{"id":25,"date":"2008-04-13T16:05:13","date_gmt":"2008-04-13T16:05:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meeseeks:5080\/blog\/?p=25"},"modified":"2023-03-02T22:27:44","modified_gmt":"2023-03-02T22:27:44","slug":"sexapedalianism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/2008\/04\/sexapedalianism\/","title":{"rendered":"Sexapedalianism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Statistician Dennis Lindley wrote a book called “Making Decisions”<\/em> which included the stunningly-arrogant sentence: “The main conclusion [of this book] is that there is essentially only one way to reach a decision sensibly.”<\/em> He justifies this outrageous claim, contrary to all human experience and a moment’s reflection, by saying that, “any deviation from the precepts is liable to lead the decision-maker into procedures which are demonstrably absurd — or as we shall say, incoherent.”<\/em> (page vii, second edition, 1985). There follows an account of maximum-expected utility decision theory, which is justified in the standard way using Dutch Book arguments (considerations of certain infinite gambles).<\/p>\n

I have never trusted these Dutch Book arguments, first because we all live in a finite world, and so games in which one party is guaranteed to win after an infinitely-large time strike me as games selling pie-in-the-sky. Everyone is rich eventually when investing in a Ponzi scheme, also. And second, gambling is such a socially- and culturally-embedded practice that I cannot possibly conceive how it could be used to justify decision-making procedures claiming universal validity. (For a start, to gamble you need to believe that events in the universe are not pre-determined, something which perhaps half of humanity does not currently believe.) The statistician Cosma Shalizi over at Three-Toed Sloth <\/a>has a nice parody of the advice of decision-theory ideologues here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A<\/strong>: Hey, you over there, the one walking! You’re doing it wrong.
\nB<\/strong>: Excuse me?
\nA<\/strong>: You’re only using two feet! You should keep at least three of your six in contact with the ground at all times.
\nB<\/strong>: …
\nA<\/strong>: Look, it’s easily proved that’s the optimal way to walk. Otherwise you’d be unstable<\/a>, and if you were walking past a Dutchman he could kick one of your legs with his clogs and knock you over<\/a> and then lecture you on how to make pancakes.
\nB<\/strong>: What? Why a Dutchman?
\nA<\/strong>: You can’t trust the Dutch, they’re everywhere! Besides, every time you walk it’s really just like running the gauntlet at Schiphol<\/a>.
\nB<\/strong>: It is?
\nA<\/strong>: Don’t change the subject! Walking like that you’re actually sessile!
\nB<\/strong>: I don’t seem to be rooted in place…
\nA<\/strong>: It’s a technical term. Look, it’s very simple, these are all implications of the axioms of the theory of optimal walking and you’re breaking them all. I can’t get over how immobile you are, walking like that.
\nB<\/strong>: “Immobile”?
\nA<\/strong>: Well, you’re not walking properly, are you?
\nB<\/strong>: Your theory seems to assume I have six legs.
\nA<\/strong>: Yes, exactly!
\nB<\/strong>: I only have two legs. It doesn’t describe what I do at all.
\nA<\/strong>: It’s a normative<\/em> theory.
\nB<\/strong>: For something with six legs.
\nA<\/strong>: Yes.
\nB<\/strong>: I have two legs. Does your theory have any advice about how to walk on two legs?
\nA<\/strong>: Could you try crawling on your hands and knees?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Statistician Dennis Lindley wrote a book called “Making Decisions” which included the stunningly-arrogant sentence: “The main conclusion [of this book] is that there is essentially only one way to reach a decision sensibly.” He justifies this outrageous claim, contrary to all human experience and a moment’s reflection, by saying that, “any deviation from the precepts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,23,25,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-decision-theory","category-economics","category-forecasting","p1","y2008","m04","d13","h16"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11260,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions\/11260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}