Matt Yglesias accepts my invitation to demonstrate the naivety of economic thinking about consequentialism. He proposes the following example

John is at the casino and he puts $100 on the number 12 spot at the roulette table. While the wheel is spinning, John dies suddenly. The body is removed and the casino manager finds John’s wife and sole heir Jane. The manager now needs to give Jane the money she’s inherited from John. Instead of just giving Jane the $100, however, he decides to cover the wheel and offer Jane the following choice. She can either choose to just take John’s $100 or else she can leave the $100 on the table and the manager will uncover the wheel. If it turns out that the ball has landed in the 12 slot Jane will get the $3,200 payoff, if not she will get nothing. Jane chooses to take the $100 so the manager gives it to her, then uncovers the wheel revealing that the ball had, in fact, landed on the 12.

Yglesias agrees that Jane adopted the correct decision procedure (since the odds were unfavorable), but nonetheless goes on to say

The purpose of the procedure, after all, is to get you the most money possible, and given these circumstances, Jane could have made more money by taking the bet. Thus, there is a sense in which Jane did the wrong thing

This example seems to me to suffer from exactly the same problems as the stock market example put up in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy which, the post informs me, is by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong .
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Consequentialism is the claim that we should judge the rightness of an action by the desirability of its consequences, as opposed, say, to its conformity with some concept of virtue or honour. As I mentioned last week, it is very closely tied to utilitarianism and is most appealing as a criterion for public policy rather than individual ethics or jurisprudence.

The big question in relation to consequentialism is how we assess the consequences of an action. And as usual there seems a huge divide between economists (particularly decision theorists) and philosophers on this point.
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It’s time for the Monday Message Board, where everyone gets to have their say on any topic (civilised discussion and no coarse language please).

I’ve managed to avoid comment on the downfall of the GG, so perhaps commentators will fill this glaring gap in my blog. But, as always, comments on any topic are welcome.

Tuesday update Lots of suggestions for a new GG. I’m backing Reithy myself.

And the other subthread relates to Collingwood-hatred. Joining in from his new site, , Tim Blair asks “Why do they hate us”, and promptly demonstrates why, by linking to this shameless piece of Victorian imperialism.

When All Else Fails: Government as the Ultimate Risk Manager by David Moss and The New Financial Order: Risk in the 21st century by Robert Shiller. These are both important books and I plan to review them in the near future.

I also watched Enigma on DVD, expecting it to be based on some combination of the breaking of the eponymous German code and the life of Alan Turing. Instead, it was dominated by an absurd spy thriller/action hero subplot – I should perhaps have been warned off by Tom Stoppard’s credit for the screenplay.

But watching this movie prompted a question. In movies of this kind, it’s necessary that the audience have some idea what’s actually involved in codebreaking (or similar esoteric devices). Surely there must be some other way of conveying the relevant info to us than to have one character ask a lot of dumb questions, giving another (usually the hero) a chance to deliver a lecture.

Another Monday, another Message Board. Now that everyone has forgotten about Iraq (except the Iraqis, of course), there’s lots to get our attention on all news fronts – universities, tree-clearing and the Murray-Darling – to name just a few. If I get time, I’ll post on these and other things, but why don’t you have your say first. As always, civilised discussion and no coarse language, please.

For the first (at least the first functioning) time on the new MT weblog, it’s time for Monday’s Message Board. Post comments on any topic (no coarse language and civilised discussion only please). I’m still interested in feedback on the new site, suggestions for additional features and so on.

Update Be sure to read Observa’s account of his family’s brush with paedophilia. It will help to inform discussion of this difficult problem.

It’s a public holiday here in Queensand (Labour Day, on which I hope to post more soon). But it’s a normal workday in most of Australia which means you have no excuse for not devoting your time and your employer’s Internet connection to posting incisive comments on today’s Monday Message Board. As always, civilised discussion and no coarse language, please.

Functional analysis by Rudin. I needed to check something for work but then I saw that Rudin had a proof of the prime number theorem using Riemann’s zeta function. It’s one of the great ironies of mathematics that a simple statement about the integers is most naturally proved by applying abstract analytical techniques to a function of complex numbers, and I decided I had to see how it was done, which entailed working through the theory of Fourier transforms and distributions.

There are ‘elementary’ proofs, most notably by Pal Erdos, that only use ordinary number theory, but elementary does not mean ‘easy’ in this context. I plan to try and work through one of the elementary proofs some time.

This reminds me to mention that my Erdos number is 3 (via Peter Wakker and Peter Fishburn). At a stretch, this blog could be claimed as a collaborative work, in which case all my commentators would obtain an Erdos number of 4 – highly prized in some circles.

*Thanks to my travels, everything is running behind. So I’ve skipped this week’s Word for Wednesday, and put in last weeks Sunday feature instead

Things have been a bit quiet for the last week, with the many holidays. This raises the question – would we better off with more public holidays, and more general observance of those holidays, or with less of both? Feel free to comment on this or anything else (no coarse language and civilised discussion, please).

Update The Message Board at its lively best, as the impact of front loading washing machines on underwear battles for mindshare with the economics of the gold standard

I hope everyone is having a great Easter weekend. For anyone who’d like to tell the world about it (or about anything else), here’s your chance to post your thoughts on any topic (no coarse language and civilised discussion, please).