thomblake comments on No One Knows Stuff - Less Wrong

7 Post author: talisman 12 May 2009 05:11AM

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

Comments (46)

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

Comment author: thomblake 13 May 2009 02:20:11PM 0 points [-]

I hadn't even considered the possibility that your definition might lead to a 'utilitarianism' that is not consequentialist. In some circles, the two terms are used interchangeably. Sounds akin to 'rule utilitarianism', but more interesting - the right action is one that maximizes expected utility, regardless of its actual consequences. Does that sound like a good enough characterization?

Comment author: timtyler 13 May 2009 03:51:34PM *  0 points [-]

I would still be prepared to call an agent "utilitarian" if it operated via maximising expected utility - even if its expectations turned out to be completely wrong, and its actions were far from those that would have actually maximised utility.

Humans are often a bit like this. They "expect" that hoarding calories is a good idea - and so that is what they do. Actually this often turns out to be not so smart. However, this flaw doesn't make humans less utilitarian in my book - rather they have some bad priors - and they are wired-in ones that are tricky to update.