If you’re worried about computational complexity, that’s OK. It’s not something that I mentioned because (surprisingly enough...) this isn’t something that any of the doctors discussed. If you like, let’s call that a “valid cost” just like the medical risks and financial/time costs of doing tests. The central issue is if it’s valid to worry about information causing harmful downstream medical decisions.
I’m sorry, but I just feel like we’ve moved the goal posts then.
I don’t see a lot of value in trying to disentangle the concept of information from 1.) costs to acquire that information, and 2.) costs to use that information, just to make some type of argument that a certain class of actor is behaving irrationally.
It starts to feel like “assume a spherical cow”, but we’re applying that simplification to the definition of what it means to be rational. First, it isn’t free to acquire information. But second, even if I assume for the sake of argument that the information is free, it still isn’t free to use it, because computation has costs.
if a theory of rational decision making doesn’t include that fact, it’ll come to conclusions that I think are absurd, like the idea that the most rational thing someone can do is acquire literally all available information before making any decision.
If you’re worried about computational complexity, that’s OK. It’s not something that I mentioned because (surprisingly enough...) this isn’t something that any of the doctors discussed. If you like, let’s call that a “valid cost” just like the medical risks and financial/time costs of doing tests. The central issue is if it’s valid to worry about information causing harmful downstream medical decisions.
I’m sorry, but I just feel like we’ve moved the goal posts then.
I don’t see a lot of value in trying to disentangle the concept of information from 1.) costs to acquire that information, and 2.) costs to use that information, just to make some type of argument that a certain class of actor is behaving irrationally.
It starts to feel like “assume a spherical cow”, but we’re applying that simplification to the definition of what it means to be rational. First, it isn’t free to acquire information. But second, even if I assume for the sake of argument that the information is free, it still isn’t free to use it, because computation has costs.
if a theory of rational decision making doesn’t include that fact, it’ll come to conclusions that I think are absurd, like the idea that the most rational thing someone can do is acquire literally all available information before making any decision.