Daniel Ellsberg was a strategic analyst with the RAND Corporation, and a defense department and state department official who served in Vietnam. He later revealed to the U.S. Senate and the press the Pentagon Papers, a 7,000 page top secret study of U.S. decision making in Vietnam from 1945 to 1968. For this he faced a trial and a sentence of 115 years in prison, but all charges were dismissed on grounds of gross governmental misconduct against him, which led to the conviction of a number of White House aids and figured in the impeachment proceedings against President Nixon.
Acknowledgments
Note to Reader
Foreword, Isaac Levi
1. Ambiguity and Risk
Vagueness, Confidence, and the Weight of Arguments
The Nature and Uses of Normative Theory
The Validation of Normative Propositions
The Utility Axioms as Norms
Normative Theory and Empirical Research
2. The Bernoulli Proposition
A Possible Counterexample: Are there Uncertainties that are Not Risks?
Vulgar Evaluations of Risk
3. The Measurement of Definite Opinions
von Neumann-Morgenstern Utilities
Probability as Price
"Coherence" and "Definiteness" of Probability-Prices
Appendix to Chapter Three
On Making a Fool of Oneself: The Requirement of Coherence
Acceptable Odds: Definite, Coherent, and Otherwise
4. Opinions and Actions: Which Come First?
The Logic of Degrees of Belief
Opinions that Make Horse Races
Postulate 2: the "Sure-Thing Principle"
Intuitive Probabilities and "Vagueness"
Appendix to Chapter Four
The Savage Postulates
The Koopman Axioms
5. Uncertainties that are Not Risks
The "Three-Color Urn" Example
Vulgar Evaluations of Ambiguity
Appendix to Chapter Five
6. Why Are Some Uncertainties Not Risks?
Decision Criteria for "Complete Ignorance"
Decision Criteria for "Partial Ignorance"
7. The "Restricted Hurwicz Criterion"
The "Restricted Bayes/Hurwicz Criterion"
Boldness and Prudence: the "n-Color Urn" Example
Ignorance, Probability, and Varieties of Gamblers
8. Ambiguity and the Utility Axioms
The Pratt/Raiffa Criticisms and the Value of Randomization
Rubin's Axiom
Allais and the Sure-Thing Principle
Winning at Russian Roulette
Bibliography
