Certainly not this guy, a cognitive neuroscientist who used his knowledge of how memory works to win $500,000.
When I’ve watched TV quiz shows and played along, I’ve either known the answer or used probabilistic reasoning, which goes something like this: “This is a TV quiz show, so some of the answers, even to esoteric questions, must be known by the audience or the show would be no fun. As I’ve not heard of the other options, then it must be the one I’ve heard of”.
This sort of reasoning (which the contestant in the link used to answer the $500,000 question) changes the kind of game you are playing. It’s not about the Question itself anymore, but more about your insight into another persons mind, in this case the question setter. It has a parallel with a Keynesian p-beauty contest. This contestant was lucky enough to find various Nash equilibria.
As an economist, what I found interesting was the suggestion that when faced with questions or issues that we think we don’t know about, we reason by forming associations, cause-effect mechanisms, popular references and probably a great deal of folk wisdom, AND ultimately believe more in these than the wisdom of experts, UNLESS the pay-off is significant.
Does this explain the continued failure of the general public at large to grasp economic concepts like comparative advantage?
Hat tip to Alex Tabbarok for linking to the article.
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