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elspood comments on Pinpointing Utility - Less Wrong
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I think I have updated slightly in the direction of requiring my utility function to conform to VNM and away from being inclined to throw it out if my preferences aren't consistent. This is probably mostly due to smart people being asked to give an example of a circular preference and my not finding any answer compelling.
I think I see the point you're trying to make, which is that we want to have a normalized scale of utility to apply probability to. This directly contradicts the prohibition against "looking at the sign or magnitude". You are comparing 1/400 EU and 1/500 EU using their magnitudes, and jumping headfirst into the radiation. Am I missing something?
If you don't conform to VNM, you don't have a utility function.
I think you mean to refer to your decision algorithms.
No, I mean if my utility function violates transitivity or other axioms of VNM, I more want to fix it than to throw out VNM as being invalid.
then it's not a utility function in the standard sense of the term.
I think what you mean to tell me is: "say 'my preferences' instead of 'my utility function'". I acknowledge that I was incorrectly using these interchangeably.
I do think it was clear what I meant when I called it "my" function and talked about it not conforming to VNM rules, so this response felt tautological to me.