Related papers: Why do we change whatever amount we found in the f…
We designed and ran an experiment to test how often people's choices are reversed by others' recommendations when facing different levels of confirmation and conformity pressures. In our experiment participants were first asked to provide…
The aim of this paper is to solve the "gift exchange" problem: you are one of n players, and there are n wrapped gifts on display; when your turn comes, you can either choose any of the remaining wrapped gifts, or you can "steal" a gift…
We present a simplistic model of the competition between different currencies. Each individual is free to choose the currency that minimizes his transaction costs, which arise whenever his exchanging relations have chosen a different…
The apparent failure of individual probabilistic expressions to distinguish uncertainty about truths from uncertainty about probabilistic assessments have prompted researchers to seek formalisms where the two types of uncertainties are…
The purpose of this paper is to clarify the (non-Bayesian and Bayesian) two-envelope problems in terms of quantum language (or, measurement theory), which was recently proposed as a linguistic turn of quantum mechanics (with the Copenhagen…
Experiments suggest that people fail to take into account interdependencies between their choices -- they do not broadly bracket. Researchers often instead assume that people narrowly bracket, but existing designs do not test it. We design…
Money was invented to address the difficulty in the double coincidence of wants between the supply and demand when people exchanged their goods and services. There are two information states in society: one is the initial state that people…
Common wisdom has it that small distinctions in the probabilities (parameters) quantifying a belief network do not matter much for the results of probabilistic queries. Yet, one can develop realistic scenarios under which small variations…
Uncertainty may be taken to characterize inferences, their conclusions, their premises or all three. Under some treatments of uncertainty, the inferences itself is never characterized by uncertainty. We explore both the significance of…
Exchangeability -- in which the distribution of an infinite sequence is invariant to reorderings of its elements -- implies the existence of a simple conditional independence structure that may be leveraged in the design of statistical…
Many widely used models amount to an elaborate means of making up numbers--but once a number has been produced, it tends to be taken seriously and its source (the model) is rarely examined carefully. Many widely used models have little…
Any strategy and prior probability together are a coherent conditional probability that can be extended, generally not in a unique way, to a full conditional probability. The corresponding class of extensions is studied and a closed form…
We consider how an agent should update her uncertainty when it is represented by a set $\P$ of probability distributions and the agent observes that a random variable $X$ takes on value $x$, given that the agent makes decisions using the…
In recent years there has been a spate of papers describing systems for probabilisitic reasoning which do not use numerical probabilities. In some cases the simple set of values used by these systems make it impossible to predict how a…
We revisit anthropic arguments purporting to explain the measured value of the cosmological constant. We argue that different ways of assigning probabilities to candidate universes lead to totally different anthropic predictions. As an…
It is shown that an equiprobability hypothesis leads to a scenario in which it is possible to predict the outcome of a single toss of a fair coin with a success probability greater than 50%. We discuss whether this hypothesis might be…
We consider how an agent should update her uncertainty when it is represented by a set P of probability distributions and the agent observes that a random variable X takes on value x, given that the agent makes decisions using the minimax…
People sometimes change their opinions when they discuss things with other people. Researchers can use mathematics to study opinion changes in simplifications of real-life situations. These simplified settings, which are examples of…
In this paper, I will demonstrate a new perspective on the Two Envelope Problem. I hope to show with convincing clarity how the paradox results from an inherent problem pertaining to the interpretation of Bayesian probability. Specifically,…
A series of examples of computational models is provided, where the model aim is to interpret numerical results in terms of internal states of agents minds. Two opposite strategies or research can be distinguished in the literature. First…