Thursday Seminar -- Dec 11 [Last seminar of the year]

[Nuhu Osman Attah]

Hello Everyone, 

This week, the Thursday Seminar Series welcomes Joe Roussos, who will be presenting on December 11th, at 3:30pm, in the RSSS Auditorium (room 1.28). This is the final Thursday Seminar of the year. Title and abstract are below.

Other events in the day include: 

- A grads-only pre-talk session with the speaker in room 6.68 at 2:00pm;

- Afternoon tea in the School of Philosophy tearoom at 3:00pm;

- Drinks at Badger & Co at 5:00pm;

- Dinner at Kathmandu Momo House at 6:30pm, half-subsidized for grad students (put your name down here if you would like to join).

Title: Continuity, Catastrophic Risk, and Severe Uncertainty

Abstract: The Continuity axiom of expected utility theory implies that no catastrophe is so bad that one should not be willing to accept a gamble that might result in that catastrophe, as long as the gamble is sufficiently likely to instead result in some improvement on the status quo. This is implied by most normative decision theories, including risk averse alternatives to expected utility theory. We argue that when there is significant uncertainty about the probabilities, these trade-offs are not warranted. Rather than opting for an ambiguity decision theory we suggest that one can achieve the required caution by rejecting Continuity and using something like Steel, Bartha and DesRoches's lexical utility theory. However, unlike Bartha and DesRoches (2021) and Steel and Bartha (2023), we argue that there are policy situations with catastrophic outcomes in which one should use expected utility theory: those with reliable probabilities.

[Note: All visitors (faculty, graduate students, undergraduates) are welcome to join for dinner. Faculty dine at a rate of ~$30.00 AUD, and graduate students and undergraduates at a rate of roughly $15.00 AUD.]

[n.osma...@gmail.com]

Hi all,

Update: Dinner will be at Bistro Nguyen's, not at Kathmandu Momo House.

Best,

Osman.