handoflixue comments on St. Petersburg Mugging Implies You Have Bounded Utility - Less Wrong

10 Post author: TimFreeman 07 June 2011 03:06PM

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Comment author: handoflixue 08 June 2011 05:43:44AM 0 points [-]

Bullshit it does. How does it even get access to the entire history of the universe? :)

Comment author: MixedNuts 08 June 2011 06:34:06AM 1 point [-]

History books.

Yeah, there's uncertainty over it, but it's not harder than regular expected utility.

Comment author: handoflixue 08 June 2011 06:39:33AM 0 points [-]

the entire history of the universe as an argument (past and future).

Emphasis mine. I know I went to public school, but I do not recall any future-history lessons :)

Comment author: MixedNuts 08 June 2011 06:42:20AM 1 point [-]

They're called physics, and probability theory. And, for that matter, history - teaches you to compute the probability that Queen Whatsherface will be assassinated given that the LHC doesn't work and you had juice for breakfast.

Comment author: Giles 09 June 2011 11:13:10PM 1 point [-]

The utility function is a mathematical function. It simply evaluates whatever hypothetical universe-history you feed it.

The question of where the agent gets its expected future-universe-history from is more interesting though, and it's something you're right to be sceptical about. Here we're talking about bounded rationality and all sorts of wonderful things beyond the scope of the original post (also for the purposes of discussion I'm pretending to be something more closely resembling an expected-utility-maximizer than what I actually am).