Luck, Biases, FOMO and Bad Movies

Ever been to watch a movie because "all your friends have been to see it" and then come out seriously disappointed? Did you go just because you had a Fear Of Missing Out? Was the quality of the film reflected by the number of people that went? Ever seen a brilliant movie that everyone else seemed to miss? Was one movie lucky and the other unlucky?

The article in the link below is not an easy read. It might suggest that we are all holding on to a model about price and quality that is just plain wrong. The implications are far reaching and make a lot of people uncomfortable. We might place too much emphasis on "what other people think" or give sway to our "fear of missing out".

It leads to the terrible situation where we invest in people's luck rather than real quality of what they are offering. Tversky and Kahneman would probably have a specific bias for it, but at the very least it is a form of confirmation bias - they were in the market last year so they can't be that bad. Or at the extreme, they were the best last year, therefore , they have some magical power; which turns out to be everyone buying their stuff because they were good last year.

If you're prepared to have your brain stretched read the article. If you believe successful people are 'morally' superior then DO NOT read it; unless you're prepared to embrace fatalism.

https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/full/10.1287/orsc.2020.1414