Leonard Jimmie Savage was a pioneer in modern decision theory and a disciple of Frank Plumpton Ramsey, whose story occupies the final chapter of The Big Questions.
In 1954, Savage wrote a lovely and highly influential little book called The Foundations of Statistics, which starts with six simple axioms about human preferences — one of which says that if you prefer a dog to a cat, then you’ll prefer an 11% chance of a dog to an 11% chance of a cat (and likewise for any other percentage). From these axioms, he drew deep and surprising conclusions about human behavior. This work underlies much of modern game theory, decision theory and economics in general.
According to legend (and I have reason to suspect this legend is actually true), Professor Savage was giving a talk one day when he was interrupted by the French econometrician (and then-future Nobel Prize winner) Maurice Allais, who asked Savage if he’d be willing to answer two questions about his own preferences. Savage said sure. These were the questions:
