On Thu, Apr 18, 2002 at 01:39:59PM -0700, Brent Meeker wrote: > Exactly. So what does the assumption about the complete mathematical > description add?
It's so that your preferences are well defined. > > As a positive theory, decision theory is going to be wrong sometimes (e.g. > > not predict what people actually do), but it may be able to make up for > > that with conceptual elegance and simplicity. > > Hmm. Maybe I misunderstood your objective. I thought it was to decide > what action to take - not to predict what some person will do. Did you not understand the distinction between "positive" and "normative"? A positive theory explains and predicts, a normative theory tells you what you should do. I'm interested in both.
