I believe so. Either I’m wrong (in which case, I want to hear from you, Kip) or I really have learned something. Here goes:

You receive an e-mail describing any number of unrealistic claims. You’re familiar with this e-mail because you’ve doubtless received hundreds of them:

There is a beta-tracker embedded in the message, and if you send it to 10 people you’ll get a gift certificate to Applebees for $20, or to the Gap, or a Free iPod, or it describes some progressive scheme by which the originator claims to have received 11,359,824.12 from Bill Gates & Microsoft.

I have yet to meet anyone who can verify receipt of any prize of this nature, nor have I read of any verifiable “winners,” wherever they may exist. The question then, is why do these e-mails keep circulating? Certainly, email as a technology is wide-enough-srpead in the West that most people have fallen victim to them countless times – experience ought to dictate action, and whenever the “chain” reaches someone who relies on experience, it should cease being forwarded. Certainly there are enough people with enough experience and reason to all-but eliminate this sort of spam, no?

You know that the claim is fake. I know the claim is fake. I’ve been getting these since I started getting spam, when I entered my freshman year in college. Back then, e-mail was relatively new and like most people, I was largely unfamiliar with its various trappings. I had no idea that these claims were technologically impossible, fiiscally unsound, among other things. So I sent a few of them on. And a few more. But I never got anything. Eventually, my mind caught up with reality, and I stopped sending them – despite the fact that the marginal cost of continuing the chain was to me, approximately zero. I realized that the payoff was also approximately (if not definitely) zero.

I think the problem is in the details. Unfortunately, most people are blithering idiots. If you don’t believe me, try talking to them sometime, I mean, a real, honest conversation that’s not about the weather, who the Tigers play on sunday, or how drunk we got last weeked (FYI: very). Because they’re mostly idiots, then, most people will argue that the payoff is $20. Or whatever the “prize” happens to be. They don’t think in terms of probability. They are blinded by the figure in front of them and don’t give any pause to reflect on the likelihood of receiving the payoff.

The perception, then, is that the probability of payoff is significantly greater than it actually is. And this perception plays into their reasoning:

“If I don’t send this e-mail, and a bunch of my friends get a check from Microsoft, won’t I look like the fool for doubting them? And after all, what does it cost me? What have I got to lose? Afterall, I might get a big reward if I do.”

Because of this, I think this game lends itself to the Nash Equilibrium, being that by and large, the messages keep circulating, even though the Pareto-optimal situation is for everyone to delete the message without perpetuating it.