Unofficial Followup to: Fake Selfishness, Post Your Utility Function

A perception-determined utility function is one which is determined only by the perceptual signals your mind receives from the world; for instance, pleasure minus pain. A noninstance would be number of living humans. There's an argument in favor of perception-determined utility functions which goes like this: clearly, the state of your mind screens off the state of the outside world from your decisions. Therefore, the argument to your utility function is not a world-state, but a mind-state, and so, when choosing between outcomes, you can only judge between anticipated experiences, and not external consequences. If one says, "I would willingly die to save the lives of others," the other replies, "that is only because you anticipate great satisfaction in the moments before death - enough satisfaction to outweigh the rest of your life put together."

Let's call this dogma perceptually determined utility. PDU can be criticized on both descriptive and prescriptive grounds. On descriptive grounds, we may observe that it is psychologically unrealistic for a human to experience a lifetime's worth of satisfaction in a few moments. (I don't have a good reference for this, but) I suspect that our brains count pain and joy in something like unary, rather than using a place-value system, so it is not possible to count very high.

The argument I've outlined for PDU is prescriptive, however, so I'd like to refute it on such grounds. To see what's wrong with the argument, let's look at some diagrams. Here's a picture of you doing an expected utility calculation - using a perception-determined utility function such as pleasure minus pain.

Bloggingheads.tv can't exactly call up, say, the President of France and get him to do a diavlog, but they have some street cred with mid-rank celebrities and academics.  With that in mind, how would you fill in this blank?

"I would really love to see a diavlog between Yudkowsky and ____________."

I provide our monthly place to discuss Less Wrong topics that have not appeared in recent posts. Work your brain and gain prestige by doing so in E-prime (or not, as you please).

Suppose I told you about a certain country, somewhere in the world, in which some of the cities have degenerated into gang rule.  Some such cities are ruled by a single gang leader, others have degenerated into almost complete lawlessness.  You would probably conclude that the cities I was talking about were located inside what we call a "failed state".

So what does the existence of North Korea say about this Earth?

No, it's not a perfect analogy.  But the thought does sometimes occur to me, to wonder if the camel has two humps.  If there are failed Earths and successful Earths, in the great macroscopic superposition popularly known as "many worlds" - and we're not one of the successful.  I think of this as the "failed Earth" hypothesis.

Of course the camel could also have three or more humps, and it's quite easy to imagine Earths that are failing much worse than this, epic failed Earths ruled by the high-tech heirs of Genghis Khan or the Catholic Church.  Oh yes, it could definitely be worse...

...and the "failed state" analogy is hardly perfect; "failed state" usually refers to failure to integrate into the global economy, but a failed Earth is not failing to integrate into anything larger...

...but the question does sometimes haunt me, as to whether in the alternative Everett branches of Earth, we could identify a distinct cluster of "successful" Earths, and we're not in it.  It may not matter much in the end; the ultimate test of a planet's existence probably comes down to Friendly AI, and Friendly AI may come down to nine people in a basement doing math.  I keep my hopes up, and think of this as a "failing Earth" rather than a "failed Earth".

But it's a thought that comes to mind, now and then.  Reading about the ongoing Market Complexity Collapse and wondering if this Earth failed to solve one of the basic functions of global economics, in the same way that Rome, in its later days, failed to solve the problem of orderly transition of power between Caesars.

People have been encouraging me to share my anti-akrasia tricks, but it feels inappropriate to dedicate a top-level post solely to unproven techniques that work for some person and may not work for others, so:

Go ahead and share your anti-akrasia tricks!

Let's make it an open thread where we just share what works and what doesn't, without worrying (yet) about having to explain tricks with deep theories, or designing proper experiments to verify them. However, if you happen to have a theory or a proposed experiment in mind, please share.

Bragging is fine, but please share the failures of your techniques as well – they are just as valuable, if not more.

Note to readers – before you read the comments and try the tricks, keep in mind that the techniques below are not yet proven supported or explained by proper experiments, and are not yet backed by theory. They may work for their authors, but are not guaranteed to work for you, so try them at your own risk. It would be even better to read the following posts before rushing to try the tricks:

• Practical Advice Backed By Deep Theories
• Beware of Other-Optimizing
• Akrasia and Shangri-La