Plenty of libertarians understand that some percentage of the population will degenerate when given limitless opportunities to do so. Though they usually don’t have an answer for what to do with the resulting millions of semi-deranged adults other than isolation/prison/etc...
It’s more the speed and extent that it has occurred within a short time is probably what’s surprising.
Most people don’t have very fixed ideas about how much a 28% overall increase in bankruptcy happens to be.
If you would ask most people without a libertarian outlook to rank different factors that lead to an increase in bankruptcy, I would not expect them to be able to accurately compare them and find that sports online gambling only will have such a strong influence.
Sure, but people in general are really bad at that kind of precise quantitative world-knowledge. They have pretty weak priors and a mostly-anecdotes-and-gut-feeling-informed negative opinion of gambling, such that when presented with the 28% percent increase in bankruptcy study they go “ok sure that’s compatible with my worldview” instead of being surprised and taking the evidence as a big update.
Yes, most people are generally bad at updating. That has nothing to do with whether or not someone is a libertarian.
The reason Zvi is surprised comes downstream of numerical literacy and not downstream of him being libertarian-leaning.
28% percent increase suggests that more than one in five go bankrupt because of sports online gambling (which would be a subset of gambling in general).
If I ask Claude for the top five reasons people go bankrupt in the US in 2023 I get:
1. Medical Debt
2. Job Loss/Income Reduction
3. Credit Card/Consumer Debt
4. Divorce/Family Issues
5. Housing Market Issues/Mortgage Debt
ChatGPT gives me:
Loss of Income
Medical Expenses
Unaffordable Mortgages or Foreclosures
Overspending and Credit Card Debt
Providing Financial Assistance to Others
I think Claude and ChatGPT do summarize the common wisdom about what normal people believe about what the most important factors for bankruptcy happen to be and that does not include gambling (let alone sports online gambling specifically). If you ask a normal person for the top five reasons they would likely come up with a similar list that does not mention sports online betting.
Of course some of those can be influenced by gambling, eg it is a type of overspending. Even so, Claude estimated that legalized online gambling would raise the bankruptcy rate by 2-3% and agreed that 28% is surprising.
Yes, I think an unusually numerate and well-informed person will be surprised by the 28% figure regardless of political orientation. How surprised that kind of person is by the broader result of “hey looks like legalizing mobile sports betting was a bad idea” I expect to be somewhat moderated by political priors though.
I suspect that most people whose priors have not been shaped by a libertarian outlook are not very surprised by the outcome of this experiment.
Plenty of libertarians understand that some percentage of the population will degenerate when given limitless opportunities to do so. Though they usually don’t have an answer for what to do with the resulting millions of semi-deranged adults other than isolation/prison/etc...
It’s more the speed and extent that it has occurred within a short time is probably what’s surprising.
Most people don’t have very fixed ideas about how much a 28% overall increase in bankruptcy happens to be.
If you would ask most people without a libertarian outlook to rank different factors that lead to an increase in bankruptcy, I would not expect them to be able to accurately compare them and find that sports online gambling only will have such a strong influence.
Sure, but people in general are really bad at that kind of precise quantitative world-knowledge. They have pretty weak priors and a mostly-anecdotes-and-gut-feeling-informed negative opinion of gambling, such that when presented with the 28% percent increase in bankruptcy study they go “ok sure that’s compatible with my worldview” instead of being surprised and taking the evidence as a big update.
Yes, most people are generally bad at updating. That has nothing to do with whether or not someone is a libertarian.
The reason Zvi is surprised comes downstream of numerical literacy and not downstream of him being libertarian-leaning.
28% percent increase suggests that more than one in five go bankrupt because of sports online gambling (which would be a subset of gambling in general).
If I ask Claude for the top five reasons people go bankrupt in the US in 2023 I get:
ChatGPT gives me:
I think Claude and ChatGPT do summarize the common wisdom about what normal people believe about what the most important factors for bankruptcy happen to be and that does not include gambling (let alone sports online gambling specifically). If you ask a normal person for the top five reasons they would likely come up with a similar list that does not mention sports online betting.
Of course some of those can be influenced by gambling, eg it is a type of overspending. Even so, Claude estimated that legalized online gambling would raise the bankruptcy rate by 2-3% and agreed that 28% is surprising.
Yes, I think an unusually numerate and well-informed person will be surprised by the 28% figure regardless of political orientation. How surprised that kind of person is by the broader result of “hey looks like legalizing mobile sports betting was a bad idea” I expect to be somewhat moderated by political priors though.