That he makes assumptions is no point against him; the question is do those assumptions hold.
To support the first one: the popularity and success of the fallacy of appealing to authority, Milgram’s comments on his experiment, the “hole-shaped God” theory (well supported).
For the second one: First, it’s not entirely clear we do understand expected utility maximisation. Certainly, I know of no-one who acts as though they are maximising their expected utility. Second, to the extent that we do understand it, I would draw the metaphor of a Turing tarpit—I would say that we understand it only in the sense that we can hack together a bunch of neural processes that do other things, in such a way that they produce the words “expected utility maximisation” and the concept “act to get the most of what you really want”. This is still an understanding, of course, but in no way do we have machinery for that purpose like how we have machinery for orders from authority / deontological injunctions.
“Expected utility maximisation” is, by definition what actually represents our best outcome. To the extent that it doesn’t, it is a failure of our ability to grasp and apply the concept, not a failure in the concept itself.
As for the third, and for your claim of debatable: Yes, you could debate it. You would have to stand on some very wide definitions of entirely and different, and you’d lose the debate. For example: speaking aloud to an AI and speaking aloud to a human are entirely different tasks. Not to mention that conveying a concept to a human carries no instructions; programming concepts into an AI is all instructions. Another entire difference.
“Expected utility maximisation” is, by definition what actually represents our best outcome.
No, it’s based on certain axioms that are not unbreakable in strange contexts, which in turn assume a certain conceptual framework (where you can, say, enumerate possibilities in a certain way).
There’s no point in assuming completeness, being able to compare events that you won’t be choosing between (in the context of utility function having possible worlds as domain). Updateless analysis says that you never actually choose between observational events. And there are only so many counterfactuals to consider (which in this setting are more about high-level logical properties of a fixed collection of worlds, which lead to their different utility, and not presence/absence of any given possible world, so in one sense even counterfactuals don’t give you nontrivial events).
There’s no point in assuming completeness, being able to compare events that you won’t be choosing between (in the context of utility function having possible worlds as domain).
Is there ever actually a two events for which this would not hold if you did need to make such a choice?
Updateless analysis says that you never actually choose between observational events.
I’m not sure what you mean. Outcomes do not have to be observed in order to be chosen between.
And there are only so many counterfactuals to consider (which in this setting are more about high-level logical properties of a fixed collection of worlds, which lead to their different utility, and not presence/absence of any given possible world, so in one sense even counterfactuals don’t give you nontrivial events).
Isn’t this just seperating degrees of freedom and assuming that some don’t affect others? It can be derived from the utility axioms.
That he makes assumptions is no point against him; the question is do those assumptions hold.
To support the first one: the popularity and success of the fallacy of appealing to authority, Milgram’s comments on his experiment, the “hole-shaped God” theory (well supported).
For the second one: First, it’s not entirely clear we do understand expected utility maximisation. Certainly, I know of no-one who acts as though they are maximising their expected utility. Second, to the extent that we do understand it, I would draw the metaphor of a Turing tarpit—I would say that we understand it only in the sense that we can hack together a bunch of neural processes that do other things, in such a way that they produce the words “expected utility maximisation” and the concept “act to get the most of what you really want”. This is still an understanding, of course, but in no way do we have machinery for that purpose like how we have machinery for orders from authority / deontological injunctions.
“Expected utility maximisation” is, by definition what actually represents our best outcome. To the extent that it doesn’t, it is a failure of our ability to grasp and apply the concept, not a failure in the concept itself.
As for the third, and for your claim of debatable: Yes, you could debate it. You would have to stand on some very wide definitions of entirely and different, and you’d lose the debate. For example: speaking aloud to an AI and speaking aloud to a human are entirely different tasks. Not to mention that conveying a concept to a human carries no instructions; programming concepts into an AI is all instructions. Another entire difference.
No, it’s based on certain axioms that are not unbreakable in strange contexts, which in turn assume a certain conceptual framework (where you can, say, enumerate possibilities in a certain way).
Name one exception to any axiom other than the third or to the general conceptual framework.
There’s no point in assuming completeness, being able to compare events that you won’t be choosing between (in the context of utility function having possible worlds as domain). Updateless analysis says that you never actually choose between observational events. And there are only so many counterfactuals to consider (which in this setting are more about high-level logical properties of a fixed collection of worlds, which lead to their different utility, and not presence/absence of any given possible world, so in one sense even counterfactuals don’t give you nontrivial events).
Is there ever actually a two events for which this would not hold if you did need to make such a choice?
I’m not sure what you mean. Outcomes do not have to be observed in order to be chosen between.
Isn’t this just seperating degrees of freedom and assuming that some don’t affect others? It can be derived from the utility axioms.