it be otherwise?

 

Let us consider some foolish gambling decisions. In lotteries, the play is much

lower when numbers are distributed randomly than it is when the player picks his

own number. This is quite irrational. The odds are almost exactly the same and

much against the player. Because state lotteries take advantage of man’s

irrational love of self- picked numbers, modern man buys more lottery tickets

than he otherwise would have, with each purchase foolish.

 

Intensify man’s love of his own conclusions by adding the possessory wallop from

the “endowment effect,” and you will find that a man who has already bought a

pork-belly future on a commodity exchange now foolishly believes, even more

strongly than before, in the merits of his speculative bet.

 

And foolish sports betting, by people who love sports and think they know a lot

about relative merits of teams, is a lot more addictive than race track

betting—partly because of man’s automatic overappraisal of his own complicated

conclusions.

 

Also extremely counterproductive is man’s tendency to bet, time after time, in

games of skill, like golf or poker, against people who are obviously much better

players. Excessive Self-Regard Tendency diminishes the foolish bettor’s accuracy

in appraising his relative degree of talent.

 

More counterproductive yet are man’s appraisals, typically excessive, of the