Giles comments on Decision Theories: A Less Wrong Primer - Less Wrong

69 Post author: orthonormal 13 March 2012 11:31PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (172)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Giles 18 March 2012 06:23:00PM 0 points [-]

Nowhere in this post am I talking about Benthamist altruistic utilitarianism

Ah sorry - it was the link "but that's a different topic" that I was talking about, I realize I didn't make that clear. I was expecting the justification for assigning outcomes a utility would link to something about the Von Neumann-Morgenstern axioms, which I think are less controversial than altruistic utilitarianism. But it's only a minor point.

Comment author: orthonormal 18 March 2012 06:32:22PM 0 points [-]

Ah. It may be a matter of interpretation, but I view that post and this one as more enlightening on the need for expected-utility calculation, even for non-altruists, than the von Neumann-Morgenstern axioms.