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solipsist comments on Open thread, Apr. 18 - Apr. 24, 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion

2 Post author: MrMind 18 April 2016 07:19AM

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Comment author: solipsist 23 April 2016 10:25:46PM 0 points [-]

Can you by chance pin down your disagreement to a particular axiom? You're modus tollensing where I expected you would modus ponens.

Comment author: Lumifer 24 April 2016 12:29:48AM 1 point [-]

You are looking at the wrong meta level.

When I say "VNM doesn't offer any formulation of rational behavior" I'm not disagreeing with any particular axiom. It's like I'm saying that an orange is not an apple and you respond by asking me what kind of apples I dislike.

Comment author: solipsist 24 April 2016 02:53:58AM *  0 points [-]

Which (possibly all) of the VNM axioms do you think are not appropriate as part of a formulation of rational behavior?

I think the Peano natural numbers is a reasonable model for the number of steins I own (with the possible exception that if my steins fill up the universe a successor number of steins might not exist). But I don't think the Peano axioms are a good model for how much beer I drink. It is not the case that all quantities of beer can be expressed as successors to 0 beer, so beer does not follow the axiom of induction.

I think ZFC axioms are a poor model of impressionist paintings. For example, it is not the case that for every impressionist paintings x and y, there exists an impressionist painting that contains both x and y. Therefore impressionist paintings violate the axiom of pairing.

Comment author: Lumifer 24 April 2016 05:19:08AM 1 point [-]

Which (possibly all) of the VNM axioms do you think are not appropriate as part of a formulation of rational behavior?

I don't think that rational behaviour as understood on LW (basically, instrumental rationality) has anything to do with VNM axioms. In particular, I do not think that the VNM model is an adequate model of human decision-making once you go beyong toy examples.