Is it irrational to gamble against unfair odds, as in a Vegas casino?

Is it always a sign of a character defect?

Here is my take. What do you think?

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If people drop money at a casino, then the entertainment value of it to them is worth the expectation value of their bets.

Assuming they can afford that, plus an extra allowance for the risk their loss will go over, all this tells us is that by choice or nature they get off on the thrill.

This isn’t irrational or irresponsible. Human utility isn’t linear. So in other words, being irrational comes with the territory, for all of us.

Given that the thrill of winning is worth more than the heartbreak of losing, as long as the gap for you personally doesn’t exceed the house advantage, it’s a rational bet for you. The arbitrage allows the house to provide the service.

Lots of stuff is like that. Are you analyzing every purchase everyone makes and asking about the cost vs the expected return?

Now maybe your point is that people who enjoy taking such risks, who get off on them, are a hazard to others. But they are also fighter pilots and cardiothoracic surgeons and professional athletes and stock traders and political candidates and startup founders and … well, you get the idea.

Maybe what we should ask is whether people who are built that way are making prudent choices about how to channel it, such as visiting a casino, or are they shoplifting or scoring blow in a sketchy encounter or driving their city bus too fast with passengers in it.

Maybe we should have a public registry of overly risk averse people. Or the anhedonic. Those pose risks to others too, in the right circumstances.

It’s a big world. With lots of kinds of people. The issue isn’t so much how we are but what we choose to do about it. Hitting the casino isn’t typically a sign of bad judgment, just an expression of what someone is like.

Come to think of it, maybe we need a registry of people who don’t understand how people who differ from them move through the world, and this lack of empathy makes them misjudge others in ways that have social repercussions.