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Costs of abandoning the Sure-Thing Principle

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Rachael Briggs
Rachael Briggs*
Affiliation:
Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
*
Email: rbriggs@stanford.edu
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Abstract

Risk-weighted expected utility theory (REU theory for short) permits preferences which violate the Sure-Thing Principle (STP for short). But preferences that violate the STP can lead to bad decisions in sequential choice problems. In particular, they can lead decision-makers to adopt a strategy that is dominated – i.e. a strategy such that some available alternative leads to a better outcome in every possible state of the world.

Keywords

Risk-weighted expected utilitySure-Thing Principleexpected utilitydecision theoryallais paradox
Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 45 , Issue 5-6: Special Issue: Belief, Action, and Rationality over Time , December 2015 , pp. 827 - 840
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Journal of Philosophy 2015

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References

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