Yes, nice points. If one is committed to contingent people not counting, then one has to say that C is worse than B. But it still seems to me like an implausible verdict, especially if one of B and C is going to be chosen (and hence those contingent people are going to become actual).
It seems like the resulting view also runs into problems of sequential choice. If B is best out of {A, B, C}, but C is best out of {B, C}, then perhaps what you’re required to do is initially choose B and then (once A is no longer available) later switch to C, even if doing so is costly. And that seems like a bad feature of a view, since you could have costlessly chosen C in your first choice.
I think you’d still just choose A at the start here if you’re considering what will happen ahead of time and reasoning via backwards induction on behalf of the necessary people. (Assuming C is worse than A for the original necessary people.)
If you don’t use backwards induction, you’re going to run into a lot of suboptimal behaviour in sequential choice problems, even if you satisfy expected utility theory axioms in one-shot choices.
Yes, nice points. If one is committed to contingent people not counting, then one has to say that C is worse than B. But it still seems to me like an implausible verdict, especially if one of B and C is going to be chosen (and hence those contingent people are going to become actual).
It seems like the resulting view also runs into problems of sequential choice. If B is best out of {A, B, C}, but C is best out of {B, C}, then perhaps what you’re required to do is initially choose B and then (once A is no longer available) later switch to C, even if doing so is costly. And that seems like a bad feature of a view, since you could have costlessly chosen C in your first choice.
I think you’d still just choose A at the start here if you’re considering what will happen ahead of time and reasoning via backwards induction on behalf of the necessary people. (Assuming C is worse than A for the original necessary people.)
If you don’t use backwards induction, you’re going to run into a lot of suboptimal behaviour in sequential choice problems, even if you satisfy expected utility theory axioms in one-shot choices.