In case you are not a long-time reader, I will repeat my advice as to how to enjoy the thrill of the lottery without the fool’s bet. Choose your numbers, but don’t buy a ticket. You’ll win almost every week — the fear that your number might actually come up is an adrenaline rush to beat them all.
From his Undercover Economist advice column. Another example of the same thing: If (first) I buy and use Product A and then (second) see a commercial for Product A it makes me happy. Whereas the conventional order — (first) see a commercial for Product A) and then (second) buy and use Product A — is generally disappointing, just like the lottery.
Both Hartford’s example and mine are cases where what we are told (implicitly) is exactly wrong. Does buying a lottery ticket make you happy? No, not buying one will make you happy.
In Hartford’s example and mine it is the average consumer who is gullible and makes the whole thing work — without people who play the lottery, you couldn’t take Hartford’s advice. Scientists are no less gullible. Self-experimentation, like Hartford’s advice, takes advantage of that gullibility. Because scientists essentially play the lottery in their research — devote considerable resources (their careers) to looking for discoveries in one specific way (scientists are hemmed in by many rules, which also slow them down) — this leaves a great deal to be discovered by research that doesn’t cost a lot and can be done quickly. All of my interesting self-experimental discoveries have involved treatments that conventional scientists couldn’t study because their research has to be expensive. Could a conventional scientist study the effect of seeing faces in the morning? No, because you couldn’t get funding. And all research must require funding. (Research without funding is low status.) In practice, this means you can’t take risks and you can’t do very much. Like the lottery, this is a poor bet.
I shudder just thinking about this. Roughly once a month, I succumb to temptation and buy a pair of lottery tickets. $20 a year is a bargain for the chance to speculate what I’ll do with my winnings. Playing the lottery without the ticket? Sheer terror.
Re purchasing a product first: not sure how it’s related. After all, aren’t you just as likely to purchase product A, discover it’s a piece of crap, and then get pissed off every time you see a commercial for it?
Conversely, I get enormous satisfaction from targeted advertising that actually offers me services and products I find valuable. For instance, a number of top tech blogs so consistently feature useful advertisers, I’ll browse the ads intentionally. Similarly, but to a lesser degree, the advertisers on HARO have become the main reason I open Shankman’s daily emails.
P.S. I hate to say it, but the Google Ads here were sorely disappointing…
“Is your kitchen floor clean enough to eat off of? Try it and see!”
– Linda Barry