drnickbone comments on Why you must maximize expected utility - Less Wrong

20 Post author: Benja 13 December 2012 01:11AM

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Comment author: drnickbone 13 December 2012 07:08:29AM 9 points [-]

But the post is an argument for using cardinal utility (VNM utility)! And Arrow's "impossibility" theorem only applies when trying to aggregate ordinal utilities across voters. It is well-known that voting systems which aggregate cardinal utility, such as Range Voting can escape the impossibility theorem.

So Arrow is actually another reason for having a VNM utility function: it allows collectively rational decisions, as well as individually rational decisions.