My main objection for the simplified utility functions is that they are presented as depending only upon the current external state of the world in some vaguely linear and stable way. Every adjective in there corresponds to discarding a lot of useful information about preferences that people actually have.
The main argument I’ve heard for this kind of simplification is that your altruistic, morality-type preferences ought to be about the state of the external world because their subject is the wellbeing of other people, and the external world is where other people live. The linearity part is sort of an extension of the principle of treating people equally. I might be steelmanning it a little, a lot of times the argument is less that and more that having preferences that are in any way weird or complex is “arbitrary.” I think this is based on the mistaken notion that “arbitrary” is a synonym for “picky” or “complicated.”
I find this argument unpersuasive because altruism is also about respecting the preferences of others, and the preferences of others are, as you point out, extremely complicated and about all sorts of things other than the current state of the external world. I am also not sure that having nonlinear altruistic preferences is the same thing as not valuing people equally. And I think that our preferences about the welfare of others are often some of the most path-dependent preferences that we have.
EDIT: I have sense found this post, which discusses some similar arguments and refutes them more coherently than I do.
Second EDIT: I still find myself haunted by the “scary situation” I linked to and find myself wishing there was a way to tweak a utility function a little to avoid it, or at least get a better “exchange rate” than “double tiny good thing and more-than doubling horrible thing while keeping probability the same.” I suppose there must be a way since the article I linked to said it would not work on all bounded utility functions.
The main argument I’ve heard for this kind of simplification is that your altruistic, morality-type preferences ought to be about the state of the external world because their subject is the wellbeing of other people, and the external world is where other people live. The linearity part is sort of an extension of the principle of treating people equally. I might be steelmanning it a little, a lot of times the argument is less that and more that having preferences that are in any way weird or complex is “arbitrary.” I think this is based on the mistaken notion that “arbitrary” is a synonym for “picky” or “complicated.”
I find this argument unpersuasive because altruism is also about respecting the preferences of others, and the preferences of others are, as you point out, extremely complicated and about all sorts of things other than the current state of the external world. I am also not sure that having nonlinear altruistic preferences is the same thing as not valuing people equally. And I think that our preferences about the welfare of others are often some of the most path-dependent preferences that we have.
EDIT: I have sense found this post, which discusses some similar arguments and refutes them more coherently than I do.
Second EDIT: I still find myself haunted by the “scary situation” I linked to and find myself wishing there was a way to tweak a utility function a little to avoid it, or at least get a better “exchange rate” than “double tiny good thing and more-than doubling horrible thing while keeping probability the same.” I suppose there must be a way since the article I linked to said it would not work on all bounded utility functions.