A lot of rationalist thinking about ethics and economy assumes we have very well defined utility functions - knowing exactly our preferences between states and events, not only being able to compare them (I prefer X to Y), but assigning precise numbers to every combinations of them (p% chance of X equals q% chance of Y). Because everyone wants more money, you should theoretically even be able to assign exact numerical values to positive outcomes in your life.
I did a small experiment of making a list of things I wanted, and giving them point value. I must say this experiment ended up in a failure - thinking "If I had X, would I take Y instead", and "If I had Y, would I take X instead" very often resulted in a pair of "No"s. Even thinking about multiple Xs/Ys for one Y/X usually led me to deciding they're really incomparable. Outcomes related to similar subject were relatively comparable, those in different areas in life were usually not.
I finally decided on some vague numbers and evaluated the results two months later. My success on some fields was really big, on other fields not at all, and the only thing that was clear was that numbers I assigned were completely wrong.
This leads me to two possible conclusions:
- I don't know how to draw utility functions, but they are a good model of my preferences, and I could learn how to do it.
- Utility functions are really bad match for human preferences, and one of the major premises we accept is wrong.
Anybody else tried assigning numeric values to different outcomes outside very narrow subject matter? Have you succeeded and want to share some pointers? Or failed and want to share some thought on that?
I understand that details of many utility functions will be highly personal, but if you can share your successful ones, that would be great.
There's two things to say in response to this: first, I can define "liking and respecting me" as "experiencing analogous brain states to mine when I like and respect someone else". That's in the territory (modulo some assumptions about the cognitive unity of humankind): I could verify it in principle, although not in practice.
The second thing is that even if we grant that the example was poor, the point was still valid. For example, one might prefer that one's spouse never cheat to one's spouse cheating but never being aware of that fact. (ETA: but maybe you weren't arguing against the point, only the example.)
But what if they experience that state, and still, say, beat you up and treat you like jerks, because that's what their map says you should do when you feel that way?
This isn't about the example being poor, it's... (read more)