Frank wrote:
>What I believe you are alluding to is related to how people fail to account for the role chance plays in our lives and general over-reliance on the past as a predictor of the future. It is further linked to the science of heuristics, which explains the shortcuts humans use to make decisions with imperfect information.
>
>Where problems arise is when people make those quick and dirty choices without realizing just how risky their decisions are, and how tenuous the information they base them on really is. This is never more prevalent than it is in gambling, where fluctuation dominates the entire time scale people can hold safely within their heads. Only by looking at meticulous long term large sample records can the truth be revealed.
>
>I to was dubious of all things gambling related, until I had access to our old team records and got to see things from the POV of massive multi-million hand samples.
Maybe computer generated samples like that would help people with
gambling addiction. I don't think it's very hard to show that
gambling results aren't as chaotic as you say some people see them as.
>Try to remember Tom that most people don't have access to that kind or quality of information. Put yourself in their shoes. Their whole lives aren't an adequate sample to know what you and I take for granted. They are basing their opinions on personal experience without being privy to just how much experience lies.
The appeal of religion may be in how it plays the same role to life in
general as computer programs that show exact expected value play in
gambling.
>One can disagree, but one can hardly blame them for making decisions based on their own lifetime of experience.
>
>~FK
>
>P.S. For anyone interested in "how much experience lies" and "how little a lifetime means", there are two standout books I've read recently: The Believing Brain by ~Michael Shermer...and The Drunkard's Walk by ~Leonard Mlodinow
>
>I have read others, but those were the best.
Do they discuss the subject of the difficulty with which people
overcome beliefs that they only held because most people believed
them?
>--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, Tom Robertson <007@...> wrote:
>> How is seeing that underlying expected value is "real," whereas
>> fluctuation is illusory, "worse" than gambling addiction, which
>> requires the short-sighted view that fluctuation is "real?"
>>
>
