Today I heard an anecdote about the Monty Hall problem. Apparently Monty Hall himself was once asked his thoughts about the formal version of the problem, and his response was that it was in no way faithful to the game show problem from which it takes its name.

Where does the formal version fall short? Monty himself actively tried to mislead the contestant. He knew them, and tried to persuade them. This was a key part of the game. He said the formal model kills all the suspense. It'd be too boring to watch.

In other words, Monty Hall operated in a large world and it's in that context the Monty Hall problem is interesting, whereas the formal "Monty Hall problem" chops it down to a small world that is not faithful to the real world version of the problem, and on top of it all is boring.

#EcologicalRationality #LargeWorlds #SmallWorlds #modeling #DecisionTheory #ChoiceTheory #RationalChoiceTheory #MontyHallProblem