Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins

by Garry Kasparov

One of the simplest and most powerful examples of how vulnerable we are to false intuition is the “Monte Carlo fallacy,” also called the “gambler’s fallacy.” Assuming a fair coin and a fair flip, if the coin comes up heads twenty times in row, what are the odds it will come up heads again on the next flip? Surely twenty-one consecutive heads is hugely against the odds. The instinct would be to bet on tails, assuming that some statistical regression will occur in your favor eventually. This is entirely wrong, and the belief that it is true is a big part of why the gambling empires in Las Vegas and Macau don’t have to worry about paying their immense electricity bills. Each flip has the same fifty-fifty odds, no matter how many come up in a row or any other order.