History and Rationality Lecture Series - Daniel Kahneman

[PavelSTL]

Every time I listen to Kahneman, there's alway something new and interesting, even if it's on the same topic and impromptu. The dude is amazing.

[HailLuzifer]

thx for the upload

[dmokhtar]

I fail to follow your logic.. could you elaborate a little more?

When I use the word Creation I refer to "the process of Life/Creation/Existence" if that changes anything...

There is a certain comfort in having known that there were two options avialable (albeit with different probabilities) and that Life led you to one of them as opposed to your choosing your own loss at your own hands.. I guess it would be similar to "commit suicide or risk a 90% capture/torture, 10% escape to safety".

[dmokhtar]

Lose 900 for sure or take a gamble on a 90% to lose $1000.

A factor as to people's choice of the latter is in the sense of comfort/satisfaction in knowing one's loss was a result of Creation /Fate's process and not by one's own choice of self-loss.

In other words, I choose the risk option because even if I lose, I feel comfort in knowing that I invested of myself in Creation's process, albeit Creation had me lose. The alternative is to not have "played" at all. נפלה נא ביד ה' כי רבים רחמיו

[noshenim]

@dmokhtar If the chance of losing is, by definition, 90%, then 'Creation' cannot play any role.

[dmokhtar]

@noshenim didn't follow.. could you elaborate a little more?

When I use the word Creation I refer to "the process of Life/Creation/Existence" if that changes anything...

There is a certain comfort in having known that there were two options avialable (albeit with different probabilities) and that Life led you to one of them as opposed to your choosing your own loss at your own hands.. I guess it would be similar to "commit suicide or risk a 90% capture/torture, 10% escape to safety".

[PavelSTL]

@dmokhtar The reason why YOU chose the risk option is irrelevant to the point. Kahneman's insight is that you DID make that choice. And I would too, although instead of having an imaginary story of Life and Creation in my head, I'd simply resort to my irrational hope of winning by chance. We all make up reasons why we prefer one option over the other, but the Kahneman's message is that we're internally driven to prefer one choice over another. The justfications come a posteriori.

[dmokhtar]

@PavelSTL

Are you saying that internal drives do not always have a logic to them? I beg to differ

I was not giving the reason why "I" would choose. I was giving the reason why the majority of human beings were found by scientific experiment to choose the 90% option. Have you a better explanation to this phenomena that Kahneman has pointed out?

[PavelSTL]

@dmokhtar I understand, but YOUR reason is just as good as "invisible men telling us what to choose". The "logic" behind "internal drives" is a function of a specific psychological model. There's no SCIENTIFIC good model that explains WHY we're biased towards the choice, and Kahneman makes that clear. All the evolutionary psychology speculations are interesting "just so" stories, but fairly useless. We simply don't know, and I have no "better" explanation than yours, but I can make one up :)

[dmokhtar]

@PavelSTL

Hi. For what it's worth, I was thinking about it further and there is another explanation possibly. Namely, that the person's ego just can't stand the thought of "losing" and therefore at all costs takes whatever chance possible to avoid "losing/rejection/failure" etc.

It could be we we're not really arguing on anything. I'm trying to offer an explanation to "Prospect Theory" and you're focusing just on the "what" of it.. anyway, thx for sharing, blessings