ETA: The following comment is outdated. I had a gchat conversation with Wei Dai in which he kindly pointed out some ways in which my intended message could easily and justifiably have interpreted as a much stronger claim. I’ll add a note to my top level comment warning about this.
Also, utility function != utilitarianism. The fact that some people get confused about this is not a particularly good (additional) reason to stop talking about utility functions.
I never proposed that people stop talking about utility functions, and twice now I’ve described the phenomenon that I’m actually complaining about. Are you trying to address some deeper point you think is implicit in my argument, are you predicting how other people will interpret my argument and arguing against that interpreted version, or what? I may be wrong, but I think it is vitally important for epistemic hygiene that we at least listen to and ideally respond to what others are actually saying. You’re an excellent thinker and seemingly less prone to social biases than most so I am confused by your responses. Am I being dense somehow?
(ETA: The following hypothesis is obviously absurd. Blame it on rationalization. It’s very rare I get to catch myself so explicitly in the act! w00t!) Anyway, the people I have in mind don’t get confused about the difference between reasoning about/with utility functions and being utilitarian, they just take the former as strong evidence as of the latter. This doesn’t happen when “utility function” is used technically or in a sand-boxed way, only when it is used in the specific way that I was objecting to. Notice how I said we should be careful about which concepts we use, not which words.
ETA: The following comment is outdated. I had a gchat conversation with Wei Dai in which he kindly pointed out some ways in which my intended message could easily and justifiably have interpreted as a much stronger claim. I’ll add a note to my top level comment warning about this.
I never proposed that people stop talking about utility functions, and twice now I’ve described the phenomenon that I’m actually complaining about. Are you trying to address some deeper point you think is implicit in my argument, are you predicting how other people will interpret my argument and arguing against that interpreted version, or what? I may be wrong, but I think it is vitally important for epistemic hygiene that we at least listen to and ideally respond to what others are actually saying. You’re an excellent thinker and seemingly less prone to social biases than most so I am confused by your responses. Am I being dense somehow?
(ETA: The following hypothesis is obviously absurd. Blame it on rationalization. It’s very rare I get to catch myself so explicitly in the act! w00t!) Anyway, the people I have in mind don’t get confused about the difference between reasoning about/with utility functions and being utilitarian, they just take the former as strong evidence as of the latter. This doesn’t happen when “utility function” is used technically or in a sand-boxed way, only when it is used in the specific way that I was objecting to. Notice how I said we should be careful about which concepts we use, not which words.