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Robert Nozick was an American philosopher. He held the Joseph Pellegrino University Professorship at Harvard University, and was president of the American Philosophical Association. He is best known for his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), a libertarian answer to John Rawls' A Theory of Justice (1971), in which Nozick proposes his minimal state as the only justifiable form of government. His later work Philosophical Explanations (1981) advanced notable epistemological claims, namely his counterfactual theory of knowledge. It won Phi Beta Kappa society's Ralph Waldo Emerson Award the following year.
In philosophy and mathematics, Newcomb's paradox, also known as Newcomb's problem, is a thought experiment involving a game between two players, one of whom is able to predict the future.
In economics and business decision-making, a sunk cost is a cost that has already been incurred and cannot be recovered. Sunk costs are contrasted with prospective costs, which are future costs that may be avoided if action is taken. In other words, a sunk cost is a sum paid in the past that is no longer relevant to decisions about the future. Even though economists argue that sunk costs are no longer relevant to future rational decision-making, people in everyday life often take previous expenditures in situations, such as repairing a car or house, into their future decisions regarding those properties.
In economics and game theory, a participant is considered to have superrationality if they have perfect rationality but assume that all other players are superrational too and that a superrational individual will always come up with the same strategy as any other superrational thinker when facing the same problem. Applying this definition, a superrational player who assumes they are playing against a superrational opponent in a prisoner's dilemma will cooperate while a rationally self-interested player would defect.
The St. Petersburg paradox or St. Petersburg lottery is a paradox involving the game of flipping a coin where the expected payoff of the lottery game is infinite but nevertheless seems to be worth only a very small amount to the participants. The St. Petersburg paradox is a situation where a naïve decision criterion that takes only the expected value into account predicts a course of action that presumably no actual person would be willing to take. Several resolutions to the paradox have been proposed, including the impossible amount of money a casino would need to continue the game indefinitely.
Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball Company[1893] 1 QB 256 is an English contract law decision by the Court of Appeal, which held an advertisement containing certain terms to get a reward constituted a binding unilateral offer that could be accepted by anyone who performed its terms. It is notable for its treatment of contract and of puffery in advertising, for its curious subject matter associated with medical quackery, and how the influential judges developed the law in inventive ways. Carlill is frequently discussed as an introductory contract case, often one of the first cases a law student studies in the law of contract.
In decision theory, economics, and probability theory, the Dutch book arguments are a set of results showing that agents must satisfy the axioms of rational choice to avoid a kind of self-contradiction called a Dutch book. A Dutch book or money pump is a set of bets that ensures a guaranteed loss, i.e. the gambler will lose money no matter what happens. A set of beliefs and preferences is called coherent if it cannot result in a Dutch book.
In economics, dynamic inconsistency or time inconsistency is a situation in which a decision-maker's preferences change over time in such a way that a preference can become inconsistent at another point in time. This can be thought of as there being many different "selves" within decision makers, with each "self" representing the decision-maker at a different point in time; the inconsistency occurs when not all preferences are aligned.
The two envelopes problem, also known as the exchange paradox, is a paradox in probability theory. It is of special interest in decision theory and for the Bayesian interpretation of probability theory. It is a variant of an older problem known as the necktie paradox. The problem is typically introduced by formulating a hypothetical challenge like the following example:
Imagine you are given two identical envelopes, each containing money. One contains twice as much as the other. You may pick one envelope and keep the money it contains. Having chosen an envelope at will, but before inspecting it, you are given the chance to switch envelopes. Should you switch?
Rational egoism is the principle that an action is rational if and only if it maximizes one's self-interest. As such, it is considered a normative form of egoism, though historically has been associated with both positive and normative forms. In its strong form, rational egoism holds that to not pursue one's own interest is unequivocally irrational. Its weaker form, however, holds that while it is rational to pursue self-interest, failing to pursue self-interest is not always irrational.
Kavka is a Czech, Slovak and Ukrainian surname. Notable people with the surname include:
The lottery paradox arises from Henry E. Kyburg Jr. considering a fair 1,000-ticket lottery that has exactly one winning ticket. If that much is known about the execution of the lottery, it is then rational to accept that some ticket will win.
The necktie paradox is a puzzle and paradox with a subjective interpretation of probability theory describing a paradoxical bet advantageous to both involved parties. The two-envelope paradox is a variation of the necktie paradox.
Causal decision theory (CDT) is a school of thought within decision theory which states that, when a rational agent is confronted with a set of possible actions, one should select the action which causes the best outcome in expectation. CDT contrasts with evidential decision theory (EDT), which recommends the action which would be indicative of the best outcome if one received the "news" that it had been taken.
In rhetoric and ethics, "two wrongs don't make a right" and "two wrongs make a right" are phrases that denote philosophical norms. "Two wrongs make a right" has been considered as a fallacy of relevance, in which an allegation of wrongdoing is countered with a similar allegation. Its antithesis, "two wrongs don't make a right", is a proverb used to rebuke or renounce wrongful conduct as a response to another's transgression. "Two wrongs make a right" is considered "one of the most common fallacies in Western philosophy".
In philosophy, Pascal's mugging is a thought experiment demonstrating a problem in expected utility maximization. A rational agent should choose actions whose outcomes, when weighted by their probability, have higher utility. But some very unlikely outcomes may have very great utilities, and these utilities can grow faster than the probability diminishes. Hence the agent should focus more on vastly improbable cases with implausibly high rewards; this leads first to counter-intuitive choices, and then to incoherence as the utility of every choice becomes unbounded.
An intention is a mental state in which a person commits themselves to a course of action. Having the plan to visit the zoo tomorrow is an example of an intention. The action plan is the content of the intention while the commitment is the attitude towards this content. Other mental states can have action plans as their content, as when one admires a plan, but differ from intentions since they do not involve a practical commitment to realizing this plan. Successful intentions bring about the intended course of action while unsuccessful intentions fail to do so. Intentions, like many other mental states, have intentionality: they represent possible states of affairs.
Roko's basilisk is a thought experiment which states that an otherwise benevolent artificial superintelligence (AI) in the future would be incentivized to create a virtual reality simulation to torture anyone who knew of its potential existence but did not directly contribute to its advancement or development, in order to incentivize said advancement. It originated in a 2010 post at discussion board LessWrong, a rationalist web forum. The thought experiment's name derives from the poster of the article (Roko) and the basilisk, a mythical creature capable of destroying enemies with its stare.
The Missing Billionaires: A Guide to Better Financial Decisions is a 2023 book by James White and Victor Haghani. Haghani was a founding partner of Long-Term Capital Management.
