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Vaniver comments on Probabilities Small Enough To Ignore: An attack on Pascal's Mugging - Less Wrong Discussion

20 Post author: Kaj_Sotala 16 September 2015 10:45AM

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Comment author: Vaniver 23 September 2015 03:52:12PM *  0 points [-]

However, this fundamental paper proves that observed levels of risk aversion cannot be thus explained.

This paper has come up before, and I still don't think it proves anything of the sort. Yes, if you choose crazy inputs a sensible function will have crazy outputs--why did this get published?

In general, prospect theory is a better descriptive theory of human decision-making, but I think it makes for a terrible normative theory relative to utility theory. (This is why I specified consistent risk preferences--yes, you can't express transaction or probabilistic framing effects in utility theory. As said in the grandparent, that seems like a feature, not a bug.)