loqi comments on Incremental Progress and the Valley - Less Wrong

38 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 04 April 2009 04:42PM

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Tags: motivation akrasia self_deception

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Comment author: PhilGoetz 05 April 2009 02:48:13PM *  2 points [-]

I've already said, in this very thread, that I'm talking about

Happiness, defined to include all of your values

Now you just wrote

to value something beyond your own experienced happiness.

I realize that I introduced confusion with my unclear definitions.

My terms, to review a a recent discussion:

  • Utility = a function mapping your state into its desirability, based on your values.
  • Happiness = a time-varying function mapping utility over time into your satisfaction with your utility.
  • Rationality = maximizing your expected Happiness

So I think you're saying that you want to define rationality as maximizing your expected utility, not your expected happiness. It's a significant difference, and I would like to know which people prefer (or if they have some other definition). But it doesn't matter WRT the comment I made here. You're still being a Nietzschian if you elevate Truth beyond your utility function.

Comment author: loqi 05 April 2009 07:12:23PM 1 point [-]

a time-varying function mapping utility over time into your satisfaction with your utility

I can't make any sense of this. I value happiness-the-brain-state, which means I value satisfaction with my situation in life. That is part of my utility function. The "life-states" are mere inputs, they don't exhaust the definition of "utility". If I can predict that a year after winning the lottery I won't be any happier than I am now, that bears directly on the expected utility of winning.

You say you're talking about "Happiness, defined to include all of your values", but the original mention of preferring truth to happiness had this for context: "I have been heartbroken, miserable, unfocused, and extremely ineffective since". This is surely talking about psychological happiness, not overall "value". Why such confusing terminology?

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