Excellent summary. Savage’s founding of statistics is nice because it only assumes that agents have to make choices between actions, making no assumptions about whether they have to have beliefs or goals. This is important because agents in general don’t have to use beliefs or goals, but they do all have to chose actions.
Thanks for the info about boundedness, I didn’t notice that on my quick skim through the book.
This is important because agents in general don’t have to use beliefs, but they do all have to have goals.
I think you mean that agents don’t have to use beliefs or goals, but they do all have to choose between actions.
If you really meant what you said, then you drew some deep bizarre counterintuitive conclusion there that I can’t understand, and I’d really like to see an argument for it.
Yeah, obviously in the 1954 edition he didn’t know that; in the 1972 edition, he leaves all the obsolete discussion in and just adds a footnote saying that FIshburn proved boundedness and giving a reference! Had to look that up separately. Didn’t notice it either until late in writing this.
Excellent summary. Savage’s founding of statistics is nice because it only assumes that agents have to make choices between actions, making no assumptions about whether they have to have beliefs or goals. This is important because agents in general don’t have to use beliefs or goals, but they do all have to chose actions.
Thanks for the info about boundedness, I didn’t notice that on my quick skim through the book.
I think you mean that agents don’t have to use beliefs or goals, but they do all have to choose between actions.
If you really meant what you said, then you drew some deep bizarre counterintuitive conclusion there that I can’t understand, and I’d really like to see an argument for it.
Yep, my mistake. Fixed.
Yeah, obviously in the 1954 edition he didn’t know that; in the 1972 edition, he leaves all the obsolete discussion in and just adds a footnote saying that FIshburn proved boundedness and giving a reference! Had to look that up separately. Didn’t notice it either until late in writing this.
Fortunately (since I’m away from university right now) I found a PDF of Fishburn’s book online: http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=AD0708563