= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
benelliott comments on Utility Maximization and Complex Values - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (37)
I agree with your first paragraph, but I think your second is just making the same mistake again. Why should our utility function be a product any more than it should be a sum? Why should it be mathematically elegant at all when nothing else about humans is?
Sorry, I don't mean to say that it has to be a product. All I'm saying is that the product formulation is one way to achieve a complex-value effect.
A product is the unique way to evaluate a group of values if we want to have the property that whenever we hold all values constant but one, the result scales linearly with the remaining value (or, to avoid the "linearly", we can apply some additional math to the value first). I don't think that in general this is true of our utility functions, but it might sometimes be a useful approximation.
In that case I fully agree.