Did you have few enough bills in your wallet that you could immediately and accurately apprehend how many there were? If not, then there were enough that you didn’t know how many there were, and that $1 was one that might as well have not been there according to your initial coarse perception.
I think this works if the $1 represents an extra bill that you didn’t know was in there, but not if you looked more closely at a specific bill and were happy to realize that it was a $1.
How about this, then: if I don’t have any ones in my purse, this is because I have spent them on things already (since in the past, my purse has contained singles, and that is the typical method by which they depart). Assuming I really want the M&Ms, I might resent the fact that I made other spending choices in the past that caused the lack of ones. Finding the one is news that I did not make (all of) those resented choices.
Did you have few enough bills in your wallet that you could immediately and accurately apprehend how many there were? If not, then there were enough that you didn’t know how many there were, and that $1 was one that might as well have not been there according to your initial coarse perception.
I think this works if the $1 represents an extra bill that you didn’t know was in there, but not if you looked more closely at a specific bill and were happy to realize that it was a $1.
How about this, then: if I don’t have any ones in my purse, this is because I have spent them on things already (since in the past, my purse has contained singles, and that is the typical method by which they depart). Assuming I really want the M&Ms, I might resent the fact that I made other spending choices in the past that caused the lack of ones. Finding the one is news that I did not make (all of) those resented choices.
It seems to me that the problem is self-contained, and doesn’t depend on past purchases. Am I missing something?