Spring 2026 Computer Science 4580. 1/23/2026

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Note: you can find this page by going to the syllabus in canvas and then clicking "home" and "lectures" and "0123.html".

Image of the Day

Economic decision theory is prone to the above error.

Logical Problem of the Day

You get a letter in the mail predicting the winner of a heavyweight championship match a few weeks before the event.

There's no other information in the letter, just the prediction. Nothing else.

You don't take it seriously, thinking it's a prank from a friend. Nevertheless, the prediction turns out to be correct.

You receive subsequent letters predicting the winners of events a few days before they happen. The letters correctly predict the winners of the Heavyweight Championship, the World Series, the NBA Finals, the most recent elections, and the World Chess Championship. They predict the NCAA basketball finals, and the Rose Bowl...

You are amazed. These letters are always correct in their predictions, even though some of these wins are upsets.

Shortly after the Rose Bowl, you receive a letter stating that if you send 10 grand to a certain address, one week before the Super Bowl, you'll receive a letter with the winner of that event.

Should you do it, and why?

https://pollev.com/slade You may also download the app to your phone. Use the "slade" poll id.

Canvas Quiz of the Day (need daily password)

Most days, there will be a simple canvas quiz related to the lecture. You need a password to activate the quiz, which I will provide in class. These quizzes will count toward your class participation grade. The quiz is available only during class.

Click for today's quiz.

Announcements

  • Let us know if you have an upcoming event you would like to share with the class.

  • Next Wednesday, we have a guest speaker, Dan Russell, ex-Google. We will go out to dinner with Dan at Mory's at 6pm, including 5-6 students. If you are interested in coming to dinner, please enter your name in the designated Discussion in canvas (not Ed Discussion).

    Lecture

  • I have office hours Mondays and Wednesdays from 2:30-3:30pm pm, on zoom, id 459 434 2854.

  • Complete the online student information sheet.

    Assignments

    You can begin work on hw 1 Note: some of you took CS 370 last year which had this same problem. If so, I suggest that you tackle it using AI this time.

    The Realm of Decisions

  • See Beliefs, Reasoning, and Decision Making: Psycho-Logic in Honor of Bob Abelson. Chapter 2, The Illusion of Calculated Decisions, Ellen Langer. pp 33-53. She gives a shout out to Wittgenstein!

    She discusses nontransitive decision choices, which violate economic decision theory. nontransitive choices.

    Also, mindfulness vs mindlessness can be viewed as the difference between source and object code. Python defaults to "mindless" __pycache__ files. It is not efficient to recompile source code every time if nothing has changed. make has similar behavior.

    Langer mentions scripts. These can also be viewed as cached decisions leading to a kind of mindlessness. Alexa has "skills" which are similar to scripts. Google Home Assistant has similar capabilities, as does Apple's siri.

  • We shall explore Langer's mindlessness / mindfulness dichotomy for decision making. For the next class and the coming weeks: Give an example of an explanation you thought interesting because it was especially good or bad. It can be personal or from the news. Use the Discussions section of canvas (not Ed Discussion). You earn a quiz point by posting to Discussions. Try to analyze it along the mindless / mindful spectrum.

  • Truth is more complicated that the logicians would have you believe. Quotes about Truth

  • Economic Decision Theory bounded rationality.

  • God and the lottery ticket story.

  • Tic-tac-toe playing chicken, Calvin Trillin.

  • Slade's talk at Amazon - Goal-based decision making.

  • Behavioral Economics

  • PIMCO Behavioral Science

  • What is a correct decision? See A Realistic Model of Rationality. This short paper provides a high-level introduction to the topics we will discuss in this course: goals, plans, resources, relationships, goal adoption, explanations, subjective decisions, emotions, advice, and persuasion. We contrast it with the standard economic decision theory. We want to develop a theory that can be implemented in a computer program.

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