Expecting a chocolate bar that is “twice as delicous” to be worth twice as many hedons, and then thinking that is a problem with hedons, is the same mistake as expecting 2X dollars to have twice the utility of X dollars. It is a common mistake; but it has been explained many times on LW lately. Hedons, like utilons, are defined in a way that accounts for scaling effects. If you are committed to expectation maximization, then utilons are defined such that you will prefer a 50% chance of 2X utilons + epsilon to X utilons.
EDIT: Folks, if this comment gets a −3, we have a serious problem. You can’t participate in a lot of the discussions on LW if you don’t understand this point. Apparently, most LW readers don’t understand this point. (Unless they are voting it down because they think I am misinterpreting Psychohistorian.)
Expecting a chocolate bar that is “twice as delicous” to be worth twice as many hedons, is the same mistake as expecting 2X dollars to have twice the utility of X dollars.
Wow. I never said this. Not even “I kind of said this, and you took it out of context.” I just plain never claimed anything about the hedonic value of deliciousness, and I never said anything about a doubly delicious chocolate bar being worth double hedons, double dollars, double utilons, or double anything. Moreover, this is unrelated to my point.
My point was that deliciousness isn’t properly quantifiable. You don’t know how many dollars you’d pay to double your experienced deliciousness, because you don’t even know what that would mean. Omega can tell me that a chocolate bar will be twice as delicious, but I can’t sample chocolate bars and tell myself which one, if any, was twice as delicious as the first. I have absolutely no way of estimating what it would be like to double the deliciousness of my experience, and if I did double the deliciousness of my experience, I wouldn’t know it unless Omega told me so.
This is a very, very big problem. That I have never experienced multiplying deliciousness by a scalar and cannot imagine experiencing such is evidence that “twice as delicious” cannot reasonably modify “chocolate bar,” or anything else for that matter. The same seems to be true of hedons; you’d need Omega to tell you precisely how many hedons you’ve gotten today as compared to yesterday. Obviously though, you don’t need Omega to tell you if you have 20% more dollars than you did yesterday.
Wow. I never said this. Not even “I kind of said this, and you took it out of context.” I just plain never claimed anything about the hedonic value of deliciousness
Except immediately above, in the passage we are both talking about, when you said:
Assume you are indifferent towards buying Chocolate Bar A at $1 per bar. How much would you pay for a chocolate bar that is 3.25186 times as delicious?
Either that was a statement implying that hedons are in invalid concept because it doesn’t make sense to talk about being “twice as delicious” without accounting for other factors; or else it had nothing to do with what followed.
Your point still makes the same mistake. You don’t have to presently know what twice as many hedons will feel like, or what twice as delicious will taste like. You know that some things are more pleasurable than others. The problem is defined so that Omega can be trusted to double your hedons, or utilons. So stop saying “I can’t imagine doubling my hedons” or anything like that. It doesn’t matter.
If you meant that you are cognitively incapable of experience twice the utility without losing your identity, that may be a valid objection. But AFAIK you’re not making that objection.
Expecting a chocolate bar that is “twice as delicous” to be worth twice as many hedons, and then thinking that is a problem with hedons, is the same mistake as expecting 2X dollars to have twice the utility of X dollars. It is a common mistake; but it has been explained many times on LW lately. Hedons, like utilons, are defined in a way that accounts for scaling effects. If you are committed to expectation maximization, then utilons are defined such that you will prefer a 50% chance of 2X utilons + epsilon to X utilons.
EDIT: Folks, if this comment gets a −3, we have a serious problem. You can’t participate in a lot of the discussions on LW if you don’t understand this point. Apparently, most LW readers don’t understand this point. (Unless they are voting it down because they think I am misinterpreting Psychohistorian.)
Please explain your objections.
Wow. I never said this. Not even “I kind of said this, and you took it out of context.” I just plain never claimed anything about the hedonic value of deliciousness, and I never said anything about a doubly delicious chocolate bar being worth double hedons, double dollars, double utilons, or double anything. Moreover, this is unrelated to my point.
My point was that deliciousness isn’t properly quantifiable. You don’t know how many dollars you’d pay to double your experienced deliciousness, because you don’t even know what that would mean. Omega can tell me that a chocolate bar will be twice as delicious, but I can’t sample chocolate bars and tell myself which one, if any, was twice as delicious as the first. I have absolutely no way of estimating what it would be like to double the deliciousness of my experience, and if I did double the deliciousness of my experience, I wouldn’t know it unless Omega told me so.
This is a very, very big problem. That I have never experienced multiplying deliciousness by a scalar and cannot imagine experiencing such is evidence that “twice as delicious” cannot reasonably modify “chocolate bar,” or anything else for that matter. The same seems to be true of hedons; you’d need Omega to tell you precisely how many hedons you’ve gotten today as compared to yesterday. Obviously though, you don’t need Omega to tell you if you have 20% more dollars than you did yesterday.
Except immediately above, in the passage we are both talking about, when you said:
Either that was a statement implying that hedons are in invalid concept because it doesn’t make sense to talk about being “twice as delicious” without accounting for other factors; or else it had nothing to do with what followed.
Your point still makes the same mistake. You don’t have to presently know what twice as many hedons will feel like, or what twice as delicious will taste like. You know that some things are more pleasurable than others. The problem is defined so that Omega can be trusted to double your hedons, or utilons. So stop saying “I can’t imagine doubling my hedons” or anything like that. It doesn’t matter.
If you meant that you are cognitively incapable of experience twice the utility without losing your identity, that may be a valid objection. But AFAIK you’re not making that objection.