But doesn’t this make precommitting have a positive expected utility to students, so students would precommit to whatever they thought was most likely to happen and the teacher would still expect more late papers from having this policy.
Well they can’t pick circumstances that are actually likely to come about. If such circumstances can be foreseen the professor will have expected the student to finish the paper earlier just in case.The more likely the event the the more likely the professor is to make that determination and not accept the excuse. Presumably there is some ideal rate of unlikelihood that satisfies the professor’s utility function.
But doesn’t this make precommitting have a positive expected utility to students, so students would precommit to whatever they thought was most likely to happen and the teacher would still expect more late papers from having this policy.
Well they can’t pick circumstances that are actually likely to come about. If such circumstances can be foreseen the professor will have expected the student to finish the paper earlier just in case.The more likely the event the the more likely the professor is to make that determination and not accept the excuse. Presumably there is some ideal rate of unlikelihood that satisfies the professor’s utility function.
On the other hand, shit happens, and anyone with good sense would have done the paper as soon as they could, just in case.