prase comments on The Importance of Self-Doubt - Less Wrong

23 Post author: multifoliaterose 19 August 2010 10:47PM

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Comment author: ciphergoth 20 August 2010 12:29:39PM 2 points [-]

Which of the axioms of the Von Neumann–Morgenstern utility theorem do you reject?

Comment author: prase 20 August 2010 12:48:01PM 1 point [-]

If I had to describe my actual choices, I don't know. No one necessarily, any of the axioms possibly. My inner decision algorithm is probably inconsistent in different ways, I don't believe for example that my choices always satisfy transitivity.

What I wanted to say is that although I know that my decisions are somewhat irrational and thus sub-optimal, in some situations, like Pascal wagers, I don't find consciously creating an utility function and to calculate the right decision to be an attractive solution. It would help me to be marginally more rational (as given by the VNM definition), but I am convinced that the resulting choices would be fairly arbitrary and probably will not reflect my actual preferences. In other words, I can't reach some of my preferences by introspection, and think that an actual attempt to reconstruct an utility function would sometimes do worse than simple, although inconsistent heuristic.