Reminds me of Evaporative Cooling of Group Beliefs
Jonni
Karma: 70
It looks like you’re saying drug-induced discovery always turns out to be wrong when sobriety returns. I think this is a generalisation.
Psychoactive drugs induce atypical thinking patterns. Sometimes this causes people to have true insights that they would not have achieved sober. Sometimes people come to false conclusions, whether they’re on drugs or not.
A bird in the hand is indeed worth 2 in the bush.
The easiest example I’ve come across is:
If (1 ÷ 3 = 0.333...) and (0.999… ÷ 3 = 0.333...) then (1 = 0.999...).
They may do, but they are still missing many of the physical reactions one might have to genuinely being offered large sums of money—excitement, adrenalin etc—and these are bound to have some effect on people’s decision making processes.
Perhaps a way around this would be to conduct several thought experiments with a subject in one sitting, and tell them beforehand that ‘one of the offers in these thought experiments is real and you will receive what you choose—although you will not know which one until the end of the experiment’.
This would be a good way to induce their visceral reactions to the situation, and of course, disappointingly perhaps, a more modest-sum-involving thought experiment at the end could provide them with their dividend.
Also worth noting: Deal or No Deal (UK version) demonstrates the variety of reactions and strategies people have to this sort of proposition. The US version is just silly though :)
Survey: taken.