I think the confusion here is more of a sorites paradox than anything about expected utility. You can’t imagine a single extra penny changing anyone’s outcome, but you can imagine it for a hundred extra pennies.
I think that’s a mistaken intuition; for instance, you could be about to buy something small, realize you’re a few cents short, and either cancel the transaction or use the “Take a Penny” jar; but the probabilities of doing either will actually change (for social reasons) depending on whether you’re, say, 3, 4 or 5 cents short of the total.
It’s rather like the way that being one more second late out the door can either get you to the office at the exact same time, or twenty minutes later, depending on the bus schedule.
Utility clearly isn’t linear with money, but I think you’re probably right that that intuition had something to do with my drawing the conclusion I did.
I think the confusion here is more of a sorites paradox than anything about expected utility. You can’t imagine a single extra penny changing anyone’s outcome, but you can imagine it for a hundred extra pennies.
I think that’s a mistaken intuition; for instance, you could be about to buy something small, realize you’re a few cents short, and either cancel the transaction or use the “Take a Penny” jar; but the probabilities of doing either will actually change (for social reasons) depending on whether you’re, say, 3, 4 or 5 cents short of the total.
It’s rather like the way that being one more second late out the door can either get you to the office at the exact same time, or twenty minutes later, depending on the bus schedule.
Utility clearly isn’t linear with money, but I think you’re probably right that that intuition had something to do with my drawing the conclusion I did.