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D_Malik comments on Litany of Instrumentarski - Less Wrong
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Analogously, the proposition "snow is white" is true if and only if believing that snow is white has positive utility.
If you're a perfect Bayesian reasoner, believing that snow is white has positive utility iff snow is actually white, and so the above sentence simplifies to "The proposition "snow is white" is true if and only if snow is white." But you are not a perfect Bayesian reasoner, and insofar as you are imperfect, things are fuzzy.
The first paragraph here is pretty much tautological; what you can disagree about is whether the cost involved, and the benefit to be gained, are ever such that you can actually gain utility by self-delusion.
More analogously, you should believe that the proposition "snow is white" is true if and only if believing that snow is white has positive utility.
There is a difference between the proposition being true and believing the proposition is true, right?
That's quite catchy.
It also seems to claim that snow is black if doing so has positive utility, regardless of whether or not it's actually true.
Consider, for example, if Big Brother can read your mind and will punish you horribly if you believe that snow is white. Yes, in that case it might make sense to believe that it's black (if you are capable of doing so), but that doesn't make it true.
Yes, it is basically a roundabout way of saying that you prefer or think that achieving your values is more important than having an accurate map.
Right, and if people care terminally about having an accurate map, that's one of their values, so the sentence also applies to them.
Utility is not the same thing as testability. Your color detector may return the same result when pointed at snow as when pointed at a sheet of paper, but you may decide to call the former "black" and the latter "white" for utilitarian reasons. Which is quite common IRL.