I agree/upvoted your point. Human preferences are cyclic. I’d go further and say that without at least having a preference graph that is acyclic it is not possible to optimise a decision at all. The very thought seems meaningless.
Assuming one can establish coherent preferences the question of whether one should optimise for expected utility encounters a further complication. Many human preferences are refer to our actions and not outcomes. An agent could in fact decide to optimise for making ‘Right’ choices and to hell with the consequences. They could choose not to optimise for expected utility. Of course, it seems like that choice was the one with the highest expected value in their rather wacky utility function.
It’s not an observation that warrants much more than those three words and the comma but it seems to me that either you are optimising a decision for expected utility or you are doing some other thing than optimising. ‘Expected utility’ just happens to be the name given to value in the function you use if you are optimising a decision.
I agree/upvoted your point. Human preferences are cyclic. I’d go further and say that without at least having a preference graph that is acyclic it is not possible to optimise a decision at all. The very thought seems meaningless.
Assuming one can establish coherent preferences the question of whether one should optimise for expected utility encounters a further complication. Many human preferences are refer to our actions and not outcomes. An agent could in fact decide to optimise for making ‘Right’ choices and to hell with the consequences. They could choose not to optimise for expected utility. Of course, it seems like that choice was the one with the highest expected value in their rather wacky utility function.
It’s not an observation that warrants much more than those three words and the comma but it seems to me that either you are optimising a decision for expected utility or you are doing some other thing than optimising. ‘Expected utility’ just happens to be the name given to value in the function you use if you are optimising a decision.