Gambler's Fallacy

To trace something unknown back to something known is alleviating, soothing, gratifying and gives moreover a feeling of power. Danger, disquiet, anxiety attend the unknown – the first instinct is to eliminate these distressing states. First principle: any explanation is better than none … The cause-creating drive is thus conditioned and excited by the feeling of fear.

Friedrich Nietzsche


A well-known example of this is provided by the phenomenon called the gambler’s fallacy. The name refers to the fact that gamblers often seem to believe that a long row of events of one type increases the probability of the complementary event. Thus if a series of ‘red’ events occur on a roulette wheel, the gambler’s fallacy lead people to believe that the probability of ‘black’ increases. … Rather than accepting that the underlying mechanism may be randome people invent all kinds of explanations to reduce the uncertainty of future events

Erik Hollnagel