Daniel grew up as a poor kid, and one day he was overjoyed to find $20 on the sidewalk. Daniel could have worked hard to become a trader on Wall Street. Yet he decides to become a teacher instead, because of his positive experiences in tutoring a few kids while in high school. But as a high school teacher, he will only teach thousand kids in his career, while as a trader, he would have been able to make millions of dollars. If he multiplied his positive experience with one kid by a thousand, it still probably wouldn’t compare with the joy of finding $20 on the sidewalk times a million.
Nice try, but even if my utility for oiled birds was as nonlinear as most people’s utility for money is, the fact that there are many more oiled birds than I’m considering saving means that what you need to compare is (say) U(54,700 oiled birds), U(54,699 oiled birds), and U(53,699 oiled birds) -- and it’d be a very weird utility function indeed if the difference between the first and the second is much larger than one-thousandth the difference between the second and the third. And even if U did have such kinks, the fact that you don’t know exactly how many oiled birds are there would smooth them away when computing EU(one fewer oiled bird) etc.
(IIRC EY said something similar in the sequences, using starving children rather than oiled birds as the example, but I can’t seem to find it right now.)
Unless you also care about who is saving the birds—but you aren’t considering saving them with your own hands, you’re considering giving money to save them, and money is fungible, so it’d be weird to care about who is giving the money.
Nice try, but even if my utility for oiled birds was as nonlinear as most people’s utility for money is, the fact that there are many more oiled birds than I’m considering saving means that what you need to compare is (say) U(54,700 oiled birds), U(54,699 oiled birds), and U(53,699 oiled birds)
Nonlinear in what?
Daniel’s utility for dollars is nonlinear in the total number of dollars that he has, not in the total number of dollars in the world. Likewise, his utility for birds is nonlinear in the total number of birds that he has saved, not in the total number of birds that exist in the world.
(Actually, I’d expect it to have two components, one of which is nonlinear in the number of birds he has saved and another of which is nonlinear in the total number of birds in the world. However, the second factor would be negligibly small in most situations.)
He has a utility function that is larger when more birds are saved. If this doesn’t count as caring about the birds, your definition of “cares about the birds” is very arbitrary.
Because Daniel has been thinking of scope insensitivity, he expects his brain to misreport how much he actually cares about large numbers of dollars: the internal feeling of satisfaction with gaining money can’t be expected to line up with the actual importance of the situation. So instead of just asking his gut how much he cares about making lots of money, he shuts up and multiplies the joy of finding $20 by a million....
he expects his brain to misreport how much he actually cares
Um, that’s nonsense. His brain does not misreport how much he actually cares—it’s just that his brain thinks that it should care more. It’s a conflict between “is” and “should”, not a matter of misreporting “is”.
he shuts up and multiplies the joy of finding $20 by a million....
You do realize that what I said is a restatement of one of the examples in the original article, except substituting “caring about money” for “caring about birds”? And snarles’ post was a somewhat more indirect version of that as well? Being nonsense is the whole point.
You do realize that what I said is a restatement of one of the examples in the original article
Yes, I do, and I think it’s nonsense there as well. The care-o-meter is not broken, it’s just that your brain would prefer you to care more about all these numbers. It’s like preferring not have a fever and saying the thermometer is broken because it shows too high a temperature.
Daniel grew up as a poor kid, and one day he was overjoyed to find $20 on the sidewalk. Daniel could have worked hard to become a trader on Wall Street. Yet he decides to become a teacher instead, because of his positive experiences in tutoring a few kids while in high school. But as a high school teacher, he will only teach thousand kids in his career, while as a trader, he would have been able to make millions of dollars. If he multiplied his positive experience with one kid by a thousand, it still probably wouldn’t compare with the joy of finding $20 on the sidewalk times a million.
Nice try, but even if my utility for oiled birds was as nonlinear as most people’s utility for money is, the fact that there are many more oiled birds than I’m considering saving means that what you need to compare is (say) U(54,700 oiled birds), U(54,699 oiled birds), and U(53,699 oiled birds) -- and it’d be a very weird utility function indeed if the difference between the first and the second is much larger than one-thousandth the difference between the second and the third. And even if U did have such kinks, the fact that you don’t know exactly how many oiled birds are there would smooth them away when computing EU(one fewer oiled bird) etc.
(IIRC EY said something similar in the sequences, using starving children rather than oiled birds as the example, but I can’t seem to find it right now.)
Unless you also care about who is saving the birds—but you aren’t considering saving them with your own hands, you’re considering giving money to save them, and money is fungible, so it’d be weird to care about who is giving the money.
Nonlinear in what?
Daniel’s utility for dollars is nonlinear in the total number of dollars that he has, not in the total number of dollars in the world. Likewise, his utility for birds is nonlinear in the total number of birds that he has saved, not in the total number of birds that exist in the world.
(Actually, I’d expect it to have two components, one of which is nonlinear in the number of birds he has saved and another of which is nonlinear in the total number of birds in the world. However, the second factor would be negligibly small in most situations.)
IOW he doesn’t actually care about the birds, he cares about himself.
He has a utility function that is larger when more birds are saved. If this doesn’t count as caring about the birds, your definition of “cares about the birds” is very arbitrary.
He has a utility function that is larger when he saves more birds; birds saved by other people don’t count.
If it has two components, they do count, just not by much.
Because Daniel has been thinking of scope insensitivity, he expects his brain to misreport how much he actually cares about large numbers of dollars: the internal feeling of satisfaction with gaining money can’t be expected to line up with the actual importance of the situation. So instead of just asking his gut how much he cares about making lots of money, he shuts up and multiplies the joy of finding $20 by a million....
Um, that’s nonsense. His brain does not misreport how much he actually cares—it’s just that his brain thinks that it should care more. It’s a conflict between “is” and “should”, not a matter of misreporting “is”.
After which he goes and robs a bank.
You do realize that what I said is a restatement of one of the examples in the original article, except substituting “caring about money” for “caring about birds”? And snarles’ post was a somewhat more indirect version of that as well? Being nonsense is the whole point.
Yes, I do, and I think it’s nonsense there as well. The care-o-meter is not broken, it’s just that your brain would prefer you to care more about all these numbers. It’s like preferring not have a fever and saying the thermometer is broken because it shows too high a temperature.