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Pathological utilitometer thought experiment
I've been doing thought experiments involving a utilitometer: a device capable of measuring the utility of the universe, including sums-over-time and counterfactuals (what-if extrapolations), for any given utility function, even generic statements such as, "what I value." Things this model ignores: nonutilitarianism, complexity, contradictions, unknowability of true utility functions, inability to simulate and measure counterfactual universes, etc.
Unfortunately, I believe I've run into a pathological mindset from thinking about this utilitometer. Given the abilities of the device, you'd want to input your utility function and then take a sum-over-time from the beginning to the end of the universe and start checking counterfactuals ("I buy a new car", "I donate all my money to nonprofits", "I move to California", etc) to see if the total goes up or down.
It seems quite obvious that the sum at the end of the universe is the measure that makes the most sense, and I can't see any reason for taking a measure at the end of an action as is done in all typical discussions of utility. Here's an example: "The expected utility from moving to California is negative due to the high cost of living and the fact that I would not have a job." But a sum over all time might show that it was positive utility because I meet someone, or do something, or learn something that improves the rest of my life, and without the utilitometer, I would have missed all of those add-on effects. The device allows me to fill in all of the unknown details and unintended consequences.
Where this thinking becomes a problem is when I realize I have no such device, but desperately want one, so I can incorporate the unknown and the unintended, and know what path I should be taking to maximize my life, rather than having the short, narrow view of the future I do now. In essence, it places higher utility on 'being good at calculating expected utility' than almost any other actions I could take. If I could just build a true utilitometer that measures everything, then the expected utility would be enormous! ("push button to improve universe"). And even incremental steps along the way could have amazing payoffs.
Given that a utilitometer as described is impossible, thinking about it has still altered my values to place steps toward creating it above other, seemingly more realistic options (buying a new car, moving to California, etc). I previously asked the question, "How much time and effort should we put into improving our models and predictions, given we will have to model and predict the answer to this question?" and acknowledged it was circular and unanswerable. The pathology comes from entering the circle and starting a feedback loop; anything less than perfect prediction means wasting the entire future.
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Comments (30)
I suspect you're suffering from availability bias. Specifically, thinking about the utilitometer has caused you to subjectively overestimate how likely you are to succeed.
Obviously I believe I have no chance of success with the toy as described. But the slightest increase in predictive power seems to have a great deal of benefit. The marginal utility of increases in utility prediction seems quite high to me. Does it not seem that way to others?
Yes, well that's sort of the point of this site.
So how did everyone else avoid the pathological effect of that taking up more of their thought patterns than 'actual' utility? Or maybe they didn't.
Anyone spending time on here clearly believes that improving their ability to predict things is worthwhile.
Either that or they just think this place is kinda fun. Or both.
It's not necessarily pathological to devote more resources to investment than consumption for the time being. (LW may not be the best form of investment.)
I... had a similar problem, as a result of spending lots of time thinking about these topics.
and... I went as far as starting a project to construct something vaguely similar to a utilitometer.
and... I got stuck in an affective death spiral about this project.
and... I ended up throwing a ridiculous amount of time, money, and effort at this project.
I seem to be mostly recovered from the affective death spiral now, but now I'm having trouble with the sunk cost fallacy.
I was considering writing a top-level post about this project to LW, but I still haven't even managed to do a good job of describing what the project is. And it's really obvious now that the project is a whole lot more difficult and a whole lot less useful than I originally hoped.
I still don't actually have anything to show for my efforts so far. But I still might as well post some links here to what little I do have:
The "official project page" at lifeboat.com
a first attempt to describe the project, on the transhumanist wiki
Some more constructive versions of this thought:
"If I had six hours to cut down a tree, I'd spend four of them sharpening my axe."
Learning how to learn.
Knowing how to know.
How about "analysis paralysis"? "You think too much"? That's more what I had in mind.
Why? It seems like your expected utility should steadily increase as your prediction ability does.
When do you stop attempting to increase the utility and make the decision?
When d(utility)/d(research) is less than d(utility)/d(action)
That is to say; when the increase in expected utility from research is smaller than the increase in expected utility from the same amount of action.
Yes.
From the number of intuitively obvious answers to this post, I'm beginning to think that others just don't care about the sorts of problems I'm interested in. (Likely alternative: I suck at explaining them). I see "when to measure (predicting the future utility of actions)" as one of the fundamental flaws of current theory, but everyone else seems to just say "when you calculate you should do so", as if they have some sort of fully functioning ability to step out of the analysis / predictive phase and take concrete action. I don't understand that.
This flows into the other main problem I have, which is "what to value (crafting the proper utility function)". Several times, I've been told that we do not create the function, rather we discover it, in which case I reformulate the problem as "setting the proper instrumental goals (achieving ambiguous or fluctuating terminal values)".
When you're not even sure[1] what it is you want, and you're not sure[1] that doing a particular thing will lead to [very long term] positive results in the direction you want, why take any action other than research? Judgment under uncertainty is extraordinarily difficult for me.
[1] Please note that this use of "not sure" is meant along the lines of wild utility fluctuation in positive and negative directions due to unintended consequences, unknown results, and random events outside of your control. There are many ways in which short term benefits are outdone by long term detriments, which are then negated by even longer term benefits, in nearly impossible to predict patterns. I see almost every action as useless static noise, given X years of consequences.
If almost every action is static noise apart from it's predictable consequences, is it not a sensible approximation to assume that the static noises are going to be, on average, equal?
In which case, you can value the predictable consequences, and let the unpredictable consequences cancel.
If you fail to do that you can't get a value of utility for anything; even for the utility of making a better utiliometer.
In my estimation, it seems likely that either the sign of total utility flips between positive and negative based on every act (very large swings, butterfly effect), or all utility is canceled out by noise after the short term (anchoring to null).
Hence pathology.
This is a strange version of the gamblers fallacy; the random noise doesn't "cancel out" the chosen act. If I place my D20 on the 1 20 times in a row, that doesn't make it any less likely that I'll roll a 1 during a game.
Imagine a game where you first place a fair coin heads up (winning 5000 utilons) or tails up (losing 5000 utilons) and then flip it 10 million times; winning 500 utilons for every coinflip that turns up heads; and losing 500 utilons for every tails
Sure, the unpredictable (chaotic) effects are much larger than the predictable effects, but they don't cancel them out.
Putting the coin down heads-up is, on average, 10,000 utilons better.
Just like torturing someone for no reason is, on average, going to produce a worse world-outcome than giving someone chocolate for no reason.
I disagree, primarily on the grounds of when you take the measure of utility. As usual, you're measuring immediately after the event occurs, whereas all of my previous statements have been about a measure many years after. It is not at all clear to me that short term effects like those you describe end up with long term average effects that can be calculated, or would be of the desired sign. Events are not discrete.
How does giving a random person chocolate for no reason affect them over the course of their whole life?
Do you disagree with just my real-world application, or also with my coinflip example?
Let's say you have two choices; one is "+500 utilons and then other stuff"; the other is "-500 utilons and then other stuff", where you don't know anything about the nature of "other stuff". Why can you not cancel out the unknowns? Your best information about both unknowns is identical, is it not?
On average better than torturing them would. Do you disagree?
Both.
Too clean - money is not utilons. I think I can see part of the problem. The standard definition of utility seems to contain the time element within it, rather than allowing context and flow into the future to have an effect on the object (not utilons!) itself. Using the very word 'utility' creates a point-in-time effect?
Maybe. I'm mainly trying to say, "I don't know", because I'm caught in some weird loop of calculation over unknown quantities.
Well, here's when not to.