Time: 14 April 2023  (Friday)  1：30-3：30pm  (Beijing Time)

Venue: Room 1127, Block A, Creative Building, Zijingang Campus, Zhejiang University

Language:  Chinese

Topic: The Cultural Evolution of Games of Chance – a historical investigation of Chinese gambling

Abstract: 

Chance-based gambling has been a recurrent cultural activity throughout history and across many diverse human societies. In this talk, I combine quantitative and qualitative data and present a cultural evolutionary framework to explain why the odds of games of chance in premodern China appeared meticulously crafted to ensure a house edge. This is especially intriguing since extensive research in the history of probability has shown that prior to the development of probability theory (which was itself inspired by games of chance) people had very limited understanding of the nature of random events, and were generally disinclined to think mathematically about the frequency of their occurrence. I argue that games of chance in the context of gambling culturally evolved into their documented forms via a process of selective imitation and retention, and neither the customers nor the gambling houses understood the probability calculus involved in these games.