I don’t think it makes sense to not discount utility; or, at least, it is moving from agent utilities to some kind of eternal God’s utility. Hard to see how to relate that to our decisions.
Using a different function seems more promising. Why does Roko say our true discounting function is hyperbolic?
I think it’s an SIAI meme caused by excitement about George Ainslie’s work in psychology, briefly summarized here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Ainslie_(psychologist) . I’m not sure if Roko picked it up from there though. There is some debate over whether human discount rates are in fact generally hyperbolic, though Ainslie’s book Breakdown of Will is pretty theoretically aesthetic; worth checking out in any case, both for potential insight into human psychology and firepower for practical self-enhancement plans. ETA: Apparently ciphergoth made a post about it: http://lesswrong.com/lw/6c/akrasia_hyperbolic_discounting_and_picoeconomics/
Clearly, if the market rate of return were different, the wealthiest agents would tend to discount investments and payoffs according to that rate of return, and not by accident. Some kind of relating has to be happening there.
This would also be true if it were common knowledge that projected market returns followed a non-exponential schedule. (E.g. temporarily subexponential for a previously unforeseen resource crunch, or temporarily superexponential for a previously unforeseen technology improvement feedback loop).
The more general problem is that our present concept of “utility” affords no direct way to argue an observable difference between an instrumental and intrinsic value, if there is no available condition that would make an observable difference in the results of the hypothetical instrumental value calculation.
So you take the “intrinsic” branch, and assume a hypothesis about rational utility that extrapolates rigidly from the present; it attributes to timeless “rational utility” the intrinsic relative value ratios associated with infinite-term perfect exponential discounting. And I take something more like the “instrumental” branch, yielding a hypothesis that “rational utility” would contain only the instrumental value ratios associated with near-term exponential discounting. Because of how we reason about utility, the two hypotheses about utility have equal “preference likelihood” on present surface-level behavior, and so we have to argue about priors.
There is probably something wrong with how we reason about utility.
Is that the motivation for posts like this one? Are you trying to reductio what you see as the only possible way of reasoning about rational utility, or trying to reductio what you see as the only possible way of making something formal out of local informal discourse about utility maximization, and trying to force people to move on? What would a discourse look like that was about the theory of judgment and desirable actions which you wanted people to move on to, -- the theory relative to which you were judging that discourse about rational utility maximization would lead to undesirable actions?
Can you understand why other people would be frustrated that you were trying to make claims on their attention to attack them for not talking about something, while consistently being apparently oblivious to the fact that the thing that it seemed like you wanted them to talk about was exactly the thing they thought they were already trying their best to figure out how to define their terms so that they could be actually talking about it?
If you had genuine reasons to think it was impossible or fruitless to try to find such a definition, this would be more understandable. But at the moment, it seems more like you’re actively trying to find definitions that lead to a conclusion like “maximizing your utility doesn’t maximize your utility”, and then exhibiting the conclusion while hiding the choice of definition unmentioned behind a blank wall of assumed certainty.
I don’t think it makes sense to not discount utility; or, at least, it is moving from agent utilities to some kind of eternal God’s utility. Hard to see how to relate that to our decisions.
Using a different function seems more promising. Why does Roko say our true discounting function is hyperbolic?
Some of the evidence that that is true summarised here.
I think it’s an SIAI meme caused by excitement about George Ainslie’s work in psychology, briefly summarized here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Ainslie_(psychologist) . I’m not sure if Roko picked it up from there though. There is some debate over whether human discount rates are in fact generally hyperbolic, though Ainslie’s book Breakdown of Will is pretty theoretically aesthetic; worth checking out in any case, both for potential insight into human psychology and firepower for practical self-enhancement plans. ETA: Apparently ciphergoth made a post about it: http://lesswrong.com/lw/6c/akrasia_hyperbolic_discounting_and_picoeconomics/
At all?
Clearly, if the market rate of return were different, the wealthiest agents would tend to discount investments and payoffs according to that rate of return, and not by accident. Some kind of relating has to be happening there.
This would also be true if it were common knowledge that projected market returns followed a non-exponential schedule. (E.g. temporarily subexponential for a previously unforeseen resource crunch, or temporarily superexponential for a previously unforeseen technology improvement feedback loop).
The more general problem is that our present concept of “utility” affords no direct way to argue an observable difference between an instrumental and intrinsic value, if there is no available condition that would make an observable difference in the results of the hypothetical instrumental value calculation.
So you take the “intrinsic” branch, and assume a hypothesis about rational utility that extrapolates rigidly from the present; it attributes to timeless “rational utility” the intrinsic relative value ratios associated with infinite-term perfect exponential discounting. And I take something more like the “instrumental” branch, yielding a hypothesis that “rational utility” would contain only the instrumental value ratios associated with near-term exponential discounting. Because of how we reason about utility, the two hypotheses about utility have equal “preference likelihood” on present surface-level behavior, and so we have to argue about priors.
There is probably something wrong with how we reason about utility.
Is that the motivation for posts like this one? Are you trying to reductio what you see as the only possible way of reasoning about rational utility, or trying to reductio what you see as the only possible way of making something formal out of local informal discourse about utility maximization, and trying to force people to move on? What would a discourse look like that was about the theory of judgment and desirable actions which you wanted people to move on to, -- the theory relative to which you were judging that discourse about rational utility maximization would lead to undesirable actions?
Can you understand why other people would be frustrated that you were trying to make claims on their attention to attack them for not talking about something, while consistently being apparently oblivious to the fact that the thing that it seemed like you wanted them to talk about was exactly the thing they thought they were already trying their best to figure out how to define their terms so that they could be actually talking about it?
If you had genuine reasons to think it was impossible or fruitless to try to find such a definition, this would be more understandable. But at the moment, it seems more like you’re actively trying to find definitions that lead to a conclusion like “maximizing your utility doesn’t maximize your utility”, and then exhibiting the conclusion while hiding the choice of definition unmentioned behind a blank wall of assumed certainty.