jessicat comments on "incomparable" outcomes--multiple utility functions? - Less Wrong Discussion
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I think a useful meaning of "incomparable" is "you should think a very long time before deciding between these". In situations like these, the right decision is not to immediately decide between them, but to think a lot about the decision and related issues. Sure, if someone has to make a split-second decision, they will probably choose whichever sounds better to them. But if given a long time, they might think about it a lot and still not be sure which is better.
This seems a bit similar to multiple utility functions in that if you have multiple utility functions then you might have to think a lot and resolve lots of deep philosophical issues to really determine how you should weight these functions. But even people who are only using one utility function can have lots of uncertainty about which outcome is better, and this uncertainty might slowly reduce (or be found to be intractable) if they think about the issue more. I think the outcomes would seem similarly incomparable to this person.
Indeed, sometimes whether or not two options are incomparable depends on how much computational power your brain is ready to spend calculating and comparing the differences. Things that are incomparable might become comparable if you think about them more. However, when one is faced with the need to decide between the two options, one has to use heuristics. For example, in his book "Predictably irrational" Dan Ariely writes:
So, it seems that one possible heuristic is to try to match your options against yet more alternatives and the option that wins more (and loses less) matches is "declared a winner". As you can see, the result that is obtained using this particular heuristic depends on what kind of alternatives the initial options are compared against. Therefore this heuristic is probably not good enough to reveal which option is "truly better" unless, perhaps, the choice of alternatives is somehow "balanced" (in some sense, I am not sure how to define it exactly).
It seems to me, that in many case if one employs more and more (and better) heuristics one can (maybe after quite a lot of time spent deliberating the choice) approach finding out which option is "truly better". However, the edge case is also interesting. As you can see, the decision is not made instantly, it might take a lot of time. What if your preferences are less stable in a given period of time than your computational power allows you to calculate during that period of time? Can two options be said to be equal if your own brain does not have enough computational power to consistently distinguish between them seemingly even in principle, even if more powerful brain could make such decision (given the same level of instability of preferences)? What about creatures that have very little computational power? Furthermore, aren't preferences themselves usually defined in terms of decision making? At the moment I am a bit confused about this.