[Avodah] kavua/Rov

[Akiva Miller via Avodah]

R' Joel Rich asked:

> I’ve always wondered about the underlying seeming discontinuity
> in treating a safeik in a kavua (doubt generated in its original
> location) as 50/50, whereas any other safeik gets adjudicated
> based on statistical majority (the whole 10 stores thing). I’m
> wondering if this might have anything to do with behavioral
> economics heuristics (Kahnemann/Tversky, et al). I have some
> thoughts on the matter and would be interested in hearing from
> others.

I know zero about behavioral economics heuristics, but I have noticed
something about people over the years. Most people understand the idea of
probability, such as the likelihood of arriving on time at one's
destination. But there are at least two situations where the vast majority
of people will treat something as much closer to 50/50 than the actual
probability: lottery tickets, and bad news from the doctor.

If the doctor tells someone that with these symptoms there's a
one-in-a-thousand chance of it being worse, or if the lottery salesman says
that this ticket has a one-in-a-hundred-million chance of winning, all the
math goes straight out the window, and people just think, "Either I'll get
it or I won't" - mechtza al mechtza. The actual likelihood is ignored.

Yes, I'm exaggerating. But not by much.

So too, perhaps, with "the whole 10 stores thing". In some cases, Chazal
understood the actual probability, and in others, they were concerned that
"either it happened bad or it didn't".

Akiva Miller
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