Fallacy: An Analytical Approach To The Gambler's Fallacy

Pascal’s Wager has been argued to be impractical because our beliefs are often not in our control. This argument is

Donnelly begins his presentation with a thought experiment involving the tossing of a coin and predicts the possibility of a certain series of results. When predicting the possibility of heads, tails, heads (HTH) or heads, tails, tails (HTT), I, like most of the audience, believed that the chance of either possibility was equal. However, I did not take into account the possibility of overlap and how HTH was more like to be achieved in an overlap. I also did not catch that the HTH could appear in clumps because of the overlapping (the third "H" in HTH is also the first "H" in the next HTH). There was also the

To test just exactly how E.S.P. worked, he created an experiment with Zener cards, which had one of a total 5 pictures on each of them. Rhine would draw a card form the deck and ask the subject to guess what picture was on the card. Out of the many subjects tested, most guessed only about 20% of the cards correct, but one young man averaged about 50% correct. This young man, Adam Linzmayer, would even guess up to 9 cards in a row, which was almost a one in a million chance—he did it three times. Rhine became overly excited of his findings on his belief in E.S.P. and wanted to publish the results. But upon his replication of the experiment, Linzmayer’s success rate of guessing the drawn cards greatly decreased (Lehrer, para. 12-13). This decline effect could possible be due to regressive fallacy, which is the inability to account natural and unavoidable fluctuations in experiments. For example, things like stock market prices and chronic back pain unavoidably fluctuate between prosperous and well-feeling times to poor and pain-filled times. By setting aside the idea of natural and unavoidable fluctuations, one can ultimately fall into self-deception and into post hoc

From this, Pascal’s argument is unsound and to support this claim, this paper will explain and evaluate Pascal’s Wager argument using the

RCP literature also cites that persons who are depressed, anxious and/or have bipolar affective disorder are also more likely to become gamblers. Chrysalis highlights

In some ways, I felt that Weiten and McCann (2009) should have relied on a more technical term to describe this “fallacy”, since it appears to be based on the premise of gambling as a way to create interest in the reader/student (p.360). In this manner, the presentation of this theory is centered around the wins or losses of a gambler, instead of focusing more on the cognitive mindset of the individual that makes these mistakes in the thinking process. At the beginning of the chapter, I found the theory of “babbling” to be interesting, but the continued focus on cultural terms in the Gambler’s Fallacy seems a bit overdone. However, the Gambler’s Fallacy did remind me of the many times when a friend of mine would continue to lose their money at the casino, yet how they always thought that they would “win big” if they just keep trying. This was, yet again, another fascinating aspect of the thinking process, which will definitely help me to understand the randomness of events, which human beings tends to wrongfully rationalize as achieving a “balancing effect” over time.

One of humanity's oldest pastimes, gambling has been around for thousands of years. Considered to have divine beginnings, man cast sticks in an attempt to learn of their future, their fate, and the will of their gods. It was only fitting that the next step was speculation on what a throw would bring, thus, the game of chance, or gambling, was born. However, European history is peppered with attempts to ban it, and still it prevailed. Eventually, winning approval by governments in the fifteenth century, gambling was used to raise money, probably to fund public buildings, roadways, and such. Easy accessible, gambling has become a psychological habit for many, and deemed a cognitive disorder in the 80s and 90s (Glimne, 2015).

Although I lost $10 during the investigation I am still pleased with my predicted loss before buying the tickets. With room for a few math errors here and there, my expected loss and my actual loss was only $1.50 off the mark. Since my results were only $1.50 off I can reject the null hypothesis that probability will not help increase my chances profiting in a scratch-off game. When I calculate the probability of a scratch-off game, I can simply adjust a few variable until I predict a profit. Another thing we have to remember that this is still a gambling, nothing is really guaranteed. Continuing, one variable I wanted to change was the games I played. If I were to do things differently I would play a $2 game. The $2 dollar games had greater

What is the issue is how the gambler bets as in how often and by how much. For example, many gamblers believe they can predict the future because it gives them an illusion of control over what is essentially a game of chance. It also leads gamblers to believe they can exert some sort of skill over their games of chance, such as table players believing they can influence the dice, or hockey gamblers carrying a lucky item with them.

With the utilitarian ethics, gambling can be moral once it makes people happy inside. Once the good outweighs the bad, the situation can be moral. So depending on if a person is losing more money when gambling, it would be immoral pursuant to the utilitarian ethics and moral when the person is winning more money when

But what media outlets have failed to acknowledge is that not all people are problem gamblers. Its as if a study on alcoholism has been completed yet neglecting the effect of fine wines.

Within certain environments such as casinos or betting houses, it is not uncommon to see individuals choose sub-optimally, meaning individuals will often choose options that offer a high reinforcement outcome but with a lower probability of it occurring than a safer choice that would offer less reinforcement but more reliably. In animals, it would be expected not to see this behaviour, for instance, optimal foraging theory (Pyke, 1984) argues that an animal 's ability forage ultimately effects there overall evolutionary fitness in terms of ability to survive and the ability for the genes to be passed on. Therefore, choosing risky behaviour would ultimately be a deficit to their survival. However rather Paradoxically, animals do indulge in very similar gambling behaviours to that seen in humans (Stagner & Zentall, 2010).

The Gambler's fallacy, also known as the Monte Carlo fallacy (because its most famous example happened in a Monte Carlo Casino in 1913)[1] . Also referred to as the fallacy of the maturity of chances, which is the belief that if deviations from expected behaviour are observed in repeated independent trials of some random process, future deviations in the opposite direction are then more likely. For example, if a fair coin is tossed repeatedly and tails comes up a larger number of times than is expected, a gambler may incorrectly believe that this means that heads is more likely in future tosses.[2] . Such an expectation could be mistakenly referred to as being due, and it probably arises from

Among the men, majority of the problem gamblers claimed they had poor psychological health, while majority of the female problem gamblers claimed they had good psychological health. One argument could be that the problem gamblers use gambling to deal with their stress, so they feel like they have a good psychological health. However, if applying the functionalist theory this argument would be weak since the functionalist theory says that the act of deviance is a sign that the person is discontent with something, or unable to reach the goals set up to society. If the functionalist theory was correct, that women are under more stress leading them to gamble more, then they would state that there psychological health is poor, because they would be discontent with something. It is also important to remember that this is what the problem gamblers claim themselves, and some of them may not want to admit how they really are doing

Chance is one thing we lack control over. No matter how smart or skilled we are, it will not make us any luckier. The Oxford dictionary defines gambling as ‘a risky action undertaken with the hope of success’. Gambling can be a serious issue to and have many negative effects especially when someone loses control. Pathological gambling is being unable to resist impulses to gamble, which can lead to severe personal or social consequences (Vorvick, 2012). A study conducted in 2015 by Horsely et al. (will be referred to as the current/present study from here on out to prevent confusion) investigates the use of partial reinforcement in gambling and how high frequency gamblers react compared to those who do not gamble as often. Partial reinforcement produces behaviour that is learned slower but is more resistant to extinction (the reduction of frequency in gambling because of being elicited repetitively without reinforcement) (Passer & Smith, 2015). The current study starts off by quoting reputable American Psychologist B. F. Skinner’s argument that ‘compulsive betting is a function of the variable-ratio reinforcement schedules that are encountered during gambling and that persistent gambling during periods where you are not winning, reflects resistance to stop gambling (Horsley, Osborne, Norman & Wells, 2012). A variable-ratio schedule is reinforcement given after a certain amount of responses (Passer & Smith, 2015), for example a one dollar scratch it card’s odds of winning could be one in four stating that on average if you buy four scratch it cards you should win at least once. The study predicts that stubborn gamblers should be more "sensitive" to partial reinforcement and show greater resistance to extinction or stopping. There is little direct evidence that persistent gamblers respond differently to partial reinforcement than those that are low frequency gamblers. The present study will test this experimentally as to date this has never been proven.