<story><title>Why people make dumb financial decisions on purpose</title><url>https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2022/08/why-people-make-dumb-financial-decision-on-purpose/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>horsawlarway</author><text>Expected value doesn&amp;#x27;t mean jack shit if the game can only be played once.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Expected value (also known as EV, expectation, average, or mean value) is a long-run average value of random variables.&lt;p&gt;If you can only press a button once - you should take the guaranteed money in almost all circumstances (assuming you have finances that look like most Americans - if you&amp;#x27;re already a millionaire... do what you want, this game doesn&amp;#x27;t matter much to you).&lt;p&gt;Basically - This is a dire misunderstanding of how statistics works in general.  The population &lt;i&gt;at large&lt;/i&gt; might be better off pressing the 50% at 50 million button (because then you are running this game many times and you will likely achieve the expected value) - but as an individual, who can only roll the dice once, you are much better off just taking the immediate and guaranteed win.&lt;p&gt;And that&amp;#x27;s not even accounting for the drop off in marginal value of each dollar as you accumulate them - that first million is &lt;i&gt;far&lt;/i&gt; more impactful than the next 49.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>UncleMeat</author><text>This is a key observation in more practical concerns like retirement planning. Often, maximizing expected value isn&amp;#x27;t actually what you want. For somebody with a comfortable retirement portfolio you care a lot more about not running out of money than ending up with a huge amount when you die. So you&amp;#x27;ll choose strategies that might have worse expected values but limit the frequency of worst case scenarios.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why people make dumb financial decisions on purpose</title><url>https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2022/08/why-people-make-dumb-financial-decision-on-purpose/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>horsawlarway</author><text>Expected value doesn&amp;#x27;t mean jack shit if the game can only be played once.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Expected value (also known as EV, expectation, average, or mean value) is a long-run average value of random variables.&lt;p&gt;If you can only press a button once - you should take the guaranteed money in almost all circumstances (assuming you have finances that look like most Americans - if you&amp;#x27;re already a millionaire... do what you want, this game doesn&amp;#x27;t matter much to you).&lt;p&gt;Basically - This is a dire misunderstanding of how statistics works in general.  The population &lt;i&gt;at large&lt;/i&gt; might be better off pressing the 50% at 50 million button (because then you are running this game many times and you will likely achieve the expected value) - but as an individual, who can only roll the dice once, you are much better off just taking the immediate and guaranteed win.&lt;p&gt;And that&amp;#x27;s not even accounting for the drop off in marginal value of each dollar as you accumulate them - that first million is &lt;i&gt;far&lt;/i&gt; more impactful than the next 49.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mrwh</author><text>Agreed.&lt;p&gt;And well, if &lt;i&gt;everyone&lt;/i&gt; played the game, then the population at large would still be better off taking the million. I can well imagine there being fewer social problems if we all get a million fun bucks versus half of us getting fifty million. But then that&amp;#x27;s a different effect kicking in.&lt;p&gt;Personally, a million would affect my life positively (I&amp;#x27;d buy a house), 50 million negatively (I&amp;#x27;d stop working).</text></comment>