7 Comments

As a convinced Knightian/ Keynesian on risk and uncertainty, and someone who thinks stories are a hugely important part of how we understand things, your post gives me a double sense of confirmation. Which is perhaps either unbearably dogmatic or itself vindication of what you say.

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Yes, narrative plausibility is why the Linda problem in behavioral economics is so misleading and actually a set up.

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I hadn't thought of that but, yes, what a great point

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I like the idea for the novel

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Great idea for SF novels not being written, I have a few too, but I don't see how narratives as we know them would even exists where an animal logic of causation does not exist. Logic is a hindsight. And as the Roman's said, truth is the daughter of time, so why bother finding/investigating guilt/credit/blame/reasons/ratio/closure.

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You could assign (1) to lack of plausibility (US standard for dismissing a complaint on the pleadings, although technically it is not the same as “makes no sense”) and (2) to the standard to survive summary judgment and get to a jury in a civil case (a reasonable jury could accept this version of events).

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I like this. I’ve always found attempts to quantify legal standards of proof maddeningly meaningless (barring “preponderance of the evidence”, which does work as a better than 50% chance).

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