What Are The Chances?
* From “The A**HOLE’S Guide To Arguing (Or, How To Succeed In Politics)”
If you have lost an odd bet on the roulette wheel five times in a row, you may be tempted to keep on playing, thinking that,
“Statistically, the run of even numbers has to end soon, as the average is 50/50 on odd and even numbers. So if I just keep on playing the odd bet, I will eventually win.”
Here you would be making a bad decision based upon the gambler’s fallacy. Although the statistics are correct, you could easily lose all your money before the run of even numbers ends.
Even if you are not fond of gambling, you have likely thought at some point that your luck is about to change. As in this example:
“I can feel it. This job is mine. After all, what are the chances that I’ll be turned down twenty-one times in a row? This has got to be it.”
If you have applied to twenty jobs, and been turned down every time, you may find yourself thinking that this bad luck has to end soon. And that you are due for a ‘Yes, you are hired’, instead of a ‘Sorry, but we have hired someone else’.
Only, it does not work that way. At least not if your CV shows that your last job was at the Fu King Chinese Restaurant, and you listed your former boss Dum Gai as a reference.
If potential employers think you are joking, you could be applying for hundreds of jobs and still not get hired. Luck has got nothing to do with it. Neither does luck change based upon what has happened before. Share on X
“Yeah, I know we’ve lost a few battles. But if we just keep at it then sooner or later we will win. We just got to up the ante and have a little faith.”
In the first example, someone could end up losing all their money. In the second, the person may never get a job. Here, someone will get killed. That is what happens in a war, and if you find yourself arguing from the gambler’s fallacy here, then you are gambling with someone’s life.
If you are a warmongering asshole you may just get people to believe you, and agree to send more troops, to fight more battles and lose more lives.
If you are not a warmongering asshole, but you hear one using the gambler’s fallacy to this end – point it out.
© Merlyn Gabriel Miller
