Z._M._Davis comments on The Allais Paradox - Less Wrong

19 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 19 January 2008 03:05AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (133)

Sort By: Old

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: Z._M._Davis 19 January 2008 06:32:50AM 4 points [-]

When we speak of an inherent utility of certainty, what do we mean by certainty? An actual probability of unity, or, more reasonably, something which is merely very much certain, like probability .999? If the latter, then there should exist a function expressing the "utility bonus for certainty" as a function of how certain we are. It's not immediately obvious to me how such a function should behave. If probability 0.9999 is very much more preferable to probability 0.8999 than probability 0.5 is preferable to probability 0.4, then is 0.5 very much more preferable to 0.4 than 0.2 is to 0.1?