Vladimir_Nesov comments on Post Your Utility Function - Less Wrong

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

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Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 04 June 2009 07:00:31PM *  0 points [-]

A simple utility function can be descriptive in simple economic models, but taken as descriptive, such function doesn't form a valid foundation for the (accurate) prescriptive model.

On the other hand, when you start from an accurate description of human behavior, it's not easy to extract from it a prescriptive model that could be used as a criterion for improvement, but utility function (plus prior) seems to be a reasonable format for such a prescriptive model if you manage to construct it somehow.

Comment author: brian_jaress 04 June 2009 07:25:50PM 0 points [-]

In that case, we disagree about whether the format seems reasonable (for this purpose).