{Reason in Science [continued (3)]}[13th September 1989]

[Redbook6:250-252][19890913:0927c]{Reason in Science [continued (3)]}[13th September 1989] 

19890913.0927

[continued]

I am not a card player, but I think in the 3rd column* the key is the word ‘responsibility’.  I find it hard to believe that the players are not aware of the elementary facts of the game, ie prior sight of cards etc; therefore presumably they mean not decision-making responsibility but determining responsibility.  This is responsibility in the sense ‘cause’ rather than ‘moral liability’, and is arguably incorrect; but the experimenters (if my analysis is correct) should have allowed for it.**

Quite independently of this a ‘bad’ player* can ruin a game of pure chance for the other players in all sorts of ways: by not knowing the rules, for example, so that the game is interrupted; by not observing them; by distracting everyone else.


*[of the review photocopied into the ms at p250 – see last previous entry]
’Willem Wagenaar studied seasoned gamblers playing in a Dutch casino. Their behaviour was wholly irrational, given that they all claimed they wanted to win. There is a simple strategy in blackjack that limits the average losses on money staked to a mere 0.4 per cent. None of the hundred or so players he investigated used this strategy; their average losses were seven times as great (2.9 per cent). One option, available only when the dealer is showing an ace, loses the player on average 7.7 per cent. Despite its disastrous consequences more than half the players used it, presumably because they were misled by its attractive-sounding name, “Insurance”. The beliefs of the players were as irrational as their actions. For example, it was commonly held that in playing blackjack a “bad” player could ruin the game, although all that actually matters is the hand of the individual player and that of the dealer.  Even more extraordinary, players thought that the player who received cards immediately before the dealer bore a heavy responsibility: he or she could either draw a bad card that would otherwise have gone to the dealer or draw a good card thus keeping it from the dealer.  There is, of course, no conceivable way in which that player could know what the next card would be and hence decide whether to draw or not.’ 
[– Review: Rational views of irrationalists, Stuart Sutherland, New Scientist, 09091989]

**[Also perhaps the gamblers wanted to win, and win big, not minimise their losses which might not have seemed particularly interesting. But the writer of this fn is not a gambler, so finds it hard to understand the motivation: a rational animal would perhaps not gamble at all, let alone against the house, so to expect rationality in doing so would seem a trifle perverse.]

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