It’s not all. Pramipexole and other dopamine agonist medications can cause compulsive gambling in previous non-gamblers as a side effect. That makes me think that the thrill of gambling has something to do with the dopamine system and the design of the human risk/reward system, and that compulsive gambling probably has some kind of organic cause that you couldn’t find in the pure mathematics of expected utility.
I find it useful when trying to understand the behaviour of other human beings to start out by assuming that they are basically (imperfectly) rational but may have different values from me. It invokes less of a warm glow of smug superiority but generally leads to more accurate predictions.
I find it useful when trying to understand the behaviour of other human beings to start out by assuming that they are basically (imperfectly) rational but may have different values from me.
So do I. I then look at the evidence and discover they’re just irrational.
Seriously, most people don’t lose hundreds or thousands of dollars in a few hours at a casino just for the enjoyment. They want money and they expect to win some.
Seriously, most people don’t lose hundreds or thousands of dollars in a few hours at a casino just for the enjoyment. They want money and they expect to win some.
mattnewport was talking about gamblers, you’re talking about the (small?) subset of irrational gamblers.
The real question can be solved by empiricism; anyone heading to Vegas soon and willing to do a survey? Ask: A) Do you believe that you will leave the casino with more money than you started? B) If you don’t leave the casino richer, do you expect the experience to be satisfying anyway? (Except do a better job of optimizing the questions for clarity.) Ask a few hundred people, get some free drinks from the casinos, publish your results in an economics journal or a cognitive biases journal, present your findings to Less Wrong, get karma, die happy.
A: Yes. Of course, if I do go to Vegas soon, that’s a fait accompli (I bet on the Padres to win the NL and the Reds to win the World Series, among other bets.)
But in general, yes. I expect to win on the bets I place. I go to Las Vegas with my wife to play in the sun and see shows and enjoy the vibe, but I go one week a year by myself to win cash money.
B. If I come back a loser, the experience can still be OK. But I’m betting sports and playing poker, and I expect to win, so it’s not quite so fun to lose. That said, a light gambling win—not enough to pay for the hotel, say—leaving me down considering expenses gives me enough hedons to incentivize coming back.
If you don’t leave the casino richer, do you expect the experience to be satisfying anyway?
Even if you’re optimizing for enjoyment and satisfaction and fun, gambling isn’t necessarily a great way to do that. Another good question to ask subjects who answer “yes” to questions A and B would be “How much money would you be willing to lose at the casino before that starts to outweigh your enjoyment of the experience?” or “How much money would you be willing to lose at the casino before you’d regret not choosing something that is (in your estimation) a more cost-effective route to the same amount of enjoyment?”
Those are good questions, and on Less Wrong I wouldn’t be hesitant to ask them, but I figured they’d be beyond the ability of the average person to really think about. In my experience getting people to fill out surveys, they easily get indignant and frustrated when they can’t understand a question or, perhaps more importantly, the possible motives behind the question. (“Is he trying to make me look like a fool? What an ass, trying to get status over me with his nerdy smarts!”) Even if they did understand the question, I’d doubt their answer would be at all reflectively consistent; significantly less so than the answers to the other two questions.
Taking into account my other comment, I think that perhaps it’d be best to ask the less informative but much simpler question “How much money have you set aside for gambling today?” before the other two questions.
Most people at casinos are not problem gamblers, just as most people who drink are not problem drinkers. I know plenty of people (myself included) who gamble on occasion for fun but understand the odds.
More importantly, “x is being irrational” can be a fake explanation if it’s given without further detail. Much better to point to a specific fallacy or bias that would explain their behaviour.
In this particular case, though, how is it a matter of “different values”? Would anybody participate in casino-style gambling if they were better at thinking about probabilities and utilities?
I have gambled in a casino or the like exactly once in my adult life, when on a cruise I had a quarter, 25 cents, which I did not wish to carry around with me for the rest of the week. So I decided to “try my luck” at the quarter-push machine in the casino. I did not win anything, but being able to tell that story was worth every penny.
I think it’s hard to enjoy gambling if you are sure you’ll lose money, which is how I feel like. I may be over pessimistic.
Roulette gives you odds of 1.111 to 1 if you place on Red or Black with expectation −0.053 on the dollar. So I may be over-pessimistic. See the wiki entry.
Gamblers are maximizing expected utility, not expected cash. That is all.
It’s not all. Pramipexole and other dopamine agonist medications can cause compulsive gambling in previous non-gamblers as a side effect. That makes me think that the thrill of gambling has something to do with the dopamine system and the design of the human risk/reward system, and that compulsive gambling probably has some kind of organic cause that you couldn’t find in the pure mathematics of expected utility.
Or they’re just irrational.
I find it useful when trying to understand the behaviour of other human beings to start out by assuming that they are basically (imperfectly) rational but may have different values from me. It invokes less of a warm glow of smug superiority but generally leads to more accurate predictions.
So do I. I then look at the evidence and discover they’re just irrational.
Seriously, most people don’t lose hundreds or thousands of dollars in a few hours at a casino just for the enjoyment. They want money and they expect to win some.
mattnewport was talking about gamblers, you’re talking about the (small?) subset of irrational gamblers.
The real question can be solved by empiricism; anyone heading to Vegas soon and willing to do a survey? Ask: A) Do you believe that you will leave the casino with more money than you started? B) If you don’t leave the casino richer, do you expect the experience to be satisfying anyway? (Except do a better job of optimizing the questions for clarity.) Ask a few hundred people, get some free drinks from the casinos, publish your results in an economics journal or a cognitive biases journal, present your findings to Less Wrong, get karma, die happy.
Hey, I’ll do the survey on me:
A: Yes. Of course, if I do go to Vegas soon, that’s a fait accompli (I bet on the Padres to win the NL and the Reds to win the World Series, among other bets.)
But in general, yes. I expect to win on the bets I place. I go to Las Vegas with my wife to play in the sun and see shows and enjoy the vibe, but I go one week a year by myself to win cash money.
B. If I come back a loser, the experience can still be OK. But I’m betting sports and playing poker, and I expect to win, so it’s not quite so fun to lose. That said, a light gambling win—not enough to pay for the hotel, say—leaving me down considering expenses gives me enough hedons to incentivize coming back.
--JRM
Even if you’re optimizing for enjoyment and satisfaction and fun, gambling isn’t necessarily a great way to do that. Another good question to ask subjects who answer “yes” to questions A and B would be “How much money would you be willing to lose at the casino before that starts to outweigh your enjoyment of the experience?” or “How much money would you be willing to lose at the casino before you’d regret not choosing something that is (in your estimation) a more cost-effective route to the same amount of enjoyment?”
Those are good questions, and on Less Wrong I wouldn’t be hesitant to ask them, but I figured they’d be beyond the ability of the average person to really think about. In my experience getting people to fill out surveys, they easily get indignant and frustrated when they can’t understand a question or, perhaps more importantly, the possible motives behind the question. (“Is he trying to make me look like a fool? What an ass, trying to get status over me with his nerdy smarts!”) Even if they did understand the question, I’d doubt their answer would be at all reflectively consistent; significantly less so than the answers to the other two questions.
Taking into account my other comment, I think that perhaps it’d be best to ask the less informative but much simpler question “How much money have you set aside for gambling today?” before the other two questions.
Most people at casinos are not problem gamblers, just as most people who drink are not problem drinkers. I know plenty of people (myself included) who gamble on occasion for fun but understand the odds.
More importantly, “x is being irrational” can be a fake explanation if it’s given without further detail. Much better to point to a specific fallacy or bias that would explain their behaviour.
In this particular case, though, how is it a matter of “different values”? Would anybody participate in casino-style gambling if they were better at thinking about probabilities and utilities?
I have gambled in a casino or the like exactly once in my adult life, when on a cruise I had a quarter, 25 cents, which I did not wish to carry around with me for the rest of the week. So I decided to “try my luck” at the quarter-push machine in the casino. I did not win anything, but being able to tell that story was worth every penny.
I think it’s hard to enjoy gambling if you are sure you’ll lose money, which is how I feel like. I may be over pessimistic.
Roulette gives you odds of 1.111 to 1 if you place on Red or Black with expectation −0.053 on the dollar. So I may be over-pessimistic. See the wiki entry.
Typical Mind Fallacy.
Don’t get over-excited. You are still losing money in a less than fair-odds situation.
And since most people don’t stop gambling until they have some deficit from gambling, casinos usually make more than the odds give them.