Heuristics for clueless agents: how to get away with ignoring what matters most in ordinary decision-making
David Thorstad and Andreas Mogensen (Global Priorities Institute, Oxford University)
GPI Working Paper No. 2-2020
Even our most mundane decisions have the potential to significantly impact the long-term future, but we are often clueless about what this impact may be. In this paper, we aim to characterize and solve two problems raised by recent discussions of cluelessness, which we term the Problems of Decision Paralysis and the Problem of Decision-Making Demandingness. After reviewing and rejecting existing solutions to both problems, we argue that the way forward is to be found in the distinction between procedural and substantive rationality. Clueless agents have access to a variety of heuristic decision-making procedures which are often rational responses to the decision problems that they face. By simplifying or even ignoring information about potential long-term impacts, heuristics produce effective decisions without demanding too much of ordinary decision-makers. We outline two classes of problem features bearing on the rationality of decision-making procedures for clueless agents, and show how these features can be used to shed light on our motivating problems.
Other working papers
Non-additive axiologies in large worlds – Christian Tarsney and Teruji Thomas (Global Priorities Institute, Oxford University)
Is the overall value of a world just the sum of values contributed by each value-bearing entity in that world? Additively separable axiologies (like total utilitarianism, prioritarianism, and critical level views) say ‘yes’, but non-additive axiologies (like average utilitarianism, rank-discounted utilitarianism, and variable value views) say ‘no’…
Crying wolf: Warning about societal risks can be reputationally risky – Lucius Caviola (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford) et al.
Society relies on expert warnings about large-scale risks like pandemics and natural disasters. Across ten studies (N = 5,342), we demonstrate people’s reluctance to warn about unlikely but large-scale risks because they are concerned about being blamed for being wrong. In particular, warners anticipate that if the risk doesn’t occur, they will be perceived as overly alarmist and responsible for wasting societal resources. This phenomenon appears in the context of natural, technological, and financial risks…
Against Anti-Fanaticism – Christian Tarsney (Population Wellbeing Initiative, University of Texas at Austin)
Should you be willing to forego any sure good for a tiny probability of a vastly greater good? Fanatics say you should, anti-fanatics say you should not. Anti-fanaticism has great intuitive appeal. But, I argue, these intuitions are untenable, because satisfying them in their full generality is incompatible with three very plausible principles: acyclicity, a minimal dominance principle, and the principle that any outcome can be made better or worse. This argument against anti-fanaticism can be…