How your brain decides between knowledge and ignorance
We have a 'thirst for knowledge' but sometime 'ignorance is bliss', so how do we choose between these two mind states at any given time?
Jun 25, 2018
2
1242
We have a 'thirst for knowledge' but sometime 'ignorance is bliss', so how do we choose between these two mind states at any given time?
Jun 25, 2018
2
1242
Neuroscientists have uncovered a key brain area in rats that encodes the value of economic choices when faced with the uncertainty of a lottery. This is the first time the causal role of frontal and parietal cortex has been ...
Oct 19, 2023
0
17
Would you be more willing to get vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus if you could participate in a lottery for cash and prizes? The answer was surprisingly no, according to Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) researchers ...
Jul 2, 2021
0
11
A pair of researchers, one with the University of Bonn, the other Harvard University, has found that altruism may not make people as happy as prior studies have suggested. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National ...
Sixty years ago last week, New Hampshire became the first U.S. state to allow a government-run lottery following a nationwide ban of lotteries in 1895. Why did Americans grow to disfavor the lottery then? Moreover, considering ...
Mar 26, 2024
0
0
Sometimes referred to as the "crack cocaine of gambling," electronic gaming machines (EGMs) such as slot machines allow bets to be placed as quickly as once every 2.5 seconds, delivering a rapid and immersive gambling experience. ...
Sep 25, 2023
0
1
(HealthDay)—Although some U.S. states put up big amounts of cash to influence residents to get their COVID-19 vaccinations, it didn't appear to make much any difference in immunization rates.
Jan 7, 2022
0
3
The use of cash lotteries to boost COVID-19 vaccination rates were not effective, according to a new study from UO economist Ben Hansen and researchers from Bentley University, the University of Colorado Denver and San Diego ...
Nov 23, 2021
0
2
(HealthDay)—A shot at winning $1 million did nothing to budge the number of people who got the COVID-19 jab.
Oct 15, 2021
1
2
A weighted "lottery" designed to increase access to the antiviral drug remdesivir during the May-July 2020 COVID-19 surge for those most affected by the coronavirus, including members of the Black, Latinx and indigenous communities, ...
May 16, 2021
0
3
A lottery is a form of gambling which involves the drawing of lots for a prize.
Lottery is outlawed by some governments, while others endorse it to the extent of organizing a national or state lottery. It is common to find some degree of regulation of lottery by governments. At the beginning of the 20th century, most forms of gambling, including lotteries and sweepstakes, were illegal in many countries, including the U.S.A. and most of Europe. This remained so until after World War II. In the 1960s casinos and lotteries began to appear throughout the world as a means to raise revenue in addition to taxes.
Lotteries come in many formats. For example, the prize can be a fixed amount of cash or goods. In this format there is risk to the organizer if insufficient tickets are sold. More commonly the prize fund will be a fixed percentage of the receipts. A popular form of this is the "50–50" draw where the organizers promise that the prize will be 50% of the revenue.[citation needed] Many recent lotteries allow purchasers to select the numbers on the lottery ticket, resulting in the possibility of multiple winners.
The purchase of lottery tickets cannot be accounted for by decision models based on expected value maximization. The reason is that lottery tickets cost more than the expected gain, so one maximizing expected value should not buy lottery tickets. Yet, lottery purchases can be explained by decision models based on expected utility maximization, as the curvature of the utility function can be adjusted to capture risk-seeking behavior. More general models based on utility functions defined on things other than the lottery outcomes can also account for lottery purchase. In addition to the lottery prizes, the ticket may enable some purchasers to experience a thrill and to indulge in a fantasy of becoming wealthy. If the entertainment value (or other non-monetary value) obtained by playing is high enough for a given individual, then the purchase of a lottery ticket could represent a gain in overall utility. In such a case, the disutility of a monetary loss could be outweighed by the combined expected utility of monetary and non-monetary gain, thus making the purchase a rational decision for that individual.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA