
Small Probabilities and High Stakes by Christian Tarsney
What price should you be willing to pay for a tiny probability of an astronomically large gain, or to avoid a tiny probability of an astronomically large loss? Should you be willing to pay any finite price, if the potential gains or losses are large enough? Fanaticism says you should, while anti-fanaticism says you should not. Focusing on morally motivated decision-making, this Element explores arguments for and against both positions, ultimately defending the intermediate view that rationality permits a range of dispositions toward extreme risks, while ruling out the most comprehensive forms of both fanaticism and anti-fanaticism. The final section considers practical implications, arguing that under real-world circumstances any view satisfying a minimal principle of rationality must very often rank options by expected value, and thus sometimes give great weight to intuitively small probabilities, but that we nonetheless retain rational flexibility in sufficiently extreme cases.-
Rational Choice Using Imprecise Probabilities and Utilities
- Rational Attitudes to Risk
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Judgment Aggregation
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Epistemic Game Theory
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Opinion Pooling
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Rationality and Time Bias
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Preference Change
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Beyond Uncertainty
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The History and Methodology of Expected Utility
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The Measurement of Subjective Probability
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Evidential Decision Theory
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Dutch Book Arguments
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Evolutionary Game Theory
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Commitment and Resoluteness in Rational Choice
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Money-Pump Arguments
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781009571609 |
| ISBN 10 | 1009571605 |
| Title | Small Probabilities and High Stakes |
| Author | Christian Tarsney |
| Series | Elements In Decision Theory And Philosophy |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
| Year published | 2026-02-28 |
| Number of pages | 75 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |













