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Comment by tlarkworthy | Hacker News Reader

I have a theory that this is the Monty hall problem effect in practice [1]. When you blow up your life you are opening an unknown door... But after you have narrowed your options, so the outcomes are likely to be better than your status quo.

[1] https://link.medium.com/N6HaHXgyAAb

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I think the difference is in the Monty Hall problem a 3rd party who knows one of the options to be a dud, reveals it to be so. In real life you're still just as likely to pick the dud. (One of many)

No your life experiences narrow the choices. You don't randomly emigrate. While the reasoning is wonky, there is , in reality, only a small pool of choices under consideration. Life is the 3rd party that reveals duds.

Yeah sure. But that's not Monty hall. "Life" is something you experience, not something that you know like "no car behind that door". You know after the fact.

Experience shifts your beliefs in a Bayesian information thoeretic way. It's the same thing of extra information entering the system but with more diffused probability distributions compared to hard knowledge like "the prize is not in that door". But the overall effect that the fuzzy information improves your outcomes holds

With an almost infinite number of doors though, and with all of them containing something that might or might not be the prize depending on your point of view. And your opinion of what counts as a prize changing after every opening of a door.

So maybe this analogy doesn't really work...

I don't think it really affects anything if the prize is decided after opening the door.

The analogy only really fails if your internal value system values predictability... Which for some people is true.

But for others who have a vague feeling of dissatisfaction then the chances are that the unknown door picked from a shortlist of options will yield better results than staying put with the option given to you via external factors

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