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Nick_Tarleton comments on Pathological utilitometer thought experiment - Less Wrong
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Why? It seems like your expected utility should steadily increase as your prediction ability does.
When do you stop attempting to increase the utility and make the decision?
When d(utility)/d(research) is less than d(utility)/d(action)
That is to say; when the increase in expected utility from research is smaller than the increase in expected utility from the same amount of action.
Yes.
From the number of intuitively obvious answers to this post, I'm beginning to think that others just don't care about the sorts of problems I'm interested in. (Likely alternative: I suck at explaining them). I see "when to measure (predicting the future utility of actions)" as one of the fundamental flaws of current theory, but everyone else seems to just say "when you calculate you should do so", as if they have some sort of fully functioning ability to step out of the analysis / predictive phase and take concrete action. I don't understand that.
This flows into the other main problem I have, which is "what to value (crafting the proper utility function)". Several times, I've been told that we do not create the function, rather we discover it, in which case I reformulate the problem as "setting the proper instrumental goals (achieving ambiguous or fluctuating terminal values)".
When you're not even sure[1] what it is you want, and you're not sure[1] that doing a particular thing will lead to [very long term] positive results in the direction you want, why take any action other than research? Judgment under uncertainty is extraordinarily difficult for me.
[1] Please note that this use of "not sure" is meant along the lines of wild utility fluctuation in positive and negative directions due to unintended consequences, unknown results, and random events outside of your control. There are many ways in which short term benefits are outdone by long term detriments, which are then negated by even longer term benefits, in nearly impossible to predict patterns. I see almost every action as useless static noise, given X years of consequences.
If almost every action is static noise apart from it's predictable consequences, is it not a sensible approximation to assume that the static noises are going to be, on average, equal?
In which case, you can value the predictable consequences, and let the unpredictable consequences cancel.
If you fail to do that you can't get a value of utility for anything; even for the utility of making a better utiliometer.
In my estimation, it seems likely that either the sign of total utility flips between positive and negative based on every act (very large swings, butterfly effect), or all utility is canceled out by noise after the short term (anchoring to null).
Hence pathology.
This is a strange version of the gamblers fallacy; the random noise doesn't "cancel out" the chosen act. If I place my D20 on the 1 20 times in a row, that doesn't make it any less likely that I'll roll a 1 during a game.
Imagine a game where you first place a fair coin heads up (winning 5000 utilons) or tails up (losing 5000 utilons) and then flip it 10 million times; winning 500 utilons for every coinflip that turns up heads; and losing 500 utilons for every tails
Sure, the unpredictable (chaotic) effects are much larger than the predictable effects, but they don't cancel them out.
Putting the coin down heads-up is, on average, 10,000 utilons better.
Just like torturing someone for no reason is, on average, going to produce a worse world-outcome than giving someone chocolate for no reason.
I disagree, primarily on the grounds of when you take the measure of utility. As usual, you're measuring immediately after the event occurs, whereas all of my previous statements have been about a measure many years after. It is not at all clear to me that short term effects like those you describe end up with long term average effects that can be calculated, or would be of the desired sign. Events are not discrete.
How does giving a random person chocolate for no reason affect them over the course of their whole life?
Do you disagree with just my real-world application, or also with my coinflip example?
Let's say you have two choices; one is "+500 utilons and then other stuff"; the other is "-500 utilons and then other stuff", where you don't know anything about the nature of "other stuff". Why can you not cancel out the unknowns? Your best information about both unknowns is identical, is it not?
On average better than torturing them would. Do you disagree?
Both.
Too clean - money is not utilons. I think I can see part of the problem. The standard definition of utility seems to contain the time element within it, rather than allowing context and flow into the future to have an effect on the object (not utilons!) itself. Using the very word 'utility' creates a point-in-time effect?
Maybe. I'm mainly trying to say, "I don't know", because I'm caught in some weird loop of calculation over unknown quantities.
Well, here's when not to.