Orestes Munn wrote:kdh wrote:Orestes Munn wrote:OK, there's "gambling," very broadly defined, and there's habitually taking astronomical sucker bets because it feels good.
Of course you're right. Sometimes I wonder if for the habitual gambler it's simply that the joy of winning more than makes up for the anguish of losing. Classic Tversky/Kahneman loss aversion says the opposite is usually true.
If I remember correctly, intermittent reward at the right frequency, increases dopamine release during the expectation phase and that's what keeps the gambler coming back. There is also some understanding of the physiology behind "chasing" losses, which I was never quite able to follow. The strange thing for me is that all of this stuff evolved to maximize survival in a partially predictable world, but it's so easy to fool.
I get the dopamine release. Mother Nature had to deliver a reward for risk taking to force the species to undertake low probability exercises with associates risks such as hunting.
The chasing losses comes from believing the "odds will catch up" and failure to understand independent experiments. Yes, a coin toss result is a 50-50 event but after 3 heads in a row, the probability of heads on the 4th trial is still exactly 50%. Or, to put it in lottery terms, each ticket is in 30 million or so. Buying a ticket a week doesn't change that. Buying 10 tickets in one week increases the odds all the way to 1 in 3 million, still tiny odds but with a 1 in 20 or so chance of a $3 payout, the seller can trigger a dopamine release for a losing proposition (spend 20. Win 3, ensuring the stooge will play again.
Then again, dropping $2 on a $100m jackpot once in a while is harmless fun. It's the poor folks dropping their paycheck every week on that sucker bet that is both dangerous and a tax on the poor.