Depends on what you mean with ” find that you’ve made a good decision”, but probably yes. A decision is either rational given the information you had available or it’s not. Do you mean finding out you made a rational decision that you forgot about? Or making the right decision for the wrong reasons and later finding out the correct reasons? Or finding additional evidence that increases the difference in expected utility for making the choice you made?
Finding out you have a brain tumor is bad news. Visiting the doctor when you have the characteristic headache is a rational decision, and an even better decision when in the third sense when you turn out to actually have a brain tumor. Finding a tumor would retroactively make a visit to the doctor a good decision in the second sense even if it originally was for irrational reasons. And in the first sense, if you somehow forgot about the whole thing in the mean time I guess being diagnosed would remind you of the original decision.
Bad news is news that reduces your expectation of utility. Why should a rational actor lack that concept? If you don’t have a concept for that you might confuse things that change expectation of utility for things that change utility and accidentally end up just maximizing the expectation of utility when you try to maximize expected utility.
Depends on what you mean with ” find that you’ve made a good decision”, but probably yes. A decision is either rational given the information you had available or it’s not. Do you mean finding out you made a rational decision that you forgot about? Or making the right decision for the wrong reasons and later finding out the correct reasons? Or finding additional evidence that increases the difference in expected utility for making the choice you made?
Finding out you have a brain tumor is bad news. Visiting the doctor when you have the characteristic headache is a rational decision, and an even better decision when in the third sense when you turn out to actually have a brain tumor. Finding a tumor would retroactively make a visit to the doctor a good decision in the second sense even if it originally was for irrational reasons. And in the first sense, if you somehow forgot about the whole thing in the mean time I guess being diagnosed would remind you of the original decision.
Bad news is news that reduces your expectation of utility. Why should a rational actor lack that concept? If you don’t have a concept for that you might confuse things that change expectation of utility for things that change utility and accidentally end up just maximizing the expectation of utility when you try to maximize expected utility.