Commentary by Terry Anker
We are all, mostly, well-educated and thoughtful adults, trained to think instead of allowing our baser instincts to control our decision making. It is mostly our good fortune to have been deposited onto this world with the many advantages bestowed upon us by our progenitors. Included in them is the accumulation and sharing of knowledge, the strong desire to pass that information on generationally, and an innate sense of skepticism that provokes us toward constant improvement.
Still, we humans are a hopeful and romantic lot. We like to imagine that we know things that we cannot possibly know. We boast of our insight where other evidence appears to make us foolish. Our popular culture is swamped with scores of famous, seemingly intelligent faces extolling the virtue of one gambling platform after another. Scratch this to win. Bet on this game to solve your financial problems. These slot machines pay out to you. It is all very appealing. Who wouldn’t like to outsmart the house?
Most of us learn basic probability theory somewhere around age 16. Yet we continue to cling to the notion that a penny flipped showing heads 10 times in a row must show tails on the next toss. Of course, each toss is its own and there is no burden on the copper disk to deliver our desired outcome. The systems are designed to take advantage of this flaw in human awareness. We know that games of chance do not favor the player. Yet somehow, we imagine ourselves to be exempt from the standard.
Confidence in our own abilities is essential to our success. But do we challenge our assumptions aggressively enough to avoid self-deceit? Do we fully consider the limitations of our aspirations or are we satisfied to concentrate only on the aspired, self-satisfying outcome?
