Psychohistorian comments on Utilons vs. Hedons - Less Wrong

28 Post author: Psychohistorian 10 August 2009 07:20PM

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Comment author: Psychohistorian 12 August 2009 06:00:57PM 0 points [-]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure my usage is entirely consistent with the wiki usage, if not basically identical.

Comment author: conchis 13 August 2009 11:06:21AM *  0 points [-]

Interesting, I'd assumed your definitions of utilon were subtly different, but perhaps I was reading too much into your wording.

The wiki definition focuses on preference: utilons are the output of a set of vNM-consistent preferences over gambles.

Your definition focuses on "values": utilons are a measure of the extent to which a given world history measures up according to your values.

These are not necessarily inconsistent, but I'd assumed (perhaps wrongly) that they differed in two respects.

  1. Preferences are a simply binary relation, that does not allow degrees of intensity. (I can rank A>B, but I can't say that I prefer A twice as much as B.) In contrast, the degree to which a world measures up to our values seems capable of degrees. (It could make sense for me to say that I value A twice as much as I value B.)
  2. The preferences in question are over gambles over world histories, whereas I assumed that the values in question were over world histories directly.

I've started calling what-I-thought-you-meant "valutilons", to avoid confusion between that concept and the definition of utilons that seems more common here (and which is reflected in the wiki). We'll see how that goes.

Comment author: timtyler 13 August 2009 10:03:22AM 0 points [-]

Wiki says: hedons are "Utilons generated by fulfilling base desires".

Article says: hedons are "experiential utility units". Seems different to me.