Want to bet? We encounter the price-sensitivity of irrationality whenever someone unexpectedly offers us a bet based on our professed beliefs.59 Suppose you insist that poverty in the Third World is sure to get worse in the next decade. A challenger immediately retorts, “Want to bet? If you’re really ‘sure,’ you won’t mind giving me ten-to-one odds.” Why are you are unlikely to accept this wager? Perhaps you never believed your own words; your statements were poetry—or lies. But it is implausible to tar all reluctance to bet with insincerity. People often believe that their assertions are true
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