You’re playing Texas Hold’em poker against another player, and she has just bet all her chips on the flop (the 2nd of 4 betting rounds, when there are 2 more shared cards to draw). You estimate that with high probability she has a low pair (say, under 9) with a high kicker (A or K, hoping to hit a second pair). You hold Q-J off-suit. Do you call?
It really depends on what the flop was. All in implies either a desperate player who’s either bluffing (~30% of the time the player is desperate in my experience) or who has a good hand (the remaining 70% of the time the player is desperate) or, if the player still has a good-sized stack/this is a cash game, the player is bluffing a fairly small amount of the time (not enough to justify going in with a Q-J). In fact, after missing the flop with Q-J off, I can’t think of any situation where I’d be likely to call a bet (well, unless there were a huge pot, but beyond that).
Poker analysis aside, I’m not quite sure what the point of this article was. If it was just saying that the availability heuristic is there for a reason and we should be careful about adjusting for it, I fully agree. If you were trying to say something more, I’m afraid I at least didn’t get that point.
I was trying to give a specific reason that the availability heuristic is there: it’s coupled with another mechanism that actually generates the availability; and then to say a few things about this other mechanism.
Does anyone have specific advice on how I could convey this better?
I was trying to give a specific reason that the availability heuristic is there: it’s coupled with another mechanism that actually generates the availability; and then to say a few things about this other mechanism.
It seems obvious why the availability heuristic is there. The ease with which images, events and concepts come to mind is correlated with how frequently they have been observed, which in turn is correlated with how likely they are to happen again. So, the heuristic is a reasonably-good one which just happens to have some associated false positives.
The ease with which images, events and concepts come to mind is correlated with how frequently they have been observed, which in turn is correlated with how likely they are to happen again.
Yes, and I was trying to make this description one level more concrete.
Things never happen the exact same way twice. The way that past observations are correlated with what may happen again is complicated—in a way, that’s exactly what “concepts” capture.
So we don’t just recall something that happened and predict that it will happen again. Rather, we compose a prediction based on an integration of bits and patches from past experiences. Recalling these bits and patches as relevant for the context of the prediction—and of each other—is a complicated task, and I propose that an “internal availability” mechanism is needed to perform it.
I’m still unsure of what you’re actually saying. Perhaps you’re talking about some sort of a “plausibility heuristic”, where we look for instances of something in our model of the world, not just our experiences. That seems trivial, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing (I would prefer to see more stuff here that seems really obvious to people, because those few times it’s not obvious to everyone tend to be very valuable). If you’re saying something else, I’m still not getting it.
Take for example your analysis of the poker hand I partially described. You give 3 possibilities for what the truth of it may be. Are there any other possibilities? Maybe the player is bluffing to gain the reputation of a bluffer? Maybe she mistook a 4 for an ace (it happened to me once...)? Maybe aliens hijacked her brain?
It would be impossible to enumerate or notice all the possibilities, but fortunately we don’t have to. We make only the most likely and important ones available.
It really depends on what the flop was. All in implies either a desperate player who’s either bluffing (~30% of the time the player is desperate in my experience) or who has a good hand (the remaining 70% of the time the player is desperate) or, if the player still has a good-sized stack/this is a cash game, the player is bluffing a fairly small amount of the time (not enough to justify going in with a Q-J). In fact, after missing the flop with Q-J off, I can’t think of any situation where I’d be likely to call a bet (well, unless there were a huge pot, but beyond that).
Poker analysis aside, I’m not quite sure what the point of this article was. If it was just saying that the availability heuristic is there for a reason and we should be careful about adjusting for it, I fully agree. If you were trying to say something more, I’m afraid I at least didn’t get that point.
I was trying to give a specific reason that the availability heuristic is there: it’s coupled with another mechanism that actually generates the availability; and then to say a few things about this other mechanism.
Does anyone have specific advice on how I could convey this better?
It seems obvious why the availability heuristic is there. The ease with which images, events and concepts come to mind is correlated with how frequently they have been observed, which in turn is correlated with how likely they are to happen again. So, the heuristic is a reasonably-good one which just happens to have some associated false positives.
Yes, and I was trying to make this description one level more concrete.
Things never happen the exact same way twice. The way that past observations are correlated with what may happen again is complicated—in a way, that’s exactly what “concepts” capture.
So we don’t just recall something that happened and predict that it will happen again. Rather, we compose a prediction based on an integration of bits and patches from past experiences. Recalling these bits and patches as relevant for the context of the prediction—and of each other—is a complicated task, and I propose that an “internal availability” mechanism is needed to perform it.
I’m still unsure of what you’re actually saying. Perhaps you’re talking about some sort of a “plausibility heuristic”, where we look for instances of something in our model of the world, not just our experiences. That seems trivial, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing (I would prefer to see more stuff here that seems really obvious to people, because those few times it’s not obvious to everyone tend to be very valuable). If you’re saying something else, I’m still not getting it.
Take for example your analysis of the poker hand I partially described. You give 3 possibilities for what the truth of it may be. Are there any other possibilities? Maybe the player is bluffing to gain the reputation of a bluffer? Maybe she mistook a 4 for an ace (it happened to me once...)? Maybe aliens hijacked her brain?
It would be impossible to enumerate or notice all the possibilities, but fortunately we don’t have to. We make only the most likely and important ones available.