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Kaj_Sotala comments on Applying utility functions to humans considered harmful - Less Wrong
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The model doesn't incorporate randomness in the sense of saying "to predict the behavior of humans, roll a dice and predict behavior X on a result of 1-3 and predict behavior Y on a result of 4-6", which is what Eliezer was objecting against. Instead, it says there is randomness involved in the subjects it's modeling, and says the behavior of the subjects can be best modeled using a certain (deterministically derived) probability distribution.
Does it say that? I didn't get the impression they were making that claim. It seems higly likely to be false if they are. They model changes in attentional focus as a random variable but presumably those changes in attention are driven largely by complex events in the brain responding to complex features of the environment, not by random quantum fluctuation. They are using a random variable because the actual process is too complex too model and they have no simple better idea for how to model it than pure randomness.
Well, yes, "so complex and chaotic that you might as well call it random" is what I meant. That's what's usually meant by the term - the results of dice rolls aren't mainly driven by quantum randomness either.
Complex yes, chaotic I doubt. I'm reasonably confident that there is some kind of meaningful pattern to attentional shifts that is correlated with features of the environment and that is adaptive to improve outcomes in our evolutionary environment. Randomness in this model reflects a lack of sufficient information about the environment or the process that drives attention rather than a belief that attention shifts do not have a meaningful correlation with the environment.