OK that will do for a talking point.
So in your opinion, if I understand you, playing machines with a negative expectancy qualifies as a misconception to you, and you don't understand why people do it. I'll try to answer.
I'm sure people are gong to disagree with you, so I won't get involved in that, but here's what I know about the heuristic that may be involved in the dynamic.
The Availability Heuristic, makes things which are more easily remembered dominate our decision making process. Combined with reduced sensitivity to negative stimuli and increased sensitivity to positive stimuli a net negative situation can be enjoyable to some people.
Imagine a totally hypothetical situation where flipping a coin heads was positive, and having it come up tails was negative. Now imagine that the person flipping the coin remembers disproportionately the times they win over the times they lose. And lastly try to imagine that they don't "feel" the loss that much, but they get very excited by the wins.
In this fashion one could derive enjoyment from flipping a coin even though the activity was net neutral from a financial point of view.
Does that help explain it?
It's hard to put a price on enjoyment and entertainment, and I see no fundamental problem with money spent on entertainment as long as people know that's what they are doing.
The line of "problem" is only crossed if the think they are winning when they are not. (Here I'm not talking about expectancy, I'm talking about actual results.) The easiest way to avoid this trap is keeping accurate lifetime records. Your brain might only remember the wins, but a piece of paper should be immune to this heuristic.
~FK
--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "jim_mason7" <7711-jimmason@...> wrote:
The concept must be above my pay grade. I play VP to win $$.
> As long as the play is positive it is worth my time and risk.
> I personally do not understand other people's motivation to
> play any casino game for a result the would yield less in the long run. However, this is still a free country, so as long as one can afford it, each to his own.
>
> --- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "Frank" <frank@> wrote:
> >
> > Wow...I'm surprised that in two days no one has posted their favorite casino misconception and discussed what heuristic might cause it.
> >
> > I thought that since this was vpFREE, a site devoted to VP, I'd see tons of chatter. I could provide a few to get the ball rolling, but that would defeat the purpose, since I'm more interested in what's interesting to all of you.
> >
> > I already know what I think...or at least I think I do.
> >
> > ~FK
> >
> > --- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, "Frank" <frank@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Here's what I was hoping to see in this thread. Above is a really good real world example of where real people, in this case flight instructors, came to exactly the wrong conclusions even though they're observations were correct.
> > >
> > > Since this is vpFREE I thought people might want to chime in with VP related cognitive errors like thinking that end machines are luckier, because they hit more.
> > >
> > > State a casino misconception and then talk about what causes it. You're on your own for a few days, but I'll check in on Saturday.
> > >
> >
>
