Just Lose Hope Already

Excellent post. And very relevant, after Valentine's Day.

This reminds me of so many stories whose explicit moral is "never give up." The hero keeps trying after everyone told him to quit, and in the end he succeeds, and the audience comes out of the theater reaffirming the value of hope. But, in real life, what a terrible thing to teach people.

Good point. Robin's comment, and Eliezer's post, reminds me of this excellent article at The Situationist:

http://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2007/02/20/dispositionist-situational-characters/

"Never give up" is bad advice?

Probability of success if you continue: small. Probability of success if you give up: zero.

Small is better than zero, am I right?

On the other hand, this analysis only matters if the cost of failure is no worse than the cost of giving up. The "rational" thing to do would be to give up if and only if (probability of success utility of success) + (probability of failure utility of failure) < (utility of giving up).

There are a lot of things that one can achieve through sheer persistence, but there are others that, well, you can't do, period. The trick is to be able to tell the difference. I suspect that I'm not going to be a star athlete no matter how much I practice, but I just might qualify for the Pro Tour some day.

This behavior seems similar to that engaged in by gamblers who keep betting, despite heavy losses at the beginning of the night, figuring that if they stay in long enough they might be able to get their money back (and possibly more besides). In some respects, this behavior seems to be primarily motivated by the desire to have what you've already done "count for something". That is, the person is compelled to keep trying at whatever it is they're doing so as not to have to face the fact that they've wasted time and resources -- because if they "win" or succeed eventually, they can justify all prior attempts and failures as steps in the process toward eventual success.

I don't know what makes a person more or less likely to be vulnerable to engaging in that sort of behavior. But I think anyone wishing to avoid that sort of behavior would indeed do well to train themselves to learn to let go of a particular path or strategy. I'm guessing there's an element of "magical thinking" involved here, related to a fallacious sense that you accomplish things through repeating the same strategy over and over again (because eventually, "it's bound to work", when in fact, it isn't.)

The best trading advice I ever read was from Martin Mayer:

The central difference between the market professional and the sheep in to be sheared is the professional's ability to take his losses.

It might make sense to ignore evidence that you are likely to fail if it is a competitive situation and the evidence comes from a rival who is likely to gain if you give up.

As far as Casey Serin was concerned, that didn't apply. The evidence came from a bank that stood to gain if he succeeded.

"If at first you fail, then try, then try again. After that, stop. There's no use being a damn fool about it."

"Probability of success if you continue: small. Probability of success if you give up: zero."

Doug, that's exactly what people say to me when I challenge them on why they buy lottery tickets. "The chance of winning is tiny, but if I don't buy a ticket, the chance is zero."

I can't think of one single case in my experience when the argument "It has a small probability of success, but we should pursue it, because the probability if we don't try is zero" turned out to be a good idea. Typically it is an excuse not to confront the flaws of a plan that is just plain unripe. You know what happens when you try a strategy with a tiny probability of success? It fails, that's what happens.

The Simpsons gave us the best advice: "Can't win, don't try."

The cost of homes for sale is now on the decline. Buyers go out and negotiate.

Eliezer: I can actually think of one case in which the argument "It has a small probability of success, but we should pursue it, because the probability if we don't try is zero".

Say someone is dying of a usually-fatal disease, and there's an experimental treatment available that has only a small probability of working. If the goal is to not have the person die, it makes more sense to try the experimental treatment than not try it, because if you don't try it, the person is going to die anyway.

Er, that should have been:

I can actually think of one case in which the argument "It has a small probability of success, but we should pursue it, because the probability if we don't try is zero" is potentially a reasonable one.

Yeah, but Anne, I've never in real life encountered that situation.

PS: What our putative terminal patient ought to do is sign up for cryonics, something that has a much better than "small" chance of working. And if the experimental treatment would get in the way of that, forget the experimental treatment. If people didn't cling to tiny hopes, they might see their large ones.

Eliezer: Agreed, though I'd probably classify cryonics as a kind of experimental treatment. And I think that in the case of any illness bound to destroy the brain (e.g., Alzheimer's), cryonics is, well, almost a no-brainer (no pun intended).

Casey's problem isn't that he's still "trying." If I was in his situation, I'd keep trying as well. His future depends on it. His real problem is he isn't trying the right things. He's let properties go into foreclosure that he should have negotiated deeds in lieu for a long time ago. He should have declared bankruptcy a long time ago. He should have fixed up his properties a little bit at least to show better. He should have gotten a job as a source of income.

If you're interested, I actually interviewed Casey last year when this first happened. You can read the story here.

Um, how come nobody is focusing on the fact that he LIED to get the mortgages? Surely that's the more grave mistake. Had he applied legally, he might not be in debt that he can't repay. He should be in jail for fraud, not lambasted by bloggers for his failure to admit defeat.

Nigel, that's a good point. The skill of rationality is not to lose all hope, but to lose certain specific hopes under specific conditions.

Rafe, that's also an important point in how-not-to-be-stupid. Reality being intertwined, it is very hard to create a genuinely realistic deception. If you once tell a lie, the truth is ever after your enemy, and all truths entangled with that truth.

We seem to have a disproportionate number of sayings and heuristics making us less impulsive and making our time horizons longer. That might have developed as a way of sustaining the long-term discounting we humans have in comparision to other animals; http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~mnkylab/publications/animalcommunication/constraints.pdf has a nice diagram (figure 3) showing the difference between human (slowest), rats and pidgeons (fastest discounting). Slow discounting might be linked to our foraging lifestyle, http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~mnkylab/publications/animalcommunication/constraints.pdf but since human societies have developed quickly recently the benefits of discounting have risen faster than evolution could have adapted (or impulsive individuals have a fitness advantage by having children earlier).

So maybe we have a culturally transmitted bias towards slow discounting and persistence, that normally counteracts our too fast discounting. But in some individuals it becomes maladaptive, perhaps because they already are naturally stubborn.

There is a story for very young children called "The Carrot Seed" where a little boy plants a carrot seed and waters it and pulls out the weeds around it, and keeps on doing so even though everyone keeps telling him nothing will grow. At the end, of course, a giant carrot comes up. I've always had mixed feelings about reading that story. On the one hand, you don't want to send the message that things are true just because you believe, and that evidence to the contrary doesn't matter. On the other hand, you do want to innoculate the kid against excessive self-doubt and against taking too seriously people who, out of malice or out of instinctual aversion to different ideas, or because the idea of someone else succeeding is an implicit rebuke to them for not having tried, love to tell people what they can't do.

I would be good to get data about how often real world suggestions to give up hope were good solid advice, and how often they came from malice or jealosy.

Anders, there's no obvious connection between slow discounting and irrational persistence. Slow discounting is relevant when deciding whether to undertake a sunk investment (based on its ex-ante expected return), but once the investment has been incurred the sunk cost should be ignored as having no bearing on further decisions.

RBH said: "It might make sense to ignore evidence that you are likely to fail if it is a competitive situation and the evidence comes from a rival who is likely to gain if you give up.

As far as Casey Serin was concerned, that didn't apply. The evidence came from a bank that stood to gain if he succeeded."

There may be a version of Casey out there that suceeded, because he gambled one year earlier than Casey. If Casey had pulled this off, he would have been considered a real estate genius.

Chance plays a large role.

RE: Casey Serin:

Some similarly business-minded folks from the old country also run into tough times, due to their own innovative ideas for creating wealth, just like Casey:

Uzbekistani immigrants await discussion of entrepreneurial methods

http://jwemployees.bravehost.com/JWInfo/1001.html

HT Jerry Jones

Hm...

Is there some misterious, but great difference between getting -1000000$ and -100000000 in USA?

If there isn't such a thing, the wrong choices may have been made, but not by the Casey Serin. In fact, if we are speaking jury (12 honest tax payers), it may be rather smart idea to spend few millions USD on their, honest tax payers of his state, favorite charities at this point. To spend a few thousands on lawers and psichologists too.

PS. The politicians do spend a lot of money their countries don't actually own to delay the current Recession and make the next Great Depression out of it. And I do believe, they have rather good chances to succed at getting this Depression and getting away with it too.

Casey seems perfectly rational to me.

If you're in the hole 2.2.mil, what is the harm to you of doubling down? You'll have to declare bankruptcy twice as loudly?

This point was actually driven home to me over 20 years ago when I interviewed for trading position. If your company is way in the hole, it may as well take what assets it has and make a leveraged bet. Either it gets out of the hole, or it's twice as broke, which given limited liability, really isn't any more of a problem for the corporate officers.

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This is why I have decided not to be an entrepreneur. All the studies say that your odds are just not good enough to be worth it.

Closely related: escallation of commitment While it's possible to not escalate commitment when you're in a losing situation, it is often our default tendency.

It's NEVER too late to give up on your dreams. :-)

So I think it depends. If the probability stays at the same rate after trying each time, then you should quit. Like lottery ticket example that Eliezer gave is an example to that. But if there is an improvement, even if it's slight, then maybe keep trying it? It may be tricky, because every time you can say "but there is still a chance right" ? If you plot the events on a model like Markov chain, then it could be easier to be rational.