Assume the following situation. You are very rich. You meet a poor old lady in a dark alley who carries a purse with her, with some money which is a lot from her perspective. Maybe it’s all her savings, maybe she just got lucky once and received it as a gift or as alms. If you mug her, nobody will ever find it out and you get to keep that money. Would you do it? As a utility maximization agent, based on what you just wrote, you should.
As a utility maximization agent, based on what you just wrote, you should.
Only if your utility function gives negligible weight to her welfare. Having a utility function is not at all the same thing as being wholly selfish.
(Also, your scenario is unrealistic; you couldn’t really be sure of not getting caught. If you’re very rich, the probability of getting caught doesn’t have to be very large to make this an expected loss even from a purely selfish point of view.)
Surely you ‘should’ only do something like this iff acquiring this amount of money has a higher utility to you than not ruining this lady’s day. Which, for most people, it doesn’t.
Since you’re saying ‘you are very rich’ and ‘some money which is a lot from her perspective’, you seem to be deliberately presenting gaining this money as very low utility, which you seem to assume should logically still outweigh what you seem to consider the zero utility of leaving the lady alone. But since I do actually give a duck about old ladies getting home safely (and, for that matter, about not feeling horribly guilty), mugging one has a pretty huge negative utility.
Have you read the LW sequences? Because like gjm explained, your question reveals a simple and objective misunderstanding of what utility functions look like when they model realistic people’s preferences.
And why should we be utility maximization agents?
Assume the following situation. You are very rich. You meet a poor old lady in a dark alley who carries a purse with her, with some money which is a lot from her perspective. Maybe it’s all her savings, maybe she just got lucky once and received it as a gift or as alms. If you mug her, nobody will ever find it out and you get to keep that money. Would you do it? As a utility maximization agent, based on what you just wrote, you should.
Would you?
Only if your utility function gives negligible weight to her welfare. Having a utility function is not at all the same thing as being wholly selfish.
(Also, your scenario is unrealistic; you couldn’t really be sure of not getting caught. If you’re very rich, the probability of getting caught doesn’t have to be very large to make this an expected loss even from a purely selfish point of view.)
Surely you ‘should’ only do something like this iff acquiring this amount of money has a higher utility to you than not ruining this lady’s day. Which, for most people, it doesn’t.
Since you’re saying ‘you are very rich’ and ‘some money which is a lot from her perspective’, you seem to be deliberately presenting gaining this money as very low utility, which you seem to assume should logically still outweigh what you seem to consider the zero utility of leaving the lady alone. But since I do actually give a duck about old ladies getting home safely (and, for that matter, about not feeling horribly guilty), mugging one has a pretty huge negative utility.
Have you read the LW sequences? Because like gjm explained, your question reveals a simple and objective misunderstanding of what utility functions look like when they model realistic people’s preferences.