= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
to their benefit
You assert this as if it were an axiom. It doesn't look like one to me. Show me the benefit.
And I still don't understand why would I want to become an ideal utility maximizer.
Quick puzzle about utility functions under affine transformations
Here's a puzzle based on something I used to be confused about:
It is known that utility functions are equivalent (i.e. produce the same preferences over actions) up to a positive affine transformation: u'(x) = au(x) + b where a is positive.
Suppose I have u(vanilla) = 3, u(chocolate) = 8. I prefer an action that yields a 50% chance of chocolate over an action that yields a 100% chance of vanilla, because 0.5(8) > 1.0(3).
Under the positive affine transformation a = 1, b = 4; we get that u'(vanilla) = 7 and u'(chocolate) = 12. Therefore I now prefer the action that yields a 100% chance of vanilla, because 1.0(7) > 0.5(12).
How to resolve the contradiction?
For the sake of organization, I suggest discussing such things on the comment threads of Sequence posts.
you can always use meta factors to argue why your revealed preferences actually were coherent.
Three observations. First, those aren't meta factors, those are just normal positive terms in the utility function that one formulation ignores and another one includes. Second, "you can always use" does not necessarily imply that the argument is wrong. Third, we are not arguing about coherency -- why would the claim that, say, I value the perception of myself as someone who votes for X more than 10c be incoherent?
we know that humans are born being somewhat farther-than-optimal from the ideal utility maximizer, and practicing the art of rationality adds value to their lives by getting them somewhat closer to the ideal than where they started.
I disagree, both with the claim that getting closer to the ideal of a perfect utility maximizer necessarily adds value to people's lives, and with the interpretation of the art of rationality as the art of getting people to be more like that utility maximizer.
Besides, there is still the original point: even if you posit some entilty as a perfect utility maximizer, what would its utility function include? Can you use the utility function to figure out which terms should go into the utility function? Colour me doubtful. In crude terms, how do you know what to maximize?
Well I guess I'll focus on what seems to be our most fundamental disagreement, my claim that getting value from studying rationality usually involves getting yourself to be closer to an ideal utility maximizer (not necessarily all the way there).
Reading the Allais Paradox post can make a reader notice their contradictory preferences, and reflect on it, and subsequently be a little less contradictory, to their benefit. That seems like a good representative example of what studying rationality looks like and how it adds value.
with no logistical inconveniences
I would argue all those values are irrational.
Please do.
The expression "irrational values" sounds like a category mistake to me.
You're right that "those values are irrational" is a category mistake, if we're being precise. But Houshalter has an important point...
Any time you violate the axioms of a coherent utility-maximization agent, e.g. falling for the Allais paradox, you can always use meta factors to argue why your revealed preferences actually were coherent.
Like, "Yes the money pump just took some of my money, but you haven't considered that the pump made a pleasing whirring sound which I enjoyed, which definitely outweighed the value of the money it pumped from me."
While that may be a coherent response, we know that humans are born being somewhat farther-than-optimal from the ideal utility maximizer, and practicing the art of rationality adds value to their lives by getting them somewhat closer to the ideal than where they started.
A "rationality test" is a test that provides Bayesian evidence to distinguish people earlier vs. later on this path toward a more reflectively coherent utility function.
Having so grounded all the terms, I mostly agree with pwno and Houshalter.
In response to
Rationality test: Vote for trump
I guess I'll be the first one to offer a steel man interpretation of pwno's post:
Assuming you're anti-Trump... If voting for Trump could be done with no logistical inconveniences, and somehow legally pay you a reward of say 10 cents, and you didn't believe this offer was being made to anyone else, then a good rationality test is whether you would take that offer.
In response to
What makes buying insurance rational?
The expected monetary value of insurance is negative (or rather, negative in real dollars. It can be positive in nominal dollars but underperform inflation.)
But the utility is not linear in money. Losing e.g. $10,000 might be 20 times as bad as losing $1,000. If so, you should pay $1,000 100% of the time to avoid paying $10,000 8% of the time.
The insurance company averages out over many buyers, so their utility is roughly linear.
Insurance is just trading against different utility scales.
Yep. Also note that if you had $1M in the bank, you would then not prefer to buy insurance for something on the order of $10k.
In response to
Open thread, Nov. 02 - Nov. 08, 2015
I made this joke site: https://flashcash.money
It's often rational to burn cash on positional goods like Rolexes and bottle service at clubs, but FlashCash.money takes that value proposition to the logical extreme.
This is really good. I think that a summary of what the presentation covers would be useful as well. I wrote a draft one below:
'You Are A Brain' is a presentation by Liron Shapira that is tailored for a general audience and provides an introduction to some of the the core LessWrong concepts including:
- Map and territory- the map is your brains internal representation of reality. The territory is reality. This presentation covers the importance of accuracy in your map, the idea that the map is inside of you, i.e. that it is beliefs encoded as neuron structures in the brain and that maps are inherently imperfect because:
- You can’t see the whole territory
- You’re computationally bounded
- You’re biased
- Heuristics and biases - the presentation covers the idea that due to computational limitations the brain must make use of heuristics. Heuristics are mental shortcuts which require less time and energy to use, but sometimes go awry, producing bias. This presentation explains that colour vision is an example of a heuristic. The presentation also explains that illusions reveal your heuristics.
- You're biased - this presentation defines biases as deviations from good map-drawing procedures. The following example biases are covered:
- Stereotyping - You draw a map that is skewed toward what you expected to see
- Defensiveness - You don’t fix a mistake in your map because you don’t want to admit being wrong
- Wishful thinking - You draw whatever makes you feel good on your map
- The map is not the territory –this presentation covers the idea that the map is not the territory. If your brother was to die, you don’t react when he dies. You only react after you understand that your brother is dead. Reality (the territory) exists outside of our mind but we construct models of the 'territory' based on what we glimpse through our senses.
- Adaptation executors - this presentation covers the idea that individual organisms are best thought of as adaptation-executers rather than as fitness-maximizers. This is done tangentially through discussing super stimulus (stimulus that misleads your desire heuristics)
- Mind projection fallacy - this presentation talks about how ‘sexiness’ is not a property of a woman, but is instead a characteristic that you attribute to the woman. That is, sexiness is not in the territory, but is in the map.
- Wrong Questions - A question about your map that wouldn’t make sense if you had a more accurate map.
-
ignorance exists in the map, not in the territory. If I am ignorant about a phenomenon, that is a fact about my own state of mind, not a fact about the phenomenon itself.
Awesome thanks.
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And why should we be utility maximization agents?
Assume the following situation. You are very rich. You meet a poor old lady in a dark alley who carries a purse with her, with some money which is a lot from her perspective. Maybe it's all her savings, maybe she just got lucky once and received it as a gift or as alms. If you mug her, nobody will ever find it out and you get to keep that money. Would you do it? As a utility maximization agent, based on what you just wrote, you should.
Would you?
Have you read the LW sequences? Because like gjm explained, your question reveals a simple and objective misunderstanding of what utility functions look like when they model realistic people's preferences.