jimmy comments on Against utility functions - Less Wrong

40 Post author: Qiaochu_Yuan 19 June 2014 05:56AM

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Comment author: jimmy 17 August 2014 04:41:13PM 1 point [-]

Forcing anyone to stay in their current relationship forever or forever preventing them from entering a relationship would be quite bad. In order to help him, he'd have to be doing worse than that.

The way to help him would be a bit trickier than that: let him have "good" relationships but not bad. Let him leave "bad" relationships but not good. And then control his mental behaviors so that he's not allowed to spend time being miserable about his lack of options... (it's hard to force rationality)

Comment author: ericyu3 17 August 2014 05:45:56PM 0 points [-]

Controlling his mental behaviors would either be changing his preferences or giving him another option. For judging whether he is behaving irrationally, shouldn't his preferences and set of choices be held fixed?