More Decision Theory
The other reason I rely on the decision-making power of serendipity, I never knew until I started studying the economics of uncertainty. It seems that in order to make a rational decision, I need to determine how my preferences behave in relation to statements like:
If a lottery with a 1/2 chance of winning a monkey and a 1/2 chance of winning a boat is strictly preferred to a lottery with a 1/3 chance of winning a goat and a 2/3 chance of winning a date with Pauly Shore, then a lottery with a 1/3 chance of winning a monkey and a 2/3 chance of winning a goat should be strictly preferred to a lottery with a 1/2 chance of winning a boat and a 1/2 chance of winning a date with Pauly Shore, if and only if the subject’s utility function satisfies axioms (i), (iii) and (iv) of theorem 6.B.9 (the Yucky-Shore sexual preference theorem for rational preference relations).
Even after proving the Yucky-Shore sexual preference theorem for monotonic functions on (Ω, XXX), I am able to verify neither independence nor continuity, and my indifference curves are curvier than Marilyn Monroe.
I wish I could take economics without all the measure theory. I hate this class.
Still Life wrote:
Won’t get any arguement from this corner — by the time I made the Decision Sciences honor society back in college, I felt like the straight-A seminarian who’d turned agnostic; seemed to me that, once I got a clear look behind the curtain, it destoyed any illusion that any of it made any *real* sense…(but then, my econometrics prof referred to my first submitted homework assignment as ‘more like alchemy’, not knowing I’d take it as a compliment…)
Posted 23 Apr 2020 at 2:17 pm ¶
yami wrote:
Oooh, my text browser renders the omega as a W!! I want to squeal like a little girl.
Posted 23 Apr 2020 at 10:21 pm ¶
francis s. wrote:
I didn’t know Pauly Shore was still alive. Isn’t he, like, 90 or something?
(I won’t resort to putting in the “hee hee” that is actually occurring as I write this. No, no, that would be too cute.)
Posted 23 Apr 2020 at 11:34 pm ¶
yami wrote:
Well, 90 in Hollywood years. But that’s not counting his time as “Encino Man”.
Posted 24 Apr 2020 at 3:24 pm ¶
Cabell wrote:
Pauly Shore was one of Encino Man’s annoying discovers, actually–Brendan Fraser was Encino Man. Please don’t hold it against him.
There was a trailer-like thing before Ice Age with a cave guy being bonked on the head and freezing and then being revived in the present; I thought they were REMAKING Encino Man but then it turned out to be a Sprite commercial. Or maybe it was Sierra Mist. Some refreshing clear bubbly beverage.
Posted 25 Apr 2020 at 3:36 pm ¶
yami wrote:
That’s right – I keep forgetting there was more than one character in that movie.
I hope that commercial ended with someone getting bashed over the head with a stout femur. If I ever wake up zillions of years in the future after being frozen in a block of ice, my hapless discoverers had better damn well have some coffee ready. Or whatever hot stimulant drink they have in the Future.
Posted 25 Apr 2020 at 10:38 pm ¶