George Rebane
Oi Weh! Like everyone else, I’ve been keeping a beady eye on the Trump and Biden campaigns for this November’s election. And supporting Trump vs Biden, I’ve been rooting for every sign that the Lip from the Hip is making the gains that show up in the polls. But then there are the legions upon legions of double dummies out there who don’t have a clue about Bumblebrain with his overarching incompetence and evil intentions for America.
In any case, I finally decided to formally calculate my own current belief (probability) that the former president will reoccupy the White House next January. The queasy feeling in my stomach was explained away when the answer came back just north of 0.45 – Trump is still the definite underdog.
The process used to correctly compute one’s subjective probability is based on the individual’s Risk Tolerance Function generated from his formal expression of monetary utility that is basic to decision theory. Once extracted (a separate process), the RTF is then used in a sequence of accepting/rejecting reference gambles under systematically modified payoff odds until convergence at the so-called indifference point which then yields the sought-after measure of belief/probability. The process does not appeal to pre-judgement of any probabilities, just the contingent based decisions to accept/reject bets (that the target event comes/is true) for significant dollar amounts within the decider’s personal financial spectrum and his current net worth. The process named ASPE stands for Automated & Secure Probability Elicitation.
Anyway, the 0.45 number does not make me feel good, and I sincerely hope that new information and results develop during the summer, that upon recalculation, will push my belief significantly above 0.50.
rebanesruminations.com 
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