Comment on Pinpointing Utility

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 13:04:50 GMT

maximize hedons/dolors

Then 0.002 hedons and 0.00001 dolors is 20 times better than 10 hedons and 1 dolor. This would be surprising.

Ultimately, I think you need some relation between hedons and dolors, something like "one hedon is worth -3.67 dolors" or similar.

That's linear, with a scaling factor. If it is linear, then the scaling factor doesn't really matter much ('newdolors' can be defined as 'dolors' times the scaling factor, then one hedon is equal to one newdolor). But if it's that simple, then it's basically a single line that we're dealing with, not a plane.

There are any number of possible alternative (non-linear) functions; perhaps the fifth power of the total number of dolors is equivalent to the fourth power of the number of hedons? Perhaps, and this I consider far more likely, the actual relationship between hedons and dolors is nowhere near that neat...

I would suspect that there are several different, competing functions at use here; many of which may be counter-productive. For example; very few actions produce ten billion hedons. Therefore, if I find a course of action that seems (in advance) to produce ten billion or more hedons, then it is more likely that I am mistaken, or have been somehow fooled by some enemy, than that my estimations are correct. Thus, I am automatically suspicious of such a course of action. I don't dismiss it out-of-hand, but I am extremely cautious in proceeding towards that outcome, looking out for the hidden trap.

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