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Ask anyone who is obese if it's in their best interest and they're unlikely to say yes. Same for credit card debt and gambling addictions. These people know w
by scotch_drinker 17y ago
Ask anyone who is obese if it's in their best interest and they're unlikely to say yes. Same for credit card debt and gambling addictions. These people know what is in their best long term interest but choose to do something else in the short term. That's different from being "awful at figuring out what is in their own best interest". People may be awful at choosing long term interests over short term interests but saying people don't know what their best interests are at all sounds condescending to me.
- rauljara 17y agoI don't believe it's condescending because I include myself among the great number of people who have trouble figuring out my own best interest. Case in point: gambling. I love to do it. It is astonishingly easy to convince yourself your likelihood of winning is easily 10x, 100x, or in the case of a lottery, 100,000x as likely as it actually is. Humans have a well known tendency to take small probabilities of positive outcome and act as though they are, in fact, quite likely. Even knowing this, I still frequently over estimate the likelihood of good things happening when I play poker. If that tendency right there isn't my own brain being hardwired to have trouble figuring out my own best interest, I don't know what is.