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    Substantive rationality requires acting on one's actual s... — Carmelics
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    Challenges→It cannot be common knowledge among A and B at state w that both A and B are substantively rational

    Substantive rationality requires acting on one's actual strategy, but a player's strategy encodes dispositions at nodes never reached, making off-path rationality assessments counterfactually indeterminate.

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    Reasons For

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    Reason for
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    • 1.Strategies specify choices at all nodes; counterfactual nodes lack realized outcomes, so dispositions there have no empirical content.
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    • 2.Rationality assessments require determinate facts; off-path dispositions are unobservable and causally inert, making evaluation metaphysically indeterminate.
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    • 3.Players acting on actual strategies need only satisfy rationality at reached nodes; off-path requirements impose unfalsifiable constraints.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.Rationality is about reasons and consistency, not just observable behavior; off-path choices reflect a player's actual reasoning structure.
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    • 2.Counterfactual indeterminacy doesn't undermine rationality assessment—beliefs about hypothetical situations can be determinate and evaluable.
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    • 3.Backward induction and perfect equilibrium depend on off-path rationality; eliminating it abandons standard game-theoretic solution concepts.
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    Key Terms

    Counterfactually indeterminate(describes the logical status of unverifiable 'what-if' scenarios)
    Unable to be determined or pinned down when thinking about hypothetical situations that will never actually occur.
    Node (in game theory)(used in game theory to represent the structure of strategic situations)
    A specific decision point or moment in a game where a player has to choose what to do next.
    Off-path rationality(a problem in evaluating game theory strategies)
    Judging whether a player's planned actions make sense at decision points that would never actually happen given the choices everyone makes.
    Strategy (in game theory)(a key concept in game theory and strategic decision-making)
    A complete plan that tells you what to do in every possible situation that could come up in a game or interaction, even situations you might never actually reach.
    dispositions(Used broadly by educational researchers)
    The habits of mind and attitudes that contribute causally to being a critical thinker.
    substantive rationality(Epistemic game theory)
    A form of rationality whose common knowledge among players, per Aumann's Theorem, entails play of the backward induction profile

    Connections

    2 topics

    Truth & Knowledge1 linkedSkepticism1 linked

    Related

    Backward induction and perfect equilibrium depend on off-path rationality; elimi...Counterfactual indeterminacy doesn't undermine rationality assessment—beliefs ab...

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    2 (1 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit
    It cannot be common knowledge among A and B at state w that both A and B are sub...
    Players acting on actual strategies need only satisfy rationality at reached nod...
    +3 moreShow less
    Rationality assessments require determinate facts; off-path dispositions are uno...Rationality is about reasons and consistency, not just observable behavior; off-...Strategies specify choices at all nodes; counterfactual nodes lack realized outc...