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.

Comments

  1. 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…)

  2. yami wrote:

    Oooh, my text browser renders the omega as a W!! I want to squeal like a little girl.

  3. 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.)

  4. yami wrote:

    Well, 90 in Hollywood years. But that’s not counting his time as “Encino Man”.

  5. 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.

  6. 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.

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