I do not think of them in terms of some abstract utility function
Why would you expect to think of your utility function as a utility function? That’s like expecting a squirrel to think of the dispersion of nuts it buried around its tree as having a two-dimensional Gaussian distribution.
Why would you expect to think of your utility function as a utility function? That’s like expecting a squirrel to think of the dispersion of nuts it buried around its tree as having a two-dimensional Gaussian distribution.