Subjective inference

[andrew.k....@gmail.com]

Hi all,

I'm writing to share a new paper about subjective inference (attached).

The basic idea is that an agent observes an abstract clue, and an analyst observes how the agent ranks some events on the basis of how corroborated they are by that clue. I refer to that ranking as an inference, and prove that if it satisfies the axioms of Villegas (1964) except for the classic qualitative probability axiom of monotonicity, then it has a unique signed measure representation. Under a mild additional assumption, the inference can be represented as a difference between a posterior and a prior such that the former is the conditional probability of the latter with respect to an assessed event that is interpreted as a clue guess. However, observation of a prior and posterior compatible with the inference could reveal that all guesses in such representations are wrong.

Any feedback is greatly appreciated!

Kind regards,

Andy