= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
wedrifid comments on Open Thread, April 16 - 30, 2012 - 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 (123)
Might I suggest tabooing "utility function"? The phrase is used in this community at various levels of abstraction, and useful responses to your question depend on which level of abstraction you intend.
No, a utility function is a perfectly well-defined mathematical object. The question is what it means for a human to "have" such an object; so "have" is the word we should be tabooing.
Does Abraham Lincoln have a six-dimensional vector space? Does Spain have an abelian group? The question "do humans have a bounded utility function" is kind of like that.
"Does Abraham Lincoln have a personality?" would be somewhat analogous. (By somewhat I mean 'more'.)
I'd personally phrase the answer more as 'yes, but it's actually 5-dimensional' :)