Posting because the title of this linkpost was a big surprise for me.
even if Peters et al are wrong about expected utility, do you think they're right about the dangers of failing to understand ergodicity?
Not sure. I can't tell what additional information, if any, Peters is contributing that you can't already get from learning about the math of wagers and risk-averse utility functions.
Tangentially: reading about the history of gambling theory (the "unfinished game" problem, etc.) is pretty interesting.
Imagine how weird it was when people basically didn't understand expected value at all! Did casinos even know what they were doing, or did they somewhat routinely fail after picking the wrong game design? Did they only settle on profitable designs by accident? Are blackjack, roulette, and other very old games still with us because they happened not to bankrupt casinos that ran them, and were only later analyzed with tools capable of identifying whether the house had the edge?
ChristianKI is right - I was speculating that people would stop retiring. Updated my post to make that clearer.
While I'm not terribly familiar with the details, I've heard complaints of this happening at one university that I know of. There's an internal market where departments need to pay for using spaces within the university building. As a result, rooms that would otherwise be used will sit empty because the benefit of paying the rent isn't worth it.
This is confusing. Why doesn't the rent on the empty rooms fall until there are either no empty rooms or no buyers looking to use rooms? Any kind of auction mechanism (which is what I'd expect to see from something described as a "market") should exhibit the behavior I've described.
How are you calculating "opportunity cost"? Is it simply the land use conversion cost ($50,000)?