Adam Brandenburger, Patricia Contreras-Tejada, Pierfrancesco La Mura, Giannicola Scarpa, and Kai Steverson's "Agreement and Disagreement in a Non-Classical World," published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A
July 31, 2023
The Agreement Theorem (Aumann, 1976) states that if two Bayesian agents start with a common prior, then they cannot have common knowledge that they hold different posterior probabilities of some underlying event of interest. In short, the two agents cannot "agree to disagree." This result applies in the classical domain where classical probability theory applies. But in non-classical domains, such as the quantum world, classical probability theory does not apply. Inspired principally by their use in quantum mechanics, we employ signed probabilities to investigate the epistemics of the non-classical world. We find that here, too, it cannot be common knowledge that two agents assign different probabilities to an event of interest. However, in a non-classical domain, unlike the classical case, it can be common certainty that two agents assign different probabilities to an event of interest. Finally, in a non-classical domain, it cannot be common certainty that two agents assign different probabilities, if communication of their common certainty is possible — even if communication does not take place.
Adam Brandenburger is the J.P. Valles Professor of Business Economics and Strategy.
Read the full paper here.