If a student wants to pass his history test tomorrow, and he thinks there’s a 60% chance he will if he doesn’t study and a 80% chance he will if he does study, then he should study.
Let’s work out this example. “A student wants to pass his history test tomorrow.” What does that even mean? The student doesn’t have any immediate experience of the history test tomorrow, it’s only grasped as an abstract concept. Without any further grounding he might as well want to be post-utopian. “he thinks there’s a 60% chance he will if he doesn’t study and a 80% chance he will if he does study” Ahh, there’s how the concept is grounded in terms of actions. The student considers not studying as equivalent to 0.6 times passing the history test, and studying as 0.8 times passing. Now his preferences translate into preferences over actions. “Then he should study.” Because that’s what his preference over actions tells him to prefer.
In other words, probability estimates are a method for turning preferences over abstract concepts into preferences over immediate experiences. This is the method people prefer to use for many abstractions, particularly abstractions about “the future” with the presumption that these abstraction will in “the future” become immediate experience, but it is not necessary and people may prefer to use other methods for different abstractions.
Let’s work out this example. “A student wants to pass his history test tomorrow.” What does that even mean? The student doesn’t have any immediate experience of the history test tomorrow, it’s only grasped as an abstract concept. Without any further grounding he might as well want to be post-utopian. “he thinks there’s a 60% chance he will if he doesn’t study and a 80% chance he will if he does study” Ahh, there’s how the concept is grounded in terms of actions. The student considers not studying as equivalent to 0.6 times passing the history test, and studying as 0.8 times passing. Now his preferences translate into preferences over actions. “Then he should study.” Because that’s what his preference over actions tells him to prefer.
In other words, probability estimates are a method for turning preferences over abstract concepts into preferences over immediate experiences. This is the method people prefer to use for many abstractions, particularly abstractions about “the future” with the presumption that these abstraction will in “the future” become immediate experience, but it is not necessary and people may prefer to use other methods for different abstractions.