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.

HungryHobo comments on Iterated Gambles and Expected Utility Theory - Less Wrong Discussion

1 Post author: Sable 25 May 2016 09:29PM

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

Comments (43)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: entirelyuseless 26 May 2016 01:32:49PM 0 points [-]

I don't think this works out, if you think you are agreeing with Villiam. Suppose your net worth is $20,000. Then the utility increase represented by $100 is going to be [proportional to] 0.00498. On the other hand, the utility increase represented by $10,000 is going to be [proportional to] 0.40546. That is, $10,000 will be 81 times as valuable as $100.

In other words, it is less than 100 times as valuable. But not by that much, and certainly not by enough to explain the degree to which people prefer the certain $100.

Comment author: HungryHobo 26 May 2016 02:38:33PM 0 points [-]

Using your net worth as part of the calculation doesn't feel right.

Even if my net worth is quite high much of that may be inaccessible to me short term.

If I have 100,000 in liquid cash then 100 has lower utility to me than if I have 100,000 in something non liquid like a house and no cash.