You could also say that humans have utility functions, but they can change quickly over time because of trivial things. Which, I admit, would be near-indistinguishable from not having utility functions at all (in the long-term), but saying that you have a utility function and a set of preferences at one instant in time seems true enough to allow for decision theory analysis.
You could also say that humans have utility functions, but they can change quickly over time because of trivial things.
This seems like it would make the statement “humans have utility functions” devoid of value, as you point out. A single-valued utility function must be curlless (i.e. no cycles) to be a sensible utility function- but humans seem to demonstrably have cycles. It’s not just a “grass is greener” phenomenon where, once I choose John McCain, I immediately regret it and wish I had picked Clinton (i.e. a quick change over time), but that the utility function is not single-valued- the reason why people prefer McCain to Clinton is different for the reason they prefer Clinton to Obama. If you asked someone “If you had to pick one candidate from all three, who would you pick?” they would be stumped- i.e. the decision theory analysis would hang.
Now, generally what people do in these situations is tease out the causes of the preferences, and try to weight them- but it’s obviously possible to get another cycle going there.
You could also say that humans have utility functions, but they can change quickly over time because of trivial things. Which, I admit, would be near-indistinguishable from not having utility functions at all (in the long-term), but saying that you have a utility function and a set of preferences at one instant in time seems true enough to allow for decision theory analysis.
This seems like it would make the statement “humans have utility functions” devoid of value, as you point out. A single-valued utility function must be curlless (i.e. no cycles) to be a sensible utility function- but humans seem to demonstrably have cycles. It’s not just a “grass is greener” phenomenon where, once I choose John McCain, I immediately regret it and wish I had picked Clinton (i.e. a quick change over time), but that the utility function is not single-valued- the reason why people prefer McCain to Clinton is different for the reason they prefer Clinton to Obama. If you asked someone “If you had to pick one candidate from all three, who would you pick?” they would be stumped- i.e. the decision theory analysis would hang.
Now, generally what people do in these situations is tease out the causes of the preferences, and try to weight them- but it’s obviously possible to get another cycle going there.
(Also check out Perplexed’s comment below.)