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Of course, an important caveat is that absence of evidence is not necessary evidence of absence. Ideally, you would want some poll among economists, or at least well known economics. This being, said the evidence and lack of thereof that we currently have strongly points toward the conclusion that the consensus is that Peters work is irrelevant.

Of course, an important caveat is that absence of evidence is not necessary evidence of absence. Ideally, you would want some poll among economists, or at least well known economists. This being, said the evidence and lack of thereof that we currently have strongly points toward the conclusion that the consensus is that Peters work is irrelevant.

The Peters work is now already 2 years old, given that it is so widely known, and given that the work basically claims that our whole expected utility framework even in its general and behavioral applications is both wrong and not useful (and expected utility is widely used workhorse model, and even though one can criticize it on a behavioral grounds it remains useful and behavioral economics still applies the idea in behavioral setting), you would expect that people would jump at the idea and start widely applying it, or at least testing it. Yet that is not what is happening. Rather the paper was met by a silence occasionally interrupted by cricket's chirp.

The Peters work is now already 2 years old, given that it is so widely known, and given that the work basically claims that our whole expected utility framework even in its general and behavioral applications is both wrong and not useful, you would expect that people would jump at the idea and start widely applying it, or at least testing it.

This is because expected utility is widely used workhorse model, and even though one can criticize it on a behavioral grounds it remains useful, the same way as Newtonian Physics, remains useful in presence of general relativity. In the areas where it is not useful we have behavioral models that still build upon the idea of expected utility or alternative theories that do not require ergodicity (e.g. like prospect theory etc., see Kahneman Thinking Fast and Slow for discussion).

Yet we do not see people at mass abandoning either expected utility or other more generalized concepts amass. Rather the paper was met by a silence occasionally interrupted by cricket's chirp.

Well there is no opinion poll among economists on specifically this problem, but what can be judged from reaction of economists the consensus is that the Ole Peters paper is misguided and irrelevant at best. I think the economists' consensus was already very well and succinctly summed up by Doctor, Wakker and Wang you cite (and is an example of this phenomena).

For starters, on twitter R. Thaler (Nobel Prize) called it hogwash, if a Nobel Prize winner for work on decision making and behavioral economics so readily dismisses your idea about how humans make decision under uncertainity its a red flag. This work was also criticized by other notable economists such as Farmer.

However, even more can be judged by the non-reaction of economists. The Ole Peters paper was so widely circulated that it is safe to assume that majority of economists know about (I would bet that if you will ask at your university department about "that ergodicity paper" most of them will know what you are talking about). It is unbelievable but this paper got so much free press that it should an case study in marketing (it was covered and uncritically cited by major media outlets such as Bloomberg and it even got a TED talk).

So it is safe to assume at very least most economists are aware of the Peter's work existence. Yet, if you look at which articles cite the Peters work, you will see most are either A) criticisms, B) not even in the field of economics and C) save for the criticisms most are not published in any reputable journal.

The Peters work is now already 2 years old, given that it is so widely known, and given that the work basically claims that our whole expected utility framework even in its general and behavioral applications is both wrong and not useful (and expected utility is widely used workhorse model, and even though one can criticize it on a behavioral grounds it remains useful and behavioral economics still applies the idea in behavioral setting), you would expect that people would jump at the idea and start widely applying it, or at least testing it. Yet that is not what is happening. Rather the paper was met by a silence occasionally interrupted by cricket's chirp.

Now either there is some conspiracy going on in our profession, or simply most economists do not even consider the paper worth while to respond to or engage with. Given how large our profession is conspiracy is unlikely (given that likelihood of keeping conspiracy secret declines drastically with number of people involved in e.g. see work of Grimes 2016 on this). So really the most straightforward explanation for the utter lack of influence of the paper on profession is that the general consensus is that it is not even worth discussing. Of course, an important caveat is that absence of evidence is not necessary evidence of absence. Ideally, you would want some poll among economists, or at least well known economics. This being, said the evidence and lack of thereof that we currently have strongly points toward the conclusion that the consensus is that Peters work is irrelevant.

Well there is no opinion poll among economists on specifically this problem, but what can be judged from reaction of economists the consensus is that the Ole Peters paper is misguided and irrelevant at best. I think the economists' consensus was already very well and succinctly summed up by Doctor, Wakker and Wang you cite (and is an example of this phenomena).

For starters, on twitter R. Thaler (Nobel Prize) called it hogwash, if a Nobel Prize winner for work on decision making and behavioral economics so readily dismisses your idea about how humans make decision under uncertainity its a red flag. This work was also criticized by other notable economists such as Farmer.

However, even more can be judged by the non-reaction of economists. The Ole Peters paper was so widely circulated that it is safe to assume that majority of economists know about (I would bet that if you will ask at your university department about "that ergodicity paper" most of them will know what you are talking about). It is unbelievable but this paper got so much free press that it should an case study in marketing (it was covered and uncritically cited by major media outlets such as Bloomberg and it even got a TED talk).

So it is safe to assume at very least most economists are aware of the Peter's work existence. Yet, if you look at which articles cite the Peters work, you will see most are either A) criticisms, B) not even in the field of economics and C) save for the criticisms most are not published in any reputable journal.

The Peters work is now already 2 years old, given that it is so widely known, and given that the work basically claims that our whole expected utility framework even in its general and behavioral applications is both wrong and not useful (and expected utility is widely used workhorse model, and even though one can criticize it on a behavioral grounds it remains useful and behavioral economics still applies the idea in behavioral setting), you would expect that people would jump at the idea and start widely applying it, or at least testing it. Yet that is not what is happening. Rather the paper was met by a silence occasionally interrupted by cricket's chirp.

Now either there is some conspiracy going on in our profession, or simply most economists do not even consider the paper worth while to respond to or engage with. Given how large our profession is conspiracy is unlikely (given that likelihood of keeping conspiracy secret declines drastically with number of people involved in e.g. see work of Grimes 2016 on this). So really the most straightforward explanation for the utter lack of influence of the paper on profession is that the general consensus is that it is not even worth discussing.

One could also argue that the idea is being suppressed by the 'old guard'. There are several historical examples of new ideas in a field being suppressed, for some time, by established scientists e.g. like this example. While it is not impossible that is happening to the ergodicity idea as well, one has to remember that for any good idea that is too eagerly suppressed by the 'old guard' there is always a large number of ideas that were dismissed by the old guard and actually also turned out to be bad or irrelevant. A good example are ideas like EM drive or think of all the 'theories' like ancient astronaut theory. So while it could turn out that ergodicity is being suppressed, it is more likely that it is actually not.

Of course, an important caveat is that absence of evidence is not necessary evidence of absence. Ideally, you would want some poll among economists, or at least well known economics. This being, said the evidence and lack of thereof that we currently have strongly points toward the conclusion that the consensus is that Peters work is irrelevant.