More broadly, any realizable decision system must take into account the trade-offs of estimation, the costs of computation or cognition, as well as the price of gathering information.
It is tempting to hand wave these away in the apparent simplicity of a utility function, but each of these needs to find their place either in the use or in the construction of that function. And assuming that we’ve solved them already trivializes the real problems. After all, these sorts of questions make utility functions hard to build correctly, even potentially uncomputable.
More broadly, any realizable decision system must take into account the trade-offs of estimation, the costs of computation or cognition, as well as the price of gathering information.
It is tempting to hand wave these away in the apparent simplicity of a utility function, but each of these needs to find their place either in the use or in the construction of that function. And assuming that we’ve solved them already trivializes the real problems. After all, these sorts of questions make utility functions hard to build correctly, even potentially uncomputable.