Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences California Institute of Technology Pasadena, California 91125 You Won’t Harm Me If You Fool Me
نویسندگان
چکیده
A decision maker faces a new theory of how certain events unfold over time. The theory matters for choices she needs to make, but possibly the theory is a fabrication. We show that there is a test which is guaranteed to pass a true theory, and which is also conservative: A false theory will only pass when adopting it over the decision maker’s initial theory would not cause substantial harm; if the agent is fooled she will not be harmed. We also study a society of conservative decision makers with different initial theories. We uncover pathological instances of our test: a society collectively rejects most theories, be they true or false. But we also find well-behaved instances of our test, collectively accepting true theories and rejecting false. Our tests builds on tests studied in the literature in the context of non-strategic inspectors. JEL classification numbers: C72,D83
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Peter Sokol-Hessner, Colin F. Camerer, and Elizabeth A. Phelps Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS), California Institute of Technology, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) and Computational and Neural Systems (CNS), California Institute of Technology, 1200 E. California Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91125, USA, and Department of Psychology, New York University, 6 Washing...
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