wedrifid comments on We Don't Have a Utility Function - Less Wrong

43 [deleted] 02 April 2013 03:49AM

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

Comments (123)

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

Comment author: wedrifid 10 April 2013 07:00:23AM *  3 points [-]

That's why I talk about "VNM-utilitarianism" rather than simply "utilitarianism".

That isn't enough to disambiguate the meaning. In fact, your intended meaning is not even one of the options to disambiguate between. Your usage is still wrong and misleading. I suggest following nshepperd's advice and using "VNM-rational" or "VNM-ratinality".

(Obviously I will be downvoting all comments that persist with "VNM-utilitarianism". Many others will not downvote but will take your muddled terminology to be strong evidence that you are confused or ill-informed about the subject matter.)

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 11 April 2013 04:31:53AM 3 points [-]

That isn't enough to disambiguate the meaning. In fact, your intended meaning is not even one of the options to disambiguate between.

I'm curious, what were the options for what you thought it meant.

Your usage is still wrong and misleading. I suggest following nshepperd's advice and using "VNM-rational" or "VNM-ratinality".

How about "VNM-consequentialism"?

Comment author: wedrifid 11 April 2013 05:06:44AM *  1 point [-]

That isn't enough to disambiguate the meaning. In fact, your intended meaning is not even one of the options to disambiguate between.

Utilitarianism in practice means some kind of aggregation of all people's preferences. Most typically either 'total' or 'average'. Even though I am a consequentialist (at least in a highly abstract combatibilist sense) I dismiss utilitarianism as stupid, arbitrary and not worth priveleging as a moral hypothesis. Adding VNM to it effectively narrows it down to 'preference utilitarianism' which at least gets rid of the worst of the crazy ('hedonic utilitarianism' Gahh!). But I don't think that is what you are trying to refer to when you challenge VNM-X (because it wouldn't be compatible with the points you make).

How about "VNM-consequentialism"?

Perfect! Please do. 'Consequentialism' means what one would naively expect 'utilitarianism' to mean, if not for an unfortunate history of bad philosophy having defined the term already. The VNM qualifier then narrows consequentialism down to the typical case that we tend to mean around here (because you are right, technically consequentialism is more broad than just that based on VNM axioms.)