With the exception of some relatively recent and isolated pockets of research on embedded agency (e.g., Orseau & Ring, 2012;Garrabrant & Demsky, 2018), most attempts at formal descriptions of living rational agents — especially utility-theoretic descriptions — are missing the idea that living systems require and maintain boundaries.
While I generally like the post, I somewhat disagree with this summary of state of understanding, which seems to ignore quite a lot of academic research. In particular
- Friston et al certainly understand this (cf … dozens to hundreds papers claiming and explainting the importance of boundaries for living systems) - the whole autopoiesis field - various biology-inspired papers (eg this)
I do agree this way of thinking it is less common among people stuck too much in the VNM basin, such as most of econ or most of game theory.
Jan, I agree with your references, especially Friston et al. I think those kinds of understanding, as you say, have not adequately made their way into utility utility-theoretic fields like econ and game theory, so I think the post is valid as a statement about the state of understanding in those utility-oriented fields. (Note that the post is about “a missing concept from the axioms of game theory and bargaining theory” and “a key missing concept from utility theory”, and not “concepts missing from the mind of all of humanity”.)
While I generally like the post, I somewhat disagree with this summary of state of understanding, which seems to ignore quite a lot of academic research. In particular
- Friston et al certainly understand this (cf … dozens to hundreds papers claiming and explainting the importance of boundaries for living systems)
- the whole autopoiesis field
- various biology-inspired papers (eg this)
I do agree this way of thinking it is less common among people stuck too much in the VNM basin, such as most of econ or most of game theory.
Jan, I agree with your references, especially Friston et al. I think those kinds of understanding, as you say, have not adequately made their way into utility utility-theoretic fields like econ and game theory, so I think the post is valid as a statement about the state of understanding in those utility-oriented fields. (Note that the post is about “a missing concept from the axioms of game theory and bargaining theory” and “a key missing concept from utility theory”, and not “concepts missing from the mind of all of humanity”.)