derekz comments on Post Your Utility Function - Less Wrong

28 Post author: taw 04 June 2009 05:05AM

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

Comments (273)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: derekz 04 June 2009 12:12:19PM 2 points [-]

Interesting exercise. After trying for a while I completely failed; I ended up with terms that are completely vague (e.g. "comfort"), and actually didn't even begin to scratch the surface of a real (hypothesized) utility function. If it exists it is either extremely complicated (too complicated to write down perhaps) or needs "scientific" breakthroughs to uncover its simple form.

The result was also laughably self-serving, more like "here's roughly what I'd like the result to be" than an accurate depiction of what I do.

The real heresy is that this result does not particularly frighten or upset me. I probably can't be a "rationalist" when my utility function doesn't place much weight on understanding my utility function.

Can you write your own utility fuinction or adopt the one you think you should have? Is that sort of wholesale tampering wise?