= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Technologos comments on Fundamentally Flawed, or Fast and Frugal? - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (74)
I believe you are confused, but can't pinpoint on the first look in what way exactly. V is not "threshold of utility", it is a random variable of the same kind as X. I don't see what you mean by setting V to be normally distributed and U(x)=x, given that by construction they determine each other by the rule Pr(x>V)=u(x). If you redefine the concepts, you should do so more clearly.
If the decision agent is trying to maximize the probability of its utility being greater than a draw from the random variable V (where V is specified in utility) then it is trying to maximize the probability of being above some (yet-unknown) threshold value, no?
The departure from your model that I was clarifying (unsuccessfully) in the last comment was for V to be a random variable not of utility but of money, distributed normally in this example. U(x) = x is the utility function for the EU-maxing agent, because when V is specified in money, the satisficing agent no longer needs to worry about utility.
The rule you gave is only true when the satisficer defines the threshold level in terms of utility.
No luck. You should write everything in math, specifying types (domains/codomains) of all functions/random variables. It'll really be easier, and the confusion (mine or yours) will be instantly resolved.
Also, thanks for posting the original comment--it's actually useful to some research I'm doing, now that I actually understand it!
Ah, I think I found it. I took V to have a codomain in utilons in your example (that was my interpretation of "V is a random variable that depends only on u").
Reinterpreting the subsequent comments in that context, I can see that I was responding to "formally equivalent" in the original comment as if it meant "expected utility maximization of the traditional sort, where each outcome x is itself assigned a value by a function on x that does not involve V, will produce the same decisions as satisficing of the type described under these conditions."
Interestingly, the latter may be true if V did have a codomain in utilons (or at least, I was unable to come up with a consistent counterexample).