoffing at people who change machines after a "cold" streak. The fact is that it really doesn't matter which machine you use - the odds are identical - so if one chooses to change machines because of an annoying draft, bad lighting, an obnoxious player nearby, wanting a change of scenery, or tiring of putting money in and getting none back, it makes no difference. One can continue on the same machine or move, and it should make no difference - so why the flap if you decide to move to a new machine? Makes no sense to me.
I classify your reasons for moving machines into 2 categories. The
first, which you described as "an annoying draft, bad lighting, an
obnoxious player nearby, wanting a change of scenery," to which I'd
add buttons that don't work well, better access to beautiful scenery
(a. k. a. cocktail waitresses, usually), etc., isn't based on any
mathematical misconceptions. The other one is. By putting it in the
same list and the same sentence as the others, it's as if you were
trying to "smuggle" an illegitimate reason for moving machines into
the category of legitimate reasons. The negative consequences of
errors in logic such as this aren't significantly manifested in the
negligible cost of moving from one machine to another with an
identical payback and, presumably, identical qualities as mentioned in
the first category of reasons to move machines. But it doesn't take
much imagination to show significant negative consequences of the same
errors in logic in other situations. Maybe the Cuban Missile Crisis
would have turned out catastrophically worse for billions of people if
a few people had been a little less logical. Maybe World War 1,
which, in a way, to some extent, is still being fought, would have
been avoided had a few people been a little more logical. And I'm
very skeptical of anyone's ability to be selective in being logical.
To use one of my favorite phrases, I believe the correlation of the
degree to which someone is logical in one area with the degree to
which the same person is logical in another area "borders on 100%."
