I think this kind of criticism makes sense if only if you postulate that there’s some kind of extra, physical restrictions on utilities. Perhaps humans have bounded utility functions, but do all agents? It sure seems like decision theory should be able to handle agents with unbounded utility functions. If this is impossible for some reason, well that’s interesting in it’s own right. To figure out why it’s impossible, we first have to notice our own confusion.
I think this kind of criticism makes sense if only if you postulate that there’s some kind of extra, physical restrictions on utilities. Perhaps humans have bounded utility functions, but do all agents? It sure seems like decision theory should be able to handle agents with unbounded utility functions. If this is impossible for some reason, well that’s interesting in it’s own right. To figure out why it’s impossible, we first have to notice our own confusion.
Sure, but the question was “what n would you choose”, not “what n would an arbitrary decision-making agent choose”.