Fishburn (op. cit., following Blackwell and Girschick, an inaccessible source) requires that the set of gambles be closed under infinitary convex combinations.
Again, I’m simply not seeing this in the paper you linked? As I said above, I simply do not see anything like that outside of section 9, which is irrelevant. Can you point to where you’re seeing this condition?
I shall take a look at Savage’s axioms and see what in them is responsible for the same thing.
In the case of Savage, it’s not any particular axiom, but rather the setup. An action is a function from world-states to outcomes. If you can construct the function, the action (gamble) exists. That’s all there is to it. And the relevant functions are easy enough to construct, as I described above; you use P6 (the Archimedean condition, which also allows flipping coins, basically) to construct the events, and we have the outcomes by assumption. You assign the one to the other and there you go.
(If you don’t want to go getting the book out, you may want to read the summary of Savage I wrote earlier!)
A short answer to this (something longer later) is that an agent need not have preferences between things that it is impossible to encounter. The standard dissolution of the St. Petersberg paradox is that nobody can offer that gamble. Even though each possible outcome is finite, the offerer must be able to cover every possible outcome, requiring that they have infinite resources. Since the gamble cannot be offered, no preferences between that gamble and any other need exist.
So, would it be fair to sum this up as “it is not necessary to have preferences between two gambles if one of them takes on unbounded utility values”? Interesting. That doesn’t strike me as wholly unworkable, but I’m skeptical. In particular:
Can we phrase this without reference to utility functions? It would say a lot more for the possibility if we can.
What if you’re playing against Nature? A gamble can be any action; and in a world of unbounded utility functions, why should one believe that any action must have some bound on how much utility it can get you? Sure, sure, second law of thermodynamics and all that, but that’s just a feature of the paticular universe we happen to live in, not something that reshapes your preferences. (And if we were taking account of that sort of thing, we’d probably just say, oh, utility is bounded after all, in a kind of stupid way.) Notionally, it could be discovered to be wrong! It won’t happen, but it’s not probability literally 0.
Or are you trying to cut out a more limited class of gambles as impossible? I’m not clear on this, although I’m not certain it affects the results.
Anyway, yeah, as I said, my main objection is that I see no reason to believe that, if you have an unbounded utility function, Nature cannot offer you a St. Petersburg game. Or I mean, to the extent I do see reasons to believe that, they’re facts about the particular universe we happen to live in, that notionally could be discovered to be wrong.
Looking at the argument from the other end, at what point in valuing numbers of intelligent lives does one approach an asymptote, bearing in mind the possibility of expansion to the accessible universe? What if we discover that the habitable universe is vastly larger than we currently believe? How would one discover the limits, if there are any, to one’s valuing?
This is exactly the sort of argument that I called “flimsy” above. My answer to these questions is that none of this is relevant.
Both of us are trying to extend our ideas about preferences from ordinary situations to extraordinary ones. (Like, I agree that some sort of total utilitarianism is a good heuristic for value under the conditions we’re familiar with.) This sort of extrapolation, to an unfamiliar realm, is always potentially dangerous. The question then becomes, what sort of tools can we expect to continue to work, without needing any sort of adjustment to the new conditions?
I do not expect speculation about the particular form preferences our would take under these unusual conditions to be trustworthy. Whereas basic coherence conditions had damn well better continue to hold, or else we’re barely even talking about sensible preferences anymore.
Or, to put it differently, my answer is, I don’t know, but the answer must satisfy basic coherence conditions. There’s simply no way that the idea that decision-theoretic utility has to increase linearly with number intelligent lives, is on anywhere near as solid ground as that! The mere fact that it’s stated in terms of a utility function in the first place, rather than in terms of something more basic, is something of a smell. Complicated statements we’re not even entirely sure how to formulate can easily break in a new context. Short simple statements that have to be true for reasons of simple coherence don’t break.
(Also, some of your questions don’t seem to actually appreciating what a bounded utility function would actually mean. It wouldn’t mean taking an unbounded utility function and then applying a cap to it. It would just mean something that naturally approaches 1 as things get better and 0 as things get worse. There is no point at which it approaches an asymptote; that’s not how asymptotes work. There is no limit to one’s valuing; presumably utility 1 does not actually occur. Or, at least, that’s how I infer it would have to work.)
Again, I’m simply not seeing this in the paper you linked? As I said above, I simply do not see anything like that outside of section 9, which is irrelevant. Can you point to where you’re seeing this condition?
In Fishburn’s “Bounded Expected Utility”, page 1055, end of first paragraph (as cited previously):
However, we shall for the present take ℘=℘d (for any σ -algebra that contains each x ) since this is the Blackwell-Girshick setting. Not only is ℘d an abstract convex set, but also if αi≥0 and Pi∈℘d for i=1,2,… and Σ∞i=1αi=1 , then Σ∞i=1αiPi∈℘d .
That depends on some earlier definitions, e.g. ℘d is a certain set of probability distributions (the “d” stands for “discrete”) defined with reference to some particular σ -algebra, but the important part is that last infinite sum: this is where all infinitary convex combinations are asserted to exist. Whether that is assigned to “background setup” or “axioms” does not matter. It has to be present, to allow the construction of St. Petersburg gambles.
(This is more properly a followup to my sibling comment, but posting it here so you’ll see it.)
I already said that I think that thinking in terms of infinitary convex combinations, as you’re doing, is the wrong way to go about it; but it took me a bit to put together why that’s definitely the wrong way.
Specifically, it assumes probability! Fishburn, in the paper you link, assumes probability, which is why he’s able to talk about why infinitary convex combinations are or are not allowed (I mean, that and the fact that he’s not necessarily arbitrary actions).
Savage doesn’t assume probability! So if you want to disallow certain actions… how do you specify them? Or if you want to talk about convex combinations of actions—not just infinitary ones, any ones—how do you even define these?
In Savage’s framework, you have to prove that if two actions can be described by the same probabilities and outcomes, then they’re equivalent. E.g., suppose action A results in outcome X with probability 1⁄2 and outcome Y with probability 1⁄2, and suppose action B meets that same description. Are A and B equivalent? Well, yes, but that requires proof, because maybe A and B take outcome X on different sets of probability 1⁄2. (OK, in the two-outcome case it doesn’t really require “proof”, rather it’s basically just his definition of probability; but the more general case requires proof.)
So, until you’ve established that theorem, that it’s meaningful to combine gambles like that, and that the particular events yielding the probabilities aren’t relevant, one can’t really meaningfully define convex combinations at all. This makes it pretty hard to incorporate them into the setup or axioms!
More generally this should apply not only to Savage’s particular formalism, but any formalism that attempts to ground probability as well as utility.
Anyway yeah. As I think I already said, I think we should think of this in terms not of, what combinations of actions yield permitted actions, but rather whether there should be forbidden actions at all. (Note btw in the usual VNM setup there aren’t any forbidden actions either! Although there infinite gambles are, while not forbidden, just kind of ignored.) But this is in particular why trying to put it it in terms of convex combinations as you’ve done doesn’t really work from a fundamentals point of view, where there is no probability yet, only preferences.
I already said that I think that thinking in terms of infinitary convex combinations, as you’re doing, is the wrong way to go about it; but it took me a bit to put together why that’s definitely the wrong way.
Specifically, it assumes probability! Fishburn, in the paper you link, assumes probability, which is why he’s able to talk about why infinitary convex combinations are or are not allowed (I mean, that and the fact that he’s not necessarily arbitrary actions).
Savage doesn’t assume probability!
Savage doesn’t assume probability or utility, but their construction is a mathematical consequence of the axioms. So although they come later in the exposition, they mathematically exist as soon as the axioms have been stated.
So if you want to disallow certain actions… how do you specify them?
I am still thinking about that, and may be some time.
As a general outline of the situation, you read P1-7 ⇒ bounded utility as modus ponens: you accept the axioms and therefore accept the conclusion. I read it as modus tollens: the conclusion seems wrong, so I believe there is a flaw in the axioms. In the same way, the axioms of Euclidean geometry seemed very plausible as a description of the physical space we find ourselves in, but conflicts emerged with phenomena of electromagnetism and gravity, and eventually they were superseded as descriptions of physical space by the geometry of differential manifolds.
It isn’t possible to answer the question “which of P1-7 would I reject?” What is needed to block the proof of bounded utility is a new set of axioms, which will no doubt imply large parts of P1-7, but might not imply the whole of any one of them. If and when such a set of axioms can be found, P1-7 can be re-examined in their light.
Oh, so that’s what you’re referring to. Well, if you look at the theorem statements, you’ll see that P=P_d is an axiom that is explicitly called out in the theorems where it’s assumed; it’s not implictly part of Axiom 0 like you asserted, nor is it more generally left implicit at all.
but the important part is that last infinite sum: this is where all infinitary convex combinations are asserted to exist. Whether that is assigned to “background setup” or “axioms” does not matter. It has to be present, to allow the construction of St. Petersburg gambles.
I really think that thinking in terms of infinitary convex combinations is the wrong way to go about this here. As I said above: You don’t get a St. Petersburg gamble by taking some fancy convex combination, you do it by just constructing the function. (Or, in Fishburn’s framework, you do it by just constructing the distribution; same effect.) I guess without P=P_d you do end up relying on closure properties in Fishburn’s framework, but Savage’s framework just doesn’t work that way at all; and Fishburn with P=P_d, well, that’s not a closure property. Rather what Savage’s setup, and P=P_d have in common, is that they’re, like, arbitrary-construction properties: If you can make a thing, you can compare it.
Again, I’m simply not seeing this in the paper you linked? As I said above, I simply do not see anything like that outside of section 9, which is irrelevant. Can you point to where you’re seeing this condition?
In the case of Savage, it’s not any particular axiom, but rather the setup. An action is a function from world-states to outcomes. If you can construct the function, the action (gamble) exists. That’s all there is to it. And the relevant functions are easy enough to construct, as I described above; you use P6 (the Archimedean condition, which also allows flipping coins, basically) to construct the events, and we have the outcomes by assumption. You assign the one to the other and there you go.
(If you don’t want to go getting the book out, you may want to read the summary of Savage I wrote earlier!)
So, would it be fair to sum this up as “it is not necessary to have preferences between two gambles if one of them takes on unbounded utility values”? Interesting. That doesn’t strike me as wholly unworkable, but I’m skeptical. In particular:
Can we phrase this without reference to utility functions? It would say a lot more for the possibility if we can.
What if you’re playing against Nature? A gamble can be any action; and in a world of unbounded utility functions, why should one believe that any action must have some bound on how much utility it can get you? Sure, sure, second law of thermodynamics and all that, but that’s just a feature of the paticular universe we happen to live in, not something that reshapes your preferences. (And if we were taking account of that sort of thing, we’d probably just say, oh, utility is bounded after all, in a kind of stupid way.) Notionally, it could be discovered to be wrong! It won’t happen, but it’s not probability literally 0.
Or are you trying to cut out a more limited class of gambles as impossible? I’m not clear on this, although I’m not certain it affects the results.
Anyway, yeah, as I said, my main objection is that I see no reason to believe that, if you have an unbounded utility function, Nature cannot offer you a St. Petersburg game. Or I mean, to the extent I do see reasons to believe that, they’re facts about the particular universe we happen to live in, that notionally could be discovered to be wrong.
This is exactly the sort of argument that I called “flimsy” above. My answer to these questions is that none of this is relevant.
Both of us are trying to extend our ideas about preferences from ordinary situations to extraordinary ones. (Like, I agree that some sort of total utilitarianism is a good heuristic for value under the conditions we’re familiar with.) This sort of extrapolation, to an unfamiliar realm, is always potentially dangerous. The question then becomes, what sort of tools can we expect to continue to work, without needing any sort of adjustment to the new conditions?
I do not expect speculation about the particular form preferences our would take under these unusual conditions to be trustworthy. Whereas basic coherence conditions had damn well better continue to hold, or else we’re barely even talking about sensible preferences anymore.
Or, to put it differently, my answer is, I don’t know, but the answer must satisfy basic coherence conditions. There’s simply no way that the idea that decision-theoretic utility has to increase linearly with number intelligent lives, is on anywhere near as solid ground as that! The mere fact that it’s stated in terms of a utility function in the first place, rather than in terms of something more basic, is something of a smell. Complicated statements we’re not even entirely sure how to formulate can easily break in a new context. Short simple statements that have to be true for reasons of simple coherence don’t break.
(Also, some of your questions don’t seem to actually appreciating what a bounded utility function would actually mean. It wouldn’t mean taking an unbounded utility function and then applying a cap to it. It would just mean something that naturally approaches 1 as things get better and 0 as things get worse. There is no point at which it approaches an asymptote; that’s not how asymptotes work. There is no limit to one’s valuing; presumably utility 1 does not actually occur. Or, at least, that’s how I infer it would have to work.)
In Fishburn’s “Bounded Expected Utility”, page 1055, end of first paragraph (as cited previously):
That depends on some earlier definitions, e.g. ℘d is a certain set of probability distributions (the “d” stands for “discrete”) defined with reference to some particular σ -algebra, but the important part is that last infinite sum: this is where all infinitary convex combinations are asserted to exist. Whether that is assigned to “background setup” or “axioms” does not matter. It has to be present, to allow the construction of St. Petersburg gambles.
Will address the rest of your comments later.
(This is more properly a followup to my sibling comment, but posting it here so you’ll see it.)
I already said that I think that thinking in terms of infinitary convex combinations, as you’re doing, is the wrong way to go about it; but it took me a bit to put together why that’s definitely the wrong way.
Specifically, it assumes probability! Fishburn, in the paper you link, assumes probability, which is why he’s able to talk about why infinitary convex combinations are or are not allowed (I mean, that and the fact that he’s not necessarily arbitrary actions).
Savage doesn’t assume probability! So if you want to disallow certain actions… how do you specify them? Or if you want to talk about convex combinations of actions—not just infinitary ones, any ones—how do you even define these?
In Savage’s framework, you have to prove that if two actions can be described by the same probabilities and outcomes, then they’re equivalent. E.g., suppose action A results in outcome X with probability 1⁄2 and outcome Y with probability 1⁄2, and suppose action B meets that same description. Are A and B equivalent? Well, yes, but that requires proof, because maybe A and B take outcome X on different sets of probability 1⁄2. (OK, in the two-outcome case it doesn’t really require “proof”, rather it’s basically just his definition of probability; but the more general case requires proof.)
So, until you’ve established that theorem, that it’s meaningful to combine gambles like that, and that the particular events yielding the probabilities aren’t relevant, one can’t really meaningfully define convex combinations at all. This makes it pretty hard to incorporate them into the setup or axioms!
More generally this should apply not only to Savage’s particular formalism, but any formalism that attempts to ground probability as well as utility.
Anyway yeah. As I think I already said, I think we should think of this in terms not of, what combinations of actions yield permitted actions, but rather whether there should be forbidden actions at all. (Note btw in the usual VNM setup there aren’t any forbidden actions either! Although there infinite gambles are, while not forbidden, just kind of ignored.) But this is in particular why trying to put it it in terms of convex combinations as you’ve done doesn’t really work from a fundamentals point of view, where there is no probability yet, only preferences.
Savage doesn’t assume probability or utility, but their construction is a mathematical consequence of the axioms. So although they come later in the exposition, they mathematically exist as soon as the axioms have been stated.
I am still thinking about that, and may be some time.
As a general outline of the situation, you read P1-7 ⇒ bounded utility as modus ponens: you accept the axioms and therefore accept the conclusion. I read it as modus tollens: the conclusion seems wrong, so I believe there is a flaw in the axioms. In the same way, the axioms of Euclidean geometry seemed very plausible as a description of the physical space we find ourselves in, but conflicts emerged with phenomena of electromagnetism and gravity, and eventually they were superseded as descriptions of physical space by the geometry of differential manifolds.
It isn’t possible to answer the question “which of P1-7 would I reject?” What is needed to block the proof of bounded utility is a new set of axioms, which will no doubt imply large parts of P1-7, but might not imply the whole of any one of them. If and when such a set of axioms can be found, P1-7 can be re-examined in their light.
Oh, so that’s what you’re referring to. Well, if you look at the theorem statements, you’ll see that P=P_d is an axiom that is explicitly called out in the theorems where it’s assumed; it’s not implictly part of Axiom 0 like you asserted, nor is it more generally left implicit at all.
I really think that thinking in terms of infinitary convex combinations is the wrong way to go about this here. As I said above: You don’t get a St. Petersburg gamble by taking some fancy convex combination, you do it by just constructing the function. (Or, in Fishburn’s framework, you do it by just constructing the distribution; same effect.) I guess without P=P_d you do end up relying on closure properties in Fishburn’s framework, but Savage’s framework just doesn’t work that way at all; and Fishburn with P=P_d, well, that’s not a closure property. Rather what Savage’s setup, and P=P_d have in common, is that they’re, like, arbitrary-construction properties: If you can make a thing, you can compare it.