{"title":"机会游戏的文化演变:中国赌博的历史考察》(The Cultural Evolution of Games of Chance : A Historical Investigation of Chinese Gambling.","authors":"Ze Hong","doi":"10.1007/s12110-024-09471-9","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Chance-based gambling has been a recurrent cultural activity throughout history and across many diverse human societies. In this paper, I combine quantitative and qualitative data and present a cultural evolutionary framework to explain why the odds in games of chance in premodern China appeared \"designed\" to ensure a moderate yet favorable house advantage. This is especially intriguing since extensive research in the history of probability has shown that, prior to the development of probability theory, 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 may have 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.</p>","PeriodicalId":47797,"journal":{"name":"Human Nature-An Interdisciplinary Biosocial Perspective","volume":" ","pages":"89-113"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2000,"publicationDate":"2024-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11317449/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":"{\"title\":\"The Cultural Evolution of Games of Chance : A Historical Investigation of Chinese Gambling.\",\"authors\":\"Ze Hong\",\"doi\":\"10.1007/s12110-024-09471-9\",\"DOIUrl\":null,\"url\":null,\"abstract\":\"<p><p>Chance-based gambling has been a recurrent cultural activity throughout history and across many diverse human societies. In this paper, I combine quantitative and qualitative data and present a cultural evolutionary framework to explain why the odds in games of chance in premodern China appeared \\\"designed\\\" to ensure a moderate yet favorable house advantage. This is especially intriguing since extensive research in the history of probability has shown that, prior to the development of probability theory, 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 may have 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.</p>\",\"PeriodicalId\":47797,\"journal\":{\"name\":\"Human Nature-An Interdisciplinary Biosocial Perspective\",\"volume\":\" \",\"pages\":\"89-113\"},\"PeriodicalIF\":2.2000,\"publicationDate\":\"2024-06-01\",\"publicationTypes\":\"Journal Article\",\"fieldsOfStudy\":null,\"isOpenAccess\":false,\"openAccessPdf\":\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11317449/pdf/\",\"citationCount\":\"0\",\"resultStr\":null,\"platform\":\"Semanticscholar\",\"paperid\":null,\"PeriodicalName\":\"Human Nature-An Interdisciplinary Biosocial Perspective\",\"FirstCategoryId\":\"90\",\"ListUrlMain\":\"https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-024-09471-9\",\"RegionNum\":2,\"RegionCategory\":\"社会学\",\"ArticlePicture\":[],\"TitleCN\":null,\"AbstractTextCN\":null,\"PMCID\":null,\"EPubDate\":\"2024/5/31 0:00:00\",\"PubModel\":\"Epub\",\"JCR\":\"Q1\",\"JCRName\":\"ANTHROPOLOGY\",\"Score\":null,\"Total\":0}","platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Human Nature-An Interdisciplinary Biosocial Perspective","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-024-09471-9","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2024/5/31 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ANTHROPOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
The Cultural Evolution of Games of Chance : A Historical Investigation of Chinese Gambling.
Chance-based gambling has been a recurrent cultural activity throughout history and across many diverse human societies. In this paper, I combine quantitative and qualitative data and present a cultural evolutionary framework to explain why the odds in games of chance in premodern China appeared "designed" to ensure a moderate yet favorable house advantage. This is especially intriguing since extensive research in the history of probability has shown that, prior to the development of probability theory, 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 may have 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.
期刊介绍:
Human Nature is dedicated to advancing the interdisciplinary investigation of the biological, social, and environmental factors that underlie human behavior. It focuses primarily on the functional unity in which these factors are continuously and mutually interactive. These include the evolutionary, biological, and sociological processes as they interact with human social behavior; the biological and demographic consequences of human history; the cross-cultural, cross-species, and historical perspectives on human behavior; and the relevance of a biosocial perspective to scientific, social, and policy issues.