Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ Decision, Causality and Pre-Determination

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

On what basis should we make decisions. We read a lot in our field about evidence-based decision-making (EDT). "You should rank your options by the strength of the evidence they provide for outcomes you value." But there are good arguments, outlined in this paper (35 page PDF), against this approach. An alternative is causal decision theory (CDT), "the idea that you should choose one of the options that you regard as most likely to cause valuable outcomes." This too has its weaknesses. The problem lies in the complexity of the semantics of subjunctive conditionals and in particular whether you are taking into account facts about possible worlds that would be unaffected by your decision.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Apr 29, 2024 02:23 a.m.

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