Comments on: Luck Pessimism

By: Ben Albahari

Ben Albahari — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 22:12:07 +0000

I wonder if the subjects are being rational, in the sense that they’re avoiding the ludic fallacy:
http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/LudicFallacy.pdf

Within the rules of the games, yes, they’ll win 5, but this exact game they’ve never played, and more importantly never played with the experimenter, who they cannot 100% trust. So the subjects are just rationally injecting real-world experience or street-smarts into their assessment. I recall an example from when I was 6 years old. I bet a marble with this kid, and I won. Was the game over? Well in a sense, no. The kid cried to teacher, who forced me to give him the marble back. Similarly, if the experimenters don’t value the keeping of one’s word then they could give the subjects $0 regardless.

P.S. (On OB what’s the procedure when you have a new idea about an old post. Is it worth commenting on?)

By: Benja Fallenstein

Benja Fallenstein — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 21:48:57 +0000

Jay, Carl, Weldon [the "good luck attributed to skill, therefore people think they have bad luck" faction]: I think I'd buy your explanation if it turned out that the majority of the subjects really try to come up with an estimate based on experience (if somebody came up with a clever way to test for it), but the way I'm imagining the situation, it seems much more likely to me that most subjects confabulate an answer that feels right. Maybe it's because I don't have enough experience with games of luck to form an opinion based on that, and therefore imagine average people don't either? -- On the other hand, I like to play Tali (a Yahtzee-clone) on the computer, trying to beat my own highscores (of all the silly ways to waste time, this must occupy a special place), and I pay attention to the order of types in Tetris, and in both cases I actually get the feeling (not being taken seriously, don't worry) of being lucky above chance; and still I can see myself answering <5 in the study more easily than answering >5. Dagon's (and Wagster's) position hits closer to my intuitions, for what that's worth...

By: valentina

valentina — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 00:00:19 +0000

Isn’t this related to risk-aversion somehow?

By: Weldon Johnson

Weldon Johnson — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 13:19:42 +0000

As a poker player, the results don’t surprise me given how the question was phrased. People like to credit good luck to skill and mistakes to bad luck, which is made especially obvious in poker. This leads to a large lucky/unlucky imbalance when people are asked to make an estimate “according to his/her experience and his/her luck”.

If you polled professional players whose income relies on knowledge of probabilities and who have seen hundreds of losing players exhibit this bias, and you asked them if their luck has been worse or better than average, I’m sure (and based on my small-sample-sized experience) the vast majority would say they’ve been unlucky. If people with this much education and awareness regarding this bias are still prone, your average person is hopeless.

As a player, I am grateful on whole for this bias. The fact that luck is often the determining factor in poker short term allows this bias to enable massive self delusion regarding one’s skill level. Luck is the perfect scape goat. It can also help people to quit however, as often they get convinced they are permanently unlucky in poker and use this as their reason to stop playing.

By: John Maxwell

John Maxwell — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 03:58:50 +0000

long time to develop. Sorry about the broken comment.

By: John Maxwell

John Maxwell — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 03:57:09 +0000

Like the epsilon-delta definition of a limit, the theory of expected value took a long time to develop.

By: Wagster

Wagster — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 14:09:21 +0000

I think Dagon is right. My suspicion is that social circumstances are overwhelming rational estimation. If this same question were asked in written form or through a computer terminal, I suspect the pessimism effect would diminish or disappear. Note that the effect was more predominant in women, who are more socially aware.

By: Mikko

Mikko — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 10:28:47 +0000

Silas: Perhaps you tend to rely on wrong authorities on various subjects?

By: Eliezer Yudkowsky

Eliezer Yudkowsky — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 07:38:04 +0000

You. Do. Not. Have. Bad. Luck.

The concept of “bad luck” requires there to be an ontologically basic mental thing called “luck”. Now we all know by now that’s not allowed.

What does that leave? Well, there’s an old saying: “You are the only common denominator in all your failed relationships.” Or you could just be reading too much into chance. Take your pick.

By: Silas

Silas — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 03:25:09 +0000

I’ve recently come to the conclusion that my bad luck is a real phenomenon. I decided that after about the 100th occurrence of this exact template:

Me: I have problem X.
People experienced with X: Oh, that’s easy! You just have to do Y.
Me: *does Y, catastrophically backfires several times over*
Me: Um, hey people, I did Y and let me tell you what happened…
People experienced with X: No. No. No way. There is no way that could have possibly happened. We defy the data.
*after audit of my experience*
People: Holy ****! You just got a bad draw there! Well, once in a blue moon something like that happens, just gotta ignore it and move on…
Me: !!!

So, am I off-base in drawing the inference I did? It’s part of why I seriously considered popping the oil bubble and ending the food riots this summer by going long on oil… Good thing I didn’t go through with it or I’d be thoroughly convinced I had magic powers.

Actually, maybe I should call up these researchers, answer their question, and then tell them to go through with the coin tosses where I benefit on heads, and see what the average turns out to be…