Qiaochu_Yuan comments on Rationality Quotes January 2013 - Less Wrong

6 Post author: katydee 02 January 2013 05:23PM

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Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 18 January 2013 06:11:21AM 0 points [-]

Thanks for the explanation. Reading through the Wikipedia article on utilitarianism, it seems like this is one of those words that has been muddled by the presence of too many authors using it. In the future I guess I should refer to the concept I had in mind as VNM-utilitarianism.

Comment author: Sniffnoy 18 January 2013 06:43:05AM 2 points [-]

Probably best not to refer to it with the word "utilitarianism", since it isn't a form of that. Calling it "consequentialism" is arguably enough, since (making appropriate asumptions about what a rational agent must do) a rational consequentialist must use a VNM utility function. But I guess not everyone does in fact agree with those assumptions, so perhaps "utility-function based consequentialism". Or perhaps "VNM-consequentialism".