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A comment on Expected Utility. Parent comment

Re:Expected Utility by wyager on Wednesday June 15, 2016 @04:16PM (#11911843)
>Decision making is different when you can only make a small amount of spins.

You should still be maximizing expected utility. For e.g. recreational gambling, factors in your utility function such as entertainment come into play, which explains why gambling recreationally can be rational behaviour.

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Re:Expected Utility by soVeryTired on Wednesday June 15, 2016 @04:50PM (#11912053)
I broadly agree with what you said about gambling, but if you take that type of reasoning too far it can lead to some dubious conclusions.

If I'm free to add fudge factors to a utility function in order to explain an agent's behaviour, the assertion that the agent is rational (i.e. maximises utility) becomes meaningless. I can always add more fudge factors to explain deviation from rationality.

Much better to specify a utility function in advance and test how well the agent's behaviour fits your theory. IMO that's a trick economics often misses.

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