Nonlinear (decelerating) utility functions are a good way to get complex results. If I continued to like eating ice cream the same all the time, I might just eat ice cream every day. But instead the amount of utility it’s worth depends on how much ice cream I’ve had recently and some other complicated stuff, so I eat ice cream occasionally and read books occasionally and play games with friends occasionally.
I like to call it “placing a high value on novelty and variety”. Just like I’ve “made a habit of change [for the better]”, I’ve taken a fundamentally static thing and turned it into a constantly changing variable.
Nonlinear (decelerating) utility functions are a good way to get complex results. If I continued to like eating ice cream the same all the time, I might just eat ice cream every day. But instead the amount of utility it’s worth depends on how much ice cream I’ve had recently and some other complicated stuff, so I eat ice cream occasionally and read books occasionally and play games with friends occasionally.
I like to call it “placing a high value on novelty and variety”. Just like I’ve “made a habit of change [for the better]”, I’ve taken a fundamentally static thing and turned it into a constantly changing variable.