Any example that comes to mind is with poker. Say you just sit down at the table and a kid with a backwards baseball cap and sunglasses makes an aggressive move. A lot of people will fold with the rationale:
I have a feeling he’s bluffing, but I just sat down so I don’t know. I have to see him prove that he’s capable before I give him credit.
Similar example: take the same situation and replace the kid with a twenty-something year old asian. Twenty-something year old asians tend to be aggressive. People know that, but often still won’t give the player credit for being capable of bluffing because they “don’t want to stereotype”.
Given that the stereotypes are known to all players and can be manipulated (moreso the baseball cap than race), refusing to believe the signals seems like the correct thing at high level tables where all players can be assumed to have thought through their presentation. Even with something like race, if the 20 year old asian knows you think he’s likely to be aggressive, he can use that to his advantage.
I would probably have thought the same thing if I didn’t play poker, but my impression from playing poker is that players just aren’t that sophisticated (in this manner) at anything but the highest of stakes.
I think a little more goes into it with poker, at least with Texas Hold’em. The odds change every time a new card is laid down. The player who goes all-in before the flop might actually have a pair of Aces, but another player could still win with a flush once all the cards are down.
I’m not sure what your underlying point here is—I might not be disagreeing with you. One lesson I take from poker is that there is little cost to folding when the stakes are high, but a very large cost to betting and being wrong. It is safer to sit and watch for a while and wait for a hand you have great confidence in before challenging the “all-in” player.
Similarly, there seems to be greater social down-sides to believing something that turns out to be false than to be skeptical of something that turns out to be true.
The central point I’m making is that people often know that the kid with a backwards baseball cap and sunglasses is likely to be bluffing, even though they don’t know that they know it, and thus it’s an example of an unknown known.
It is true that the cards change every hand, and so the kid may not be bluffing, but the probabilities don’t change (for a given context), so the kid is just as likely to be bluffing each time (for a given context). Eg. on a 964 flop, if the kid is the preflop raiser, he could have AA, but on that flop he’s likely to be bluffing, say, 80% of the time.
Any example that comes to mind is with poker. Say you just sit down at the table and a kid with a backwards baseball cap and sunglasses makes an aggressive move. A lot of people will fold with the rationale:
Similar example: take the same situation and replace the kid with a twenty-something year old asian. Twenty-something year old asians tend to be aggressive. People know that, but often still won’t give the player credit for being capable of bluffing because they “don’t want to stereotype”.
Given that the stereotypes are known to all players and can be manipulated (moreso the baseball cap than race), refusing to believe the signals seems like the correct thing at high level tables where all players can be assumed to have thought through their presentation. Even with something like race, if the 20 year old asian knows you think he’s likely to be aggressive, he can use that to his advantage.
I would probably have thought the same thing if I didn’t play poker, but my impression from playing poker is that players just aren’t that sophisticated (in this manner) at anything but the highest of stakes.
I think a little more goes into it with poker, at least with Texas Hold’em. The odds change every time a new card is laid down. The player who goes all-in before the flop might actually have a pair of Aces, but another player could still win with a flush once all the cards are down.
I’m not sure what your underlying point here is—I might not be disagreeing with you. One lesson I take from poker is that there is little cost to folding when the stakes are high, but a very large cost to betting and being wrong. It is safer to sit and watch for a while and wait for a hand you have great confidence in before challenging the “all-in” player.
Similarly, there seems to be greater social down-sides to believing something that turns out to be false than to be skeptical of something that turns out to be true.
The central point I’m making is that people often know that the kid with a backwards baseball cap and sunglasses is likely to be bluffing, even though they don’t know that they know it, and thus it’s an example of an unknown known.
It is true that the cards change every hand, and so the kid may not be bluffing, but the probabilities don’t change (for a given context), so the kid is just as likely to be bluffing each time (for a given context). Eg. on a 964 flop, if the kid is the preflop raiser, he could have AA, but on that flop he’s likely to be bluffing, say, 80% of the time.