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    Expected-utility maximization is not the best general mod... — Carmelics
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    Home/Consequentialism
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    Expected-utility maximization is not the best general model of human decision-making behavior

    Consequentialism
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Allais (1953) showed that rational agents systematically violate the independence axiom of expected utility under controlled experimental conditions.
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    • 2.Since the independence axiom is constitutive of EU theory, Allais-pattern violations are not modeling errors but evidence of a fundamentally different decision architecture.
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    • 3.Savage's own admission that he initially fell prey to the Allais paradox undermines the claim that EU violations reduce merely to computational or informational failures.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Kahneman and Tversky's prospect theory demonstrates that humans systematically weight losses more heavily than equivalent gains, violating EU axioms.
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    • 2.This loss aversion is not a bias to be corrected but a stable, cross-cultural feature of human valuation that EU cannot accommodate structurally.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.Interpreting behavior as expected-utility maximizing requires undue case-specific restrictions to fit the data
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    • 2.Alternative decision theories (cumulative prospect theory, alpha-nu utility theory, rank-dependent utility theory) yield better predictions with fewer restrictions
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    • 3.Empirical evidence identifies Prelec's (1998) specification as the statistically most common human utility function, which is not standard expected utility
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    ConsequentialismTruth & Knowledge

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    Related

    Allais (1953) showed that rational agents systematically violate the independenc...Alternative decision theories (cumulative prospect theory, alpha-nu utility theo...Empirical evidence identifies Prelec's (1998) specification as the statistically...Interpreting behavior as expected-utility maximizing requires undue case-specifi...
    +4 moreShow less
    Kahneman and Tversky's prospect theory demonstrates that humans systematically w...Savage's own admission that he initially fell prey to the Allais paradox undermi...Since the independence axiom is constitutive of EU theory, Allais-pattern violat...This loss aversion is not a bias to be corrected but a stable, cross-cultural fe...

    Similar

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    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: game-theory
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    In other contexts, interpreting people’s behavior as generally expected-utility maximizing requires undue violence to the need for generality in theory construction. We get better prediction using fewer case-specific restrictions if we suppose that subjects are maximizing according to one or (typically) more of several alternatives (which will not be described here because they are not directly about game theory): cumulative prospect theory (Tversky and Kahneman 1992), or alpha-nu utility theo
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (2 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit