1) We don’t need an unbounded utility function to demonstrate Pascal’s Mugging. Plain old large numbers like 10^100 are enough.
2) It seems reasonable for utility to be linear in things we care about, e.g. human lives. This could run into a problem with non-uniqueness, i.e., if I run an identical computer program of you twice, maybe that shouldn’t count as two. But I think this is sufficiently murky as to not make bounded utility clearly correct.
We don’t need an unbounded utility function to demonstrate Pascal’s Mugging. Plain old large numbers like 10^100 are enough.
The scale is arbitrary. If your utility function is designed such that utility for common scenario are not very small compared to the maximum utility then you wouldn’t have Pascal’s Muggings.
It seems reasonable for utility to be linear in things we care about, e.g. human lives.
Does anybody really have linear preferences in anything? This seems at odds with empirical evidence.
1) We don’t need an unbounded utility function to demonstrate Pascal’s Mugging. Plain old large numbers like 10^100 are enough.
2) It seems reasonable for utility to be linear in things we care about, e.g. human lives. This could run into a problem with non-uniqueness, i.e., if I run an identical computer program of you twice, maybe that shouldn’t count as two. But I think this is sufficiently murky as to not make bounded utility clearly correct.
The scale is arbitrary. If your utility function is designed such that utility for common scenario are not very small compared to the maximum utility then you wouldn’t have Pascal’s Muggings.
Does anybody really have linear preferences in anything? This seems at odds with empirical evidence.
Like V_V, I don’t find it “reasonable” for utility to be linear in things we care about.
I will write a discussion topic about the issue shortly.
EDIT: Link to the topic: http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/mv3/unbounded_linear_utility_functions/