“Soba” referred to the happy drug from Brave New World; that is, to the possibility of “utility superstimulus” on a collective, not individual, level.
“Sum to one” is a really stupid rule for utilities. As a statistician, I can tell you that finding normalizing constants is hard, even if you have an agreed-upon measure; and agreeing on a measure in a politically-contentious situation is impossible. Bounded utility is a better rule, but there are still cases where it clearly fails, and even when it succeeds in the abstract it does nothing to rein in strategic incentives in practice.
As to questions about True Utility Functions and a utopic utilitarian society… those are very interesting, but not at all practical.
those are very interesting, but not at all practical.
In what practical context do we work with utilities as explicit numbers? I don’t understand what context you’re thinking of. If you have some numbers, then you can normalize them and if you don’t have numbers, then how does a utility monster even work?
“Soba” referred to the happy drug from Brave New World; that is, to the possibility of “utility superstimulus” on a collective, not individual, level.
“Sum to one” is a really stupid rule for utilities. As a statistician, I can tell you that finding normalizing constants is hard, even if you have an agreed-upon measure; and agreeing on a measure in a politically-contentious situation is impossible. Bounded utility is a better rule, but there are still cases where it clearly fails, and even when it succeeds in the abstract it does nothing to rein in strategic incentives in practice.
As to questions about True Utility Functions and a utopic utilitarian society… those are very interesting, but not at all practical.
(That’s Soma. I don’t believe the joy of consuming Soba comes close to the joy of Soma, although I’ve never eaten Soba a traditional context.)
Oops, fixed.
In what practical context do we work with utilities as explicit numbers? I don’t understand what context you’re thinking of. If you have some numbers, then you can normalize them and if you don’t have numbers, then how does a utility monster even work?