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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Realistically if a plumber has even heard of the word "rationalist" (s)he is probably an unusually smart plumber and will probably bother to keep track of whether (s)he loses or wins money on average, and might even realise that stocks have a better risk/reward profile than sports betting.

I feel this discussion is very detached from reality. Go to your local gambling venue and you will not find people who have read up on probability theory and rationality and are overconfident. You will find people who don't even know what the word rationality means and are close to innumerate. Learning a small amount of rationality is probably beyond their mental capability, but for those who could learn about concepts like probability and calibration it would probably be helpful. For example, they might learn to identify the gambler's fallacy and the inverse gambler's fallacy.

Just to disclaim: this comment is not intended to insult people who spend a lot of time and money gambling, I'm just pointing out the reality of the situation; often lack of education is to blame for the problems that these people go through.

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RobinHanson's avatar

If the plumber thinks to himself "I'm a rationalist", he may well be more likely to bet, because he thinks the usual advice to avoid betting is targeted at those irrational people.

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