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Wei_Dai comments on Purchase Fuzzies and Utilons Separately - Less Wrong
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"Utilons" isn't quite the right word: utilons are all I purchase. My utility function is a sum of components: I can decompose it into a local part to do with my happiness and the happiness of those close to me (and thus status, warm fuzzies and the like) and a global part to do with things like the lives of strangers and the future of humanity. I try to strongly mark the boundary between those two, so I don't for example value the lives of people in the same country as me more than those in different countries.
You're saying I can more optimally spend resources on efforts that clearly serve one or the other than on efforts that try to do both and do neither well, and I agree, I'd just phrase it differently: purchase big-picture utility and small-picture utility separately.
I think Eliezer is using "utilon" to refer to the unit of value in utilitarianism (i.e., the theory of aggregating value linearly across individuals) whereas what you're talking about is probably the unit of value in expected utility maximization (i.e., the theory of aggregating value linearly across possible worlds). To avoid confusion, I propose that we call the latter "utils" (which as dreeves pointed out is already standard for this usage). In other words, let's use "utilons" when talking about utilitarianism, and "utils" when talking about expected utility maximization.
Would you agree that we're all (in this thread) drawing the same distinction and just labelling it differently?
I agree that we should switch to the standard term "utils" here, but I think I wouldn't go for also using "utilons" in the way you propose; enough people would continue to use the words in a different way that we wouldn't succeed in ironing out the confusion. I'd prefer something like "global utils" and "fuzzy utils/fuzzies" which can't be taken to mean something else.