The problems of unbounded utility that Eliezer keeps pointing out, that he insists we need to solve, really are just straight contradictions arising from him making bad assumptions that need to be thrown out. Like, they all stem from him assuming that unbounded utility functions work in the case of infinite gambles
Just to be clear, you’re not thinking of 3↑↑↑3 when you talk about infinite gambles, right?
I’m not sure I know what argument of Eliezer’s you’re talking about when you reference infinite gambles. Is there an example you can link to?
He means gambles that can have infinitely many different outcomes. This causes problems for unbounded utility functions because of the Saint Petersburg paradox.
But the way you solve the St Petersburg paradox in real life is to note that nobody has infinite money, nor infinite time, and therefore it doesn’t matter if your utility function spits out a weird outcome for it because you can have a prior of 0 that it will actually happen. Am I missing something?
I don’t have an example to hand of Eliezer’s remarks. By which, I remember seeing on old LW, but I can’t find it at the moment. (Note that I’m interpreting what he said… very charitably. What he actually said made considerably less sense, but we can perhaps steelman it as a strong commitment to total utilitarianism.)
Just to be clear, you’re not thinking of 3↑↑↑3 when you talk about infinite gambles, right?
I’m not sure I know what argument of Eliezer’s you’re talking about when you reference infinite gambles. Is there an example you can link to?
He means gambles that can have infinitely many different outcomes. This causes problems for unbounded utility functions because of the Saint Petersburg paradox.
But the way you solve the St Petersburg paradox in real life is to note that nobody has infinite money, nor infinite time, and therefore it doesn’t matter if your utility function spits out a weird outcome for it because you can have a prior of 0 that it will actually happen. Am I missing something?
No.
Huh, I only just saw this for some reason.
Anyway yes AlexMennen has the right of it.
I don’t have an example to hand of Eliezer’s remarks. By which, I remember seeing on old LW, but I can’t find it at the moment. (Note that I’m interpreting what he said… very charitably. What he actually said made considerably less sense, but we can perhaps steelman it as a strong commitment to total utilitarianism.)