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MileyCyrus comments on Review of Sharot & Dolan, 'Neuroscience of Preference and Choice' (2011) - Less Wrong Discussion

7 Post author: lukeprog 02 November 2011 06:52AM

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Comment author: MileyCyrus 02 November 2011 07:35:45AM 5 points [-]

Utilities [aka 'decision values'] are real numbers ranging from 0 to 1,000 that take action potentials per second as their natural units.

Does this mean there is a limit on how much we can want/prefer something?

Comment author: lukeprog 02 November 2011 07:43:49AM *  3 points [-]

Yes, though keep in mind that these utilities are renormalized, so the important metric is how much more one option is valued over the others during a particular choice, not the absolute value of how many action potentials per second a particular option is "valued" with. The value for the exact same thing (say, an apple) could be represented by a different number of action potentials per second depending on the other options in the choice set, among other factors (e.g. context effects).

This does, it seems to me, give some neurobiological credence to a particular solution to Pascal's Mugging: bounding your utility function.

Comment author: AlexSchell 03 November 2011 01:55:05AM 2 points [-]

What is it for something to give neurobiological credence to the "bounded utility" answer to Pascal's Mugging?