I’m a bit confused by “identifying any function of happiness with utility seems clearly wrong to me” : Do you propose the actual utility function as you understand it, has no relation to happiness at all?
I believe what Qiaochu is saying is that not that happiness isn’t a component of your utility function, but rather that it doesn’t comprise the entirety of your utility function. (Normatively speaking, of course. In practical terms humans don’t even behave as though they have a consistent utility function.)
Thanks. I guess I should not have included the simple utilitarian calculation, as it seems to work as a red herring :( Mea culpa.
Qiaochu: Would the article make better sense if framed like this: …assuming as per standard LessWrong reasoning, the actual utility function is very complicated, but also assuming, it has a large happiness component, whatever hapiness means, we may ask: what would be a relation of such component to usual approaches to measure happiness by asking people? And how to aggregate among people?
I don’t even buy that there is a large happiness component. I would not be surprised to find that in a hundred years we look back on the modern western preoccupation with happiness as mostly a strange cultural phenomenon. The analogous thing looking back on the past might be 11th century monks thinking of something like serving Christ as a large component of “true utility,” or whatever.
I believe what Qiaochu is saying is that not that happiness isn’t a component of your utility function, but rather that it doesn’t comprise the entirety of your utility function. (Normatively speaking, of course. In practical terms humans don’t even behave as though they have a consistent utility function.)
Thanks. I guess I should not have included the simple utilitarian calculation, as it seems to work as a red herring :( Mea culpa.
Qiaochu: Would the article make better sense if framed like this: …assuming as per standard LessWrong reasoning, the actual utility function is very complicated, but also assuming, it has a large happiness component, whatever hapiness means, we may ask: what would be a relation of such component to usual approaches to measure happiness by asking people? And how to aggregate among people?
I don’t even buy that there is a large happiness component. I would not be surprised to find that in a hundred years we look back on the modern western preoccupation with happiness as mostly a strange cultural phenomenon. The analogous thing looking back on the past might be 11th century monks thinking of something like serving Christ as a large component of “true utility,” or whatever.
(But yes, I would be happier with this framing.)