You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

RichardKennaway comments on The Number Choosing Game: Against the existence of perfect theoretical rationality - Less Wrong Discussion

-1 Post author: casebash 29 January 2016 01:04AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (151)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: RichardKennaway 05 January 2016 01:16:09PM 11 points [-]

There is some confusion in the comments over what utility is.

kithpendragon writes:

the maximum utility that it could conceivably expect to use

and Usul writes:

goes out to spend his utility on blackjack and hookers

Utility is not a resource. It is not something that you can acquire and then use, or save up and then spend. It is not that sort of thing. It is nothing more than a numerical measure of the value you ascribe to some outcome or state of affairs. The blackjack and hookers, if that's what you're into, are the things that you would be specifically seeking by seeking the highest utility, not something you would afterwards get in exchange for some acquired quantity of utility.