Eliezer_Yudkowsky: AFAICT, and correct me if I’m wrong, you didn’t address Gray_Area’s objection on the first post on this topic, which resolved the inconsistency to my satisfaction.
Specifically, the subjects are presented with a one shot choice between the bets. You are reading “I prefer A to B” to mean “I will write an infinite number of American options to convert B’s into A’s” even when that doesn’t obviously follow from the choices presented. Once it becomes an arbitrarily repeatable or repeated game, Gray_Area’s argument goes, they will revert to expected monetary value maximization.
And in fact, that’s exactly what they did.
If someone has seen that point addressed, please link the comment or post and I will apologize. Here is the relevant part of Gray_Area’s post, just to save you time:
″...the ‘money pump’ argument fails because you are changing the rules of the game. The original question was, I assume, asking whether you would play the game once, whereas you would presumably iterate the money pump until the pennies turn into millions. The problem, though, is if you asked people to make the original choices a million times, they would, correctly, maximize expectations. Because when you are talking about a million tries, expectations are the appropriate framework. When you are talking about 1 try, they are not.”
I too initially shared Gray_Area’s objection, but Eliezer did in fact address it:
If you need $24,000 for a lifesaving operation and an extra $3,000 won’t help that much, then you choose 1A > 1B and 2A > 2B. If you have a million dollars in the bank account and your utility curve doesn’t change much with an extra $25,000 or so, then you should choose 1B > 1A and 2B > 2A.
The comments introducing the idea of a lifesaving operation actually clarified why that objection isn’t reasonable. If I need some money more than I need more money, then I should choose 1A > 1B and 2A > 2B.
Eliezer_Yudkowsky: AFAICT, and correct me if I’m wrong, you didn’t address Gray_Area’s objection on the first post on this topic, which resolved the inconsistency to my satisfaction.
Specifically, the subjects are presented with a one shot choice between the bets. You are reading “I prefer A to B” to mean “I will write an infinite number of American options to convert B’s into A’s” even when that doesn’t obviously follow from the choices presented. Once it becomes an arbitrarily repeatable or repeated game, Gray_Area’s argument goes, they will revert to expected monetary value maximization.
And in fact, that’s exactly what they did.
If someone has seen that point addressed, please link the comment or post and I will apologize. Here is the relevant part of Gray_Area’s post, just to save you time:
″...the ‘money pump’ argument fails because you are changing the rules of the game. The original question was, I assume, asking whether you would play the game once, whereas you would presumably iterate the money pump until the pennies turn into millions. The problem, though, is if you asked people to make the original choices a million times, they would, correctly, maximize expectations. Because when you are talking about a million tries, expectations are the appropriate framework. When you are talking about 1 try, they are not.”
I too initially shared Gray_Area’s objection, but Eliezer did in fact address it:
The comments introducing the idea of a lifesaving operation actually clarified why that objection isn’t reasonable. If I need some money more than I need more money, then I should choose 1A > 1B and 2A > 2B.