The Sleeping Beauty problem is a problem of imperfect recall that has received considerable attention. One approach to resolving the Sleeping Beauty problem has been to allow Sleeping Beauty to make decisions based on her beliefs, and then characterize what it takes for her decisions to be"rational". In particular, she can be allowed to make monetary bets based on her beliefs, with the assumption that she wants to gain wealth rather than lose it. However, this approach is often coupled with the erroneous assumption that Sleeping Beauty should maximize the expected value of her bets. Here, we show that (1) Sleeping Beauty's ex ante optimal betting strategy and de se optimal betting strategy are identical, and (2) under an asymptotically optimal betting strategy Sleeping Beauty is invulnerable to diachronic Dutch Books as a Thirder but remains vulnerable as a Halfer.
People often 'miswant.' They buy goods that do not make them happy and refuse to buy goods that would make their lives better. In The Price of Happiness, Cass R. Sunstein focuses on people's 'willingness to pay,' which is the foundation for free markets. He argues that willingness to pay deserves respect, and high honors in the annals of history, when buyers know what they are getting. It's when buyers lack information, or suffer from behavioral biases, that they might miswant. Special conundrums also arise when we try to monetize goods we don't normally consider in monetary terms, like pristine areas, human dignity, and social media. Exploring behavioral biases and their effect on human welfare, Sunstein shows how behavioral economics can be used to increase human happiness.
What can wellbeing data be used for? Can it help decide an individual on buying a cup of coffee versus mint tea, or buying one house rather than another? Can it help governments decide to buy artillery or frigates, set up vocational schooling or more academic schooling? If not, when is it useful? This
Viewpoint
argues that wellbeing data is particularly useful for setting broad priorities, not fine-grained choices. Wellbeing can advise individuals on the trade-offs between friends and career. The WELLBY gives governments a useful metric to see how far one has come and the broad direction of travel, but not the small steps along the way. The paper gives some examples and discusses important open questions in the field.
P. Frijters· Journal of Wellbeing Economi...· 0 citations
This paper provides an axiomatic foundation for catastrophic thinking, a form of pessimism in which an agent evaluates uncertain alternatives by attending only to a subset of adverse outcomes. We introduce Catastrophic Attention Preferences (CAP), under which an act is evaluated by its subjective expected utility conditional on the worst outcomes, up to a subjectively determined probability threshold $q$. The resulting functional is a subjective counterpart of Expected Shortfall: both the agent's belief $\mu$ and her threshold $q$ are derived from preferences rather than assumed, without a probability distribution given as a primitive. Our main result is a complete behavioral characterization: six axioms, one of which, Catastrophic Complementarity, carries the behavioral content of catastrophic thinking, together with two standard richness conditions, are equivalent to the existence of a CAP representation, and the parameters $(\mu, q)$ are unique. The parameters are fully identified from probability equivalents of events, simple binary bets that can be elicited experimentally. We characterize comparative ambiguity aversion within the class: with common beliefs, ambiguity aversion is completely ordered by $q$; with different beliefs, we provide a necessary and sufficient condition on the two belief-threshold pairs. The model admits an equivalent multiple priors representation with a closed-form set of priors, nests subjective expected utility at $q = 1$, and converges to maxmin expected utility as $q \rightarrow 0$.
Abstract It is natural to express some beliefs in binary terms (P is either believed or not, e.g., “bribery is immoral”), and others in terms of a subjective probability (P has some probability of being true, e.g., “there's an 80% chance a Democrat will win the next election”). Construing a belief in probabilistic terms (other than 0% or 100%) implicitly conveys a recognition of uncertainty (one's ignorance) and the possibility of being wrong (one's fallibility), which are key characteristics of intellectual humility (IH). Across two studies, we explore the hypothesis that probabilistic belief is associated with greater IH. Although we fail to find this association across participants, comparing their trait‐level IH, in either a student sample (Study 1, N = 279) or two nationally representative samples (Study 2a, N = 269; Study 2b, N = 270), we do find the predicted association within participants, analyzing belief‐specific IH (Studies 2a and 2b): political and moral beliefs that are classified as probabilistic rather than binary are associated with a more intellectually humble attitude toward those beliefs, even controlling for the extremity of belief. These findings support the psychological reality of a distinction between binary and probabilistic belief, and further raise the possibility that promoting probabilistic belief could foster greater IH, including in consequential domains such as politics and morality.
In ‘Individualist Theories and Interpersonal Aggregation’, Erik Zhang attempts to reconcile partial aggregation with the individualist restriction: the aggregate value we forgo to satisfy a claim enters moral deliberation indirectly as a criterion for equal consideration. We argue that Zhang’s understanding of forgone value is flawed and requires two refinements. First, Zhang remains vague on which interests can count for forgone value. To accommodate partial aggregation, however, forgone value must be restricted to relevant interests. Second, his account entails an implausible principle of outweighing: we ought to satisfy weaker claims only if their number is much greater than their relative strength suggests. We offer a better understanding of forgone value that avoids the problem. While both refinements revise Zhang’s account, they retain its individualist character.
Jonas Harney, Leonard Henckel· Utilitas· 0 citations
Beautocracy, the rule of beauty standards, is an open challenge to every individual to meet them. If he is not the master of it, then he should be subservient to it. Emotions are conscious mental responses to desired situations or events. A person can become emotionally attached to things, people, or even abstract ideas. This is instinctual to identify himself or herself after having the feeling of belongingness. This feeling of belongingness gives him the power to live an emotional life of attachment. And one perspective of this emotional attachment is that it often stems from an individual’s personal experience of the perceived beauty of these things, people, events, or situations. Initially, we may love something based on its aesthetics at a particular moment, but over time, this attachment, or love, tends to fade. Eventually, we may grow bored with these attachments. This relationship between beauty and boredom is both very unique and dynamic, as it shifts our attention towards other objects of attachment. During this subjective experience, cognitive reserves help maintain normal brain function.
Amjad Sohail· Pakistan Journal of Positive...· 0 citations
