A lot of rationalist thinking about ethics and economy assumes we have very well defined utility functions - knowing exactly our preferences between states and events, not only being able to compare them (I prefer X to Y), but assigning precise numbers to every combinations of them (p% chance of X equals q% chance of Y). Because everyone wants more money, you should theoretically even be able to assign exact numerical values to positive outcomes in your life.
I did a small experiment of making a list of things I wanted, and giving them point value. I must say this experiment ended up in a failure - thinking "If I had X, would I take Y instead", and "If I had Y, would I take X instead" very often resulted in a pair of "No"s. Even thinking about multiple Xs/Ys for one Y/X usually led me to deciding they're really incomparable. Outcomes related to similar subject were relatively comparable, those in different areas in life were usually not.
I finally decided on some vague numbers and evaluated the results two months later. My success on some fields was really big, on other fields not at all, and the only thing that was clear was that numbers I assigned were completely wrong.
This leads me to two possible conclusions:
- I don't know how to draw utility functions, but they are a good model of my preferences, and I could learn how to do it.
- Utility functions are really bad match for human preferences, and one of the major premises we accept is wrong.
Anybody else tried assigning numeric values to different outcomes outside very narrow subject matter? Have you succeeded and want to share some pointers? Or failed and want to share some thought on that?
I understand that details of many utility functions will be highly personal, but if you can share your successful ones, that would be great.
So, you are saying that you have no argument with my position, because you have not been using either "about" or "preference" with their common usage?
If that is the case, why couldn't you simply say that, instead of continued argument and posturing about your narrower definition of the words? ISTM you could have pointed that out days ago and saved us all a lot of time.
This is also not the first time where I have been reducing the common usage of a word (e.g. "should") and then had you argue that I was wrong, based on your own personal meaning of the word.
Since I have no way of knowing in advance all of the words you have chosen to redefine in your specialized vocabulary, would it be too much to ask if you point out which words you are treating as specialized when you argue that my objection to (or reduction of) the common meaning of the word is incorrect, because it does not apply to your already-reduced personal version of the word?
Then, I could simply nod, and perhaps ask for your reduction in the case where I do not have a good one already, and we would not need to have an extended argument where we are using utterly incompatible definitions for such words as "about", "preference", and "should."
Actually, the point is that most of the other usages of these words are meaningless confusion, and the argument is that this particular semi-technical sense is what the word actually means, when you get the nonsense out of it. It's not how it's used, but it's the only meaningful thing that fits the idea.
Since you don't just describe the usage of the word, but argue for the confusion behind it, we have a disagreement. Presenting a clear definition is the easy part. Showing that ten volumes of the Encyclopedia of Astrology is utter nonsense is harder, and ar... (read more)