Chasing Luck: Data-driven Prediction, Faith, Hunch, and Cultural Norms in Rural Betting Practices

HCI research predominantly uses scientific rationality to explain users’ behaviors, decisions, and interactions with statistical models based and data-driven systems. However, such interactions are often more diverse in real life, and may straddle beyond scientific and economic rationality. Building on a ten-month ethnography at seven Bangladeshi villages, we explore the social and cultural factors that influence the online betting practices among the villagers. We describe how bets harmonize with users’ faith, hunch, and cultural practices, along with statistical recommendations. Drawing on a rich body of social science work on gambling, we contribute to the HCI scholarship in rationality, justification, and postcolonial computing. Finally, we present such betting as an under-appreciated site for HCI that contradicts with the ideological hegemony of statistical rationality, and recommend a smooth integration of AI system with the “other” rationalities of the Global South.