IS IT ALWAYS RATIONAL TO SATISFY SAVAGE'S AXIOMS?

Abstract

This note argues that, under some circumstances, it is more rational not to behave in accordance with a Bayesian prior than to do so. The starting point is that in the absence of information, choosing a prior is arbitrary. If the prior is to have meaningful implications, it is more rational to admit that one does not have sufficient information to generate a prior than to pretend that one does. This suggests a view of rationality that requires a compromise between internal coherence and justification, similarly to compromises that appear in moral dilemmas. Finally, it is argued that Savage's axioms are more compelling when applied to a naturally given state space than to an analytically constructed one; in the latter case, it may be more rational to violate the axioms than to be Bayesian.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 135 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.