Re: ?Value of information without utilities?

Bob Welch (bwelch@gensym.com)
Mon, 24 May 1999 14:24:10 -0600

>I find it hard to envision a notion of value of information that is not
>somehow value related. I'd be interested in anyone who thinks he/she can.
>

FYI

I believe Professor Kenneth Arrow, in a course he gave at MIT and Stanford,
demonstrated an impossibility theorem for Shannon's information measure and
other "value less" measures of information. Given the measure, one can find
a value function such that information content, as measures by the
"valueless" measure, gives incorrect decisions from the point of view of
the value function. Sorry I don't have the reference. Perhaps it is in his
book, the Economics of Information.

Bob Welch