Burch's Law

While Burch was referring specifically to SUV's (which he believed to be badly designed) his point carries far more generally. Examples include:

• Lotteries, which take advantage of people's inability to understand small probabilities.
• Cigarettes, which take advantage of the tendency to think about the possibility of lung cancer in far mode while thinking about potential social benefits of smoking in near mode.

A corollary of Burch's Law is that any bias should be regarded as a potential vulnerability whereby the market can trick one into buying something one doesn't really want.

Blog posts

• Burch's Law by Eliezer Yudkowsky