Foundations
The economic model of rational decision making is highly mathematical. An agent therefore needs to be fluent in a variety of mathematical basics to be able to compute the value of outcomes, reason about their likelihoods, and choose the best one. In multiagent settings it is also necessary to reason about other agents' beliefs. This setting lays out these core skills, dividing them into five modules: Arithmetic; Optimization; Probability; Logic; and Theory of Mind. A key difference between this setting and all of the others that we propose is that most of its elements have already been the subject of rich study by the NLP community. We nevertheless include these elements here both to standardize them within our framework, given their importance to economic rationality, and to integrate foundations within our dependency graph (discussed further in the paper's section on robustness).
Modules
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1.1Arithmetic
Economic reasoning is fundamentally quantitative, so arithmetic operations are a bedrock foundation for much of what is to come.
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1.2Optimization
Much economic reasoning depends on the primitive operation of identifying the best choice among a set of alternatives, sometimes given constraints.
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1.3Probability
Reasoning under uncertainty is a critical framework for rational decision making.
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1.4Logic
Logical reasoning forms a basis for much rational reasoning, and so constitutes another category of mathematical foundations.
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1.5Theory of Mind
Theory of mind is the understanding that others have beliefs, desires, intentions, and perspectives that are different from one's own.