We develop a lottery procedure for selecting multiple winners that is strategy proof. The rule assigns points to each candidate based on any standard scoring rule method, and then uses one draw to select a single winning set of candidates in proportion to their collective score. In addition to being strategy proof, the lottery rule is also shown to have several other attractive normative proper...

By picking unpopular sets of numbers in a lottery, it is possible to increase one’s expected winnings. We have used the Maximum Entropy method to estimate the probability of each of the 14 million tickets being chosen by players in the UK National Lottery. We discuss the parallel solution of the non-linear system of equations on a variety of platforms and give results which indicate the returns...

This paper investigates the behaviour in repeated decision situations. The experimental study shows that subjects show low or no riskaversion, but put very high value on the opportunity to sell the lottery in every stage of the decision problem. There is evidence that risk attitudes depend on whether they are measured by comparing the certainty equivalent and the expected value of a lottery or ...

Most experiments on decision theory ask individual subjects to make more than one decision. The isolation hypothesis is commonly used to justify the choice of the random lottery incentive mechanism as the preferred payoff protocol. This research note reports on the main findings on the theoretical and empirical performance of different payoff mechanisms on eliciting individuals’ attitudes towar...

Let us suppose that organ transplant procedures have been perfected; in such circumstances if two dying patients could be saved by organ transplants then, if surgeons have the requisite organs in stock and no other needy patients, but nevertheless allow their patients to die, we would be inclined to say, and be justified in saying, that the patients died because the doctors refused to save them...

The lottery preparation, a new general kind of Laver preparation, works uniformly with supercompact cardinals, strongly compact cardinals, strong cardinals, measurable cardinals, or what have you. And like the Laver preparation, the lottery preparation makes these cardinals indestructible by various kinds of further forcing. A supercompact cardinal κ, for example, becomes fully indestructible b...

This paper is concerned with formal solutions to the lottery paradox on which high probability defeasibly warrants acceptance. It considers some recently proposed solutions of this type and presents an argument showing that these solutions are trivial in that they boil down to the claim that perfect probability is sufficient for rational acceptability. The argument is then generalized, showing ...

One version of the argument for design relies on the assumption that the apparent fine-tuning of the universe for the existence of life requires an explanation. I argue that the assumption is false. Philosophers who argue for the assumption usually appeal to analogies, such as the one in which a person was to draw a particular straw among a very large number of straws in order not to be killed....