I don’t do an expected-utility calculation about what I’m going to wear today; it wouldn’t be worth the mental energy, since my subconscious instincts on how formal I should look and what-matches-what seem to do just as well as my conscious reasoning would. But if I’m deciding something bigger- whether to spend a few hundred bucks on a new suit, for example- then it’s worth it to think about quantitative factors (I can estimate how often I’d wear it, for instance), and try my best to weight these into the decision of how much it would be worth to me.
That’s not perfect expected utility maximization, since I don’t have a conscious handle on the social factors that determine how valuable looking a bit better is to my career and happiness, nor have I solved all the problems of ontology of value. But it’s a better algorithm than what many people subconsciously use: “Oh, there’s a nice suit on sale- but I already spent a few hundred bucks renewing my car insurance today, so I feel like I’m all spent out, so no”, and later “Hey, there’s a nice looking suit- someone just made me feel badly-dressed yesterday, so I’ll buy it even if it’s expensive”.
We’re not trying to create our reasoning processes from scratch, just improve on the ones we have! I think that’s a vital distinction.
I don’t do an expected-utility calculation about what I’m going to wear today; it wouldn’t be worth the mental energy, since my subconscious instincts on how formal I should look and what-matches-what seem to do just as well as my conscious reasoning would. But if I’m deciding something bigger- whether to spend a few hundred bucks on a new suit, for example- then it’s worth it to think about quantitative factors (I can estimate how often I’d wear it, for instance), and try my best to weight these into the decision of how much it would be worth to me.
That’s not perfect expected utility maximization, since I don’t have a conscious handle on the social factors that determine how valuable looking a bit better is to my career and happiness, nor have I solved all the problems of ontology of value. But it’s a better algorithm than what many people subconsciously use: “Oh, there’s a nice suit on sale- but I already spent a few hundred bucks renewing my car insurance today, so I feel like I’m all spent out, so no”, and later “Hey, there’s a nice looking suit- someone just made me feel badly-dressed yesterday, so I’ll buy it even if it’s expensive”.