Dutch book argument for probability theory

aka "how to profit off people's irrationalities".

The philosophical question of what it means to be rational is answered by the popular slogan "Rationality is systematized winning" -- so, in particular, a rational belief is one that is expected to deliver you a profit.

This is closely linked to the "practical" definition of probability -- assigning probability $p$ to observation $X$ means valuing at $p$ a unit wager on $X$ (an asset with payoff 1 if $X$ happens, an 0 otherwise) -- you are willing to buy the wager for any price less than $p$, and sell it for any price higher. 

(We use money to make things simple, but more fundamentally we have a cardinal utility function whose expectation we seek to maximize -- so this is a valid abstract definition and does not depend on a specific currency or monetary system.)

However, if you accept that probability is definitionally subjective (even if updated by evidence via Bayes's theorem, your priors are still subjective), then assigning a probability $p$ to a particular event cannot itself be rational or irrational. You can't quite calculate whether someone who holds that belief will make a profit or loss, because doing so would require assigning an underlying "objective" probability to $X$. 

You can only say that a person is irrational if you can prove that their beliefs always lead to them losing, regardless of the results of the observation. Such beliefs are said to be incoherent, a notion that is identical to the financial concept of arbitrage. Irrationality in this sense is about an inconsistency in beliefs about different, related observations.

Consider observations $X_1,\dots X_n$ (in the language of probability theory, these are elements of our sigma algebra). Suppose you assigned to them the probabilities $p_1,\dots p_n$. 

Your beliefs are irrational iff I can come up with a list of unit wagers (called a Dutch book) to trade with you that always deliver me a profit regardless of the outcome of each observation.

For example, if $X_1\subseteq X_2$ and you assign probabilities $p_1=0.5,p_2=0.1$, then I can buy from you a unit wager on $X_2$ and sell you a unit wager on $X_1$, and always make a profit.

The axioms of probability theory can then be shown to be equivalent to forbidding a Dutch book. If the values of all bets are positive between 0 and 1, the value of the bet on the entire sample space is 1 and bets are additive, then it becomes impossible to construct a Dutch book. Conversely, a violation of any of these axioms allows a bet on something equivalent to the sample space to be traded for less than or greater than 1, allowing for a Dutch book.

Similar Dutch book arguments can be extended to conditionalization and Bayes's theorme.

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