If I were Kahneman and I had posed that riddle, I would object that the entire point of the thought experiment is to consider the activity as being of no future utility whatsoever. Just observing the way people behave every day, most of us choose to indulge in pleasures that have no future utility (and in some cases have negative future utility) all the time. We eat junk food, watch TV, waste time watching cat videos. Things that would not obviously be missed if they could not be got.
If I were Kahneman and I had posed that riddle, I would object that the entire point of the thought experiment is to consider the activity as being of no future utility whatsoever.
Sorry, I don’t follow you. If you were Kahneman you would have posed the riddle differently? Or are you saying that I’m unfairly describing it?
Understood. In that case, I disagree on this point.
most of us choose to indulge in pleasures that have no future utility (and in some cases have negative future utility) all the time. We eat junk food, watch TV, waste time watching cat videos. Things that would not obviously be missed if they could not be got.
Are you sure there’s no future utility? Doesn’t resisting these useless but pleasurable activities deplete the ego? Doesn’t depleted ego lead to bad decision-making?
This is not to say that every time a parole judges eat a brownie it’s because they’re trying to protect their ability to make sound decisions, merely that I don’t agree that it’s the same as taking a vacation that totally evaporates when it’s over.
Are you sure there’s no future utility? Doesn’t resisting these useless but pleasurable activities deplete the ego? Doesn’t depleted ego lead to bad decision-making?
For at least some of the stuff I do, yes I’m sure. You can easily reduce this ego-depletion argument to absurdity by supposing that foregoing every minor indulgence is ego-depleting and that you should never deny yourself. Even that there exists some activity B with higher (expected) future utility than activity A, but lower present utility, which we sometimes nevertheless forego in favour of higher immediate returns shows that we don’t act to maximise future utility; you lose out on the difference in opportunity cost.
To suggest that such activities B don’t exist, or that we never choose them, is to suggest that (at least some) human beings are entirely “subjectively rational”, i.e. always make the choice they believe to yield optimal future benefit. If you know any such person see if you can gather up a few hair samples so we can clone him!
Alright, let’s say I agree that in the space of all possible activities there exist some pleasurable activities that have zero future utility.
Couldn’t we die at any minute? Given this, shouldn’t we always do the pleasurable thing so long as there’s no negative utility and no opportunity cost because there’s a small chance it’ll be the last thing we do?
Doesn’t choosing the beautiful vacation that evaporates when it’s over have the benefit that if we die in the middle of it, life was just that much more pleasant?
I guess I don’t understand why someone would choose not to take the vacation.
shouldn’t we always do the pleasurable thing so long as there’s no negative utility and no opportunity cost
The problem with this (I think, I’m not that hot on decision theory) is that you can pretty much never assign an opportunity cost of zero to an activity unless your life depends on it, as would be the case for breathing. For as long as we’re given no reason to believe our life will end at any particular point, you have to calculate your opportunity costs on the assumption that you’ll continue to live. At least, it seems that way in the general case. You could push this too far by assuming you’ll never die, and therefore you’ll perpetually forego short-term gains for some massive payoff you expect to get infinitely far into the future.
If I were Kahneman and I had posed that riddle, I would object that the entire point of the thought experiment is to consider the activity as being of no future utility whatsoever. Just observing the way people behave every day, most of us choose to indulge in pleasures that have no future utility (and in some cases have negative future utility) all the time. We eat junk food, watch TV, waste time watching cat videos. Things that would not obviously be missed if they could not be got.
Sorry, I don’t follow you. If you were Kahneman you would have posed the riddle differently? Or are you saying that I’m unfairly describing it?
What I mean is “this is what I think he intended”.
Understood. In that case, I disagree on this point.
Are you sure there’s no future utility? Doesn’t resisting these useless but pleasurable activities deplete the ego? Doesn’t depleted ego lead to bad decision-making?
This is not to say that every time a parole judges eat a brownie it’s because they’re trying to protect their ability to make sound decisions, merely that I don’t agree that it’s the same as taking a vacation that totally evaporates when it’s over.
For at least some of the stuff I do, yes I’m sure. You can easily reduce this ego-depletion argument to absurdity by supposing that foregoing every minor indulgence is ego-depleting and that you should never deny yourself. Even that there exists some activity B with higher (expected) future utility than activity A, but lower present utility, which we sometimes nevertheless forego in favour of higher immediate returns shows that we don’t act to maximise future utility; you lose out on the difference in opportunity cost.
To suggest that such activities B don’t exist, or that we never choose them, is to suggest that (at least some) human beings are entirely “subjectively rational”, i.e. always make the choice they believe to yield optimal future benefit. If you know any such person see if you can gather up a few hair samples so we can clone him!
Alright, let’s say I agree that in the space of all possible activities there exist some pleasurable activities that have zero future utility.
Couldn’t we die at any minute? Given this, shouldn’t we always do the pleasurable thing so long as there’s no negative utility and no opportunity cost because there’s a small chance it’ll be the last thing we do?
Doesn’t choosing the beautiful vacation that evaporates when it’s over have the benefit that if we die in the middle of it, life was just that much more pleasant?
I guess I don’t understand why someone would choose not to take the vacation.
The problem with this (I think, I’m not that hot on decision theory) is that you can pretty much never assign an opportunity cost of zero to an activity unless your life depends on it, as would be the case for breathing. For as long as we’re given no reason to believe our life will end at any particular point, you have to calculate your opportunity costs on the assumption that you’ll continue to live. At least, it seems that way in the general case. You could push this too far by assuming you’ll never die, and therefore you’ll perpetually forego short-term gains for some massive payoff you expect to get infinitely far into the future.