Utility functions are really bad match for human preferences, and one of the major premises we accept is wrong.

They may be a bad descriptive match. But in prescriptive terms, how do you "help" someone without a utility function?

You want a neuron dump? I don't have a utility function, I embody one, and I don't have read access to my coding.

I've put a bit of thought into this over the years, and don't have a believable theory yet. I have learned quite a bit from the excercise, though.

1) I have many utility functions. Different parts of my identity or different frames of thought engage different preference orders, and there is no consistent winner. I bite this bullet: personal identity is a lie - I am a collective of many distinct algorithms. I also accept that Arrow’s impossibility theorem applies to my own decisions.

2) There are at least three dimensions (time, intensity, and risk) to my... (read more)

Here's one data point. Some guidelines have been helpful for me when thinking about my utility curve over dollars. This has been helpful to me in business and medical decisions. It would also work, I think, for things that you can treat as equivalent to money (e.g. willingness-to-pay or willingness-to-be-paid).

1. Over a small range, I am approximately risk neutral. For example, a 50-50 shot at $1 is worth just about $0.50, since the range we are talking about is only between $0 and $1. One way to think about this is that, over a small enough range, there is

This leads me to two possible conclusions

A third possibility: Humans aren't in general capable of accurately reflecting on their preferences.

Utility functions are really bad match for human preferences, and one of the major premises we accept is wrong.

If utility functions are a bad match for human preferences, that would seem to imply that humans simply tend not to have very consistent preferences. What major premise does this invalidate?

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

It's a well-known result that losing something produces roughly twice the disutility that gaining the same thing would produce in utility. (I.e., we "irrationally" prefer what we already have.)

This is a good exercise, I'll see what I can do for MY utility function.

First of all, a utility function is a function

f: X --> R

Where X is some set. What should that set be? Certainly it shouldn't be the set of states of the universe, because then you can't say that you enjoy certain processes (such as bringing up a child, as opposed to the child just appearing). Perhaps the set of possible histories of the universe is a better candidate. Even if we identify histories that are microscopically different but macroscopically identical, and apply some cru... (read more)

So, we're just listing how much we'd buy things for? I don't see why it's supposed to be hard.

I guess it gets a bit complicated when you consider combinations of things, rather than just their marginal value. For example, once I have a computer with an internet connection, I care for little else. Still, I just have to figure out what would be about neutral, and decide how much I'd pay an hour (or need to be payed an hour) to go from that to something else.

Playing a vaguely interesting game on the computer = 0.

Doing something interesting = 1-3.

Talking to a ... (read more)

I realize that my utility function is inscrutable and I trust the unconscious par of me to make accurate judgments of what I want. When I've determined what I want, I use the conscious part of me to determine how I'll achieve it.

What counts as a "successful" utility function?

In general terms there are two, conflicting, ways to come up with utility functions, and these seem to imply different metrics of success.

1. The first assumes that "utility" corresponds to something real in the world, such as some sort of emotional or cognitive state. On this view, the goal, when specifying your utility function, is to get numbers that reflect this reality as closely as possible. You say "I think x will give me 2 emotilons", and "I think y will give me 3 emot

Utility functions are really bad match for human preferences, and one of the major premises we accept is wrong.

Human utility functions are relative, contextual, and include semi-independent positive-negative axes. You can't model all that crap with one number.

The study of affective synchrony shows that humans have simultaneously-active positive and negative affect systems. At extreme levels in either system, the other is shut down, but the rest of the time, they can support or oppose each other. (And in positions of opposition, we experience conflict... (read more)

Your observation is interesting. Note that I can't write down my wave function, either, but that doesn't mean I don't have one.

For a thread entitled "Post Your Utility Function" remarkably few people have actually posted what they think their utility function is.

Are people naturally secreteve about what they value? If so, why might that be?

Do people not know what their utility function is? That seems strange for such a basic issue.

Do people find their utility function hard to express? Why might that be?

Because everyone wants more money,

Why do people keep saying things like this? Intuition suggests, and research confirms, that there's a major diminishing returns factor involved with money, and acquiring lots of it can actually make people unhappy.

I want more money only to a degree, then I wouldn't want more. My utility function does not assign a positive, set value to money.

Do people care more about money's absolute value, or more about its relative value to what other people have? Does our utility function have a term for other people in it which is it in conflict with other people's utility functions?