sticks are stronger than carrots
i have been reading this book on-and-off. it has an interesting point in its beginning:
humans are much more loss-averse than gain-seeking. this is because in evolutionary times, it is cool if we see something to eat, but if there is, say, a snake lying on the path, we'd damn well be afraid of it. avoiding danger has to be dealt with always; feeding yourself can be done later.
for some reason this extends from "life-threatening stabby things" to "minor inconveniences".
with much thanks to mbrewer, i acquired a pair of these, and was talking with him about how to run in them. apparently toe-first running is better for you than heel-first, physical-fitness-wise - but thanks to modern running shoes, running heel-first is on a lower potential hill. the same goes for exercise in general, of course: people tend to balk at the effort required to do the thing that will make them healthier and happier.
not once but twice has the subject of lottery tickets come up in the past week. of course the discussion starts with "it's a tax on people who are bad at math", but i find the psychology interesting: i don't find abhorrent (silly, maybe, but not "omg never") the idea of purchasing a normal lottery ticket. but suppose there were a ticket which had a near-perfect chance of making you a dollar richer, and an infinitesimal chance of plunging you a million dollars into debt? i would never touch it.
this, i hypothesize, is because we internally evaluate linearly-scaling outcomes superlinearly - that is, any actual expected value is skewed by a big emotional response (to a lot of money prize/debt) in contrast to none (a dollar is nothing one way or the other). however, i have yet to see how this meshes with the previous loss-averse pattern...
humans are much more loss-averse than gain-seeking. this is because in evolutionary times, it is cool if we see something to eat, but if there is, say, a snake lying on the path, we'd damn well be afraid of it. avoiding danger has to be dealt with always; feeding yourself can be done later.
for some reason this extends from "life-threatening stabby things" to "minor inconveniences".
with much thanks to mbrewer, i acquired a pair of these, and was talking with him about how to run in them. apparently toe-first running is better for you than heel-first, physical-fitness-wise - but thanks to modern running shoes, running heel-first is on a lower potential hill. the same goes for exercise in general, of course: people tend to balk at the effort required to do the thing that will make them healthier and happier.
not once but twice has the subject of lottery tickets come up in the past week. of course the discussion starts with "it's a tax on people who are bad at math", but i find the psychology interesting: i don't find abhorrent (silly, maybe, but not "omg never") the idea of purchasing a normal lottery ticket. but suppose there were a ticket which had a near-perfect chance of making you a dollar richer, and an infinitesimal chance of plunging you a million dollars into debt? i would never touch it.
this, i hypothesize, is because we internally evaluate linearly-scaling outcomes superlinearly - that is, any actual expected value is skewed by a big emotional response (to a lot of money prize/debt) in contrast to none (a dollar is nothing one way or the other). however, i have yet to see how this meshes with the previous loss-averse pattern...