There’s an important category of choices: the ones where any good choice is “acting as if” something is true.
That is, there are two possible worlds. And there’s one choice best if you knew you were in world 1, and another choice best if you knew you were in world 2. And, in addition, under any probabilistic mixture of the two worlds, one of those two choices is still optimal.
The hotel example falls into this category. So, one of the important reasons to recognize this category is to avoid a half-speed response to uncertainty.
Many choices don’t fall into this category. You can tell because in many decision-making problems, gathering more information is a good decision. But, this is never acting as if you knew one of the possibilities for certain.
Arguably in your example, information-seeking actually was the best solution: pull over and take out a map or use a GPS.
It seems like another important category of choices is those where the best option is trying the world 1 choice for a specified amount of time and then trying the world 2 choice. Perhaps these are the choices where the best source of information is observing whether something works? Reminds me of two-armed bandit problems, where acting-as-if and investigating manifest in the same kind of choice (pulling a lever).
There’s an important category of choices: the ones where any good choice is “acting as if” something is true.
That is, there are two possible worlds. And there’s one choice best if you knew you were in world 1, and another choice best if you knew you were in world 2. And, in addition, under any probabilistic mixture of the two worlds, one of those two choices is still optimal.
The hotel example falls into this category. So, one of the important reasons to recognize this category is to avoid a half-speed response to uncertainty.
Many choices don’t fall into this category. You can tell because in many decision-making problems, gathering more information is a good decision. But, this is never acting as if you knew one of the possibilities for certain.
Arguably in your example, information-seeking actually was the best solution: pull over and take out a map or use a GPS.
It seems like another important category of choices is those where the best option is trying the world 1 choice for a specified amount of time and then trying the world 2 choice. Perhaps these are the choices where the best source of information is observing whether something works? Reminds me of two-armed bandit problems, where acting-as-if and investigating manifest in the same kind of choice (pulling a lever).