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.
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.