EP 84 — Brett Abarbanel, PhD, on the Illusion of Control
Highlights
- The Many Faces of Gambling
Key takeaways:
- Gambling is a risk that is uncertain, and it can be found in many different aspects of life.
- Dan thinks about gambling differently than most people, because he sees it as a way to have fun.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
It also might be no. You know, some people might think about this and say, yeah, but whatever. I mean, it's this golden world of Warcraft who cares, right? It's so there's the eat-ups various answers. And are there other instances where this starts to exist in everyday life where you have a chance mechanism? Is that gambling? And as it turns out, many of our most familiar elements and activities in life, right? So especially those that we think of as games use some sort of element of gambling. And then depending on how you define gambling, I can make a case and I do regularly that you gamble in pretty much every single decision that you make in your life. But you, Dan, right? You think about gambling differently than I do. We both think about gambling differently than every other person who would be listening to this podcast because the nature and nurture that that brought you where you are today influences the lens through which you do everything in the world, right? This is how we are unique as humans. So you think about gambling differently because you, you know, little told muddic levity here, right? You don't see things as they are. You see them as you are. And that's kind of the theme that always tends to come up when I talk about this. Because the when you think about what gambling is from a general social perspective, it can be a pretty specific thing in terms of definition, but that definition is super broad. So I like to give the following definition. Gambling is risking something of value on an outcome that's uncertain.
Speaker 2
So you said, we're gambling in basically all of the decisions we make that there's some element of chance in all of the decisions that we make. (Time 0:08:33)
- The Different Perspectives of Gambling
Key takeaways:
- Gambling is a risk that is taken in order to gain something of value.
- The cost to participate in a gambling activity is always defined as money or money's worth.
- Every jurisdiction around the world has a different definition of what constitutes as gambling.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Yeah. And I think that that's an important thing to consider because, again, you know, I'm talking about this in terms of gambling. Tons of people in life would never define as as gambling. It would be risk taken. And I think that a big part of this is just sort of this difference between social and legal definitions of gambling. So much of how we view gambling as people is based on how they're legally defined, right, how gambles are legally defined. So let me just run through that super briefly. Because I think that also helps frame this in terms of how people think about it. So there's three elements that are pretty much all part of the legal definition of gambling, and pretty much every jurisdiction around the world, the amount of weight put on each of these three is a little different everywhere you go. But that all three are pretty much always present. So the first is the concept of consideration. So this is the cost to participate, right? What do you have to anti to be part of this gamble? Now, almost everywhere you go around the world, this is very specifically defined as money or money's worth. So there has to be some sort of monetary value attached to it. So what's money's worth to you that, right? It's probably different than what money's worth is to me, it's probably different to a whole variety of other folks, right? (Time 0:13:20)