I think one reason people end up using a minimax strategy is that it’s just easier to compute than EV-maximization.
But more importantly, it just feels like there’s no downsides—it’s free insurance!
If you want to have a convincing excuse however, you might actively impede your chances. (It might be possible to distance yourself from the excuse so the insurance is actually free, but I think this is unlikely/hard.)
If you’ve already hedged so hard that you’ve bet a lot against yourself, you might have sufficiently changed the payoffs to make losing rational, especially if you also add a penalty to Being Mediocre. This is why post like this are needed.
I hope we haven’t forgotten Stuck in the Middle With Bruce and Soares’ Have No Excuses, which starts with a quote from Bonds That Make Us Free.
I think one reason people end up using a minimax strategy is that it’s just easier to compute than EV-maximization.
But more importantly, it just feels like there’s no downsides—it’s free insurance!
If you want to have a convincing excuse however, you might actively impede your chances. (It might be possible to distance yourself from the excuse so the insurance is actually free, but I think this is unlikely/hard.)
If you’ve already hedged so hard that you’ve bet a lot against yourself, you might have sufficiently changed the payoffs to make losing rational, especially if you also add a penalty to Being Mediocre. This is why post like this are needed.
Thanks for linking back to the Bruce piece—I remembered that it had made similar points, but I hadn’t understood it when I read it at 15.