I agree that, if you want to experience the outcomes typical of other people in situations similar to yours, there’s not much to be gained by thinking about your utility function. In general it’s foolish to rely on inside-view thinking if you have more than enough outside-view information. But if you don’t like your peer group’s outcomes — maybe you got into an unfortunate situation, or you have some wacky preferences like wanting to build a friendly AI, or you just want to show off your rationalist chops — then using expected utility could still be valuable.
Our inability to model all possible histories of the universe does not make the concept of expected utility useless. We can apply it at whatever level of detail is tractable. We can’t do real-time expected utility calculations, but we can use generalizations and implications of utility theory to discover when our rules of thumb are contradictory or self-defeating.
We don’t need to throw away intuition either, we can consider it from an outside view. In situations where following intuition gives the best expected outcome, then follow intuition.
But if you don’t like your peer group’s outcomes — maybe you got into an unfortunate situation, or you have some wacky preferences like wanting to build a friendly AI, or you just want to show off your rationalist chops — then using expected utility could still be valuable.
This sounds good; if the default way of living is not working for you, then try something different and risky.
I agree that, if you want to experience the outcomes typical of other people in situations similar to yours, there’s not much to be gained by thinking about your utility function. In general it’s foolish to rely on inside-view thinking if you have more than enough outside-view information. But if you don’t like your peer group’s outcomes — maybe you got into an unfortunate situation, or you have some wacky preferences like wanting to build a friendly AI, or you just want to show off your rationalist chops — then using expected utility could still be valuable.
Our inability to model all possible histories of the universe does not make the concept of expected utility useless. We can apply it at whatever level of detail is tractable. We can’t do real-time expected utility calculations, but we can use generalizations and implications of utility theory to discover when our rules of thumb are contradictory or self-defeating.
We don’t need to throw away intuition either, we can consider it from an outside view. In situations where following intuition gives the best expected outcome, then follow intuition.
This sounds good; if the default way of living is not working for you, then try something different and risky.