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MikeStankavich 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.
So you see warm fuzzies, status boost, and societal good as subtypes of the utilon output of altruistic activities? Interesting.
It's more about what you use the word "utilon" for; I see "utilon" as the measure of whatever consequences I value, but EY is using it here to refer to utility without weighting for proximity to the speaker, which I call "big picture utility" above.