DanielLC comments on Efficient Charity: Do Unto Others... - Less Wrong

130 Post author: Yvain 24 December 2010 09:26PM

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Comment author: nshepperd 26 December 2010 02:40:22AM 1 point [-]

In order this to be true forever, the world would have to never end, which would mean that there's infinite utility no matter what you do.

That doesn't sound right... even if I'm expecting an infinite future I think I'd still want to live a good existence rather than a mediocre one (but with >0 utility). So it does matter what I do.

Say I have two options:

  • A, which offers on average 1.. utilon per second? (Are utilons measures of utility of a time period, or instantaneous utility?)
  • B, which offers on average 2 utilons / s

The limits as t approaches infinity are U(A) = t, U(B) = 2t. Both are "infinite" but B is yet larger than A, and therefore "better".

Comment author: DanielLC 26 December 2010 07:48:22AM 0 points [-]

You can switch between A and B just by rearranging when events happen. For example, imagine that there are two planets moving in opposite directions. One is a Utopia, the other is a Distopia. From the point of reference of the Utopia, time is slowed down in the Distopia, so the world is worth living in. From the point of reference of the Distopia, it's reversed.

This gets even worse when you start dealing with expected utility. As messed up as the idea is that the order of events matter, there at least is an order. With expected utility, there is no inherent order.

The best I can do is assign the priors for infinite utility to zero, and make my priors fall off fast enough to make sure expected utility always converges. I've managed to prove that my posteriors will also always have a converging expected utility.