See, the core of the issue is that assigning some utility to money is just a heuristic. The foresight-oriented agent does not need to do that, for it automatically tries to acquire money (and trades wisely) when maximizing other utility such as e.g. quality of life over the future. Such agent, btw, would need to assign not utility number to the money, but the future utility distribution (at very least mean and standard deviation) that he expects to get from having the money at some point in closer future.
And with regards to assigning utilities from the future to the items in the now, well, chess AI doesn’t need to do that, it doesn’t need to have some floating point value for each piece and update those all the time. (see my chess example in another post).
The problem with assigning same type of utility to money as to the items those money buy, as per
In terms of “Hey, I have this nice-looking coin”, of course. But as you can buy items with money (and you know it), money has a comparable utility.
is that if you do so as you get thirstier, the utility of the coin should also increase.
The big issue here is that people speak very informally of the utilities all the time. We do, internally, distinguish between some derived utility (like that of money) and some primary utility (that of water when thirsty), at least to the extent necessary to avoid getting stuck when getting thirsty. Albeit it IS the case that some people act as misers, which is probably due to some confusion.
See, the core of the issue is that assigning some utility to money is just a heuristic. The foresight-oriented agent does not need to do that, for it automatically tries to acquire money (and trades wisely) when maximizing other utility such as e.g. quality of life over the future. Such agent, btw, would need to assign not utility number to the money, but the future utility distribution (at very least mean and standard deviation) that he expects to get from having the money at some point in closer future.
And with regards to assigning utilities from the future to the items in the now, well, chess AI doesn’t need to do that, it doesn’t need to have some floating point value for each piece and update those all the time. (see my chess example in another post).
The problem with assigning same type of utility to money as to the items those money buy, as per
is that if you do so as you get thirstier, the utility of the coin should also increase.
The big issue here is that people speak very informally of the utilities all the time. We do, internally, distinguish between some derived utility (like that of money) and some primary utility (that of water when thirsty), at least to the extent necessary to avoid getting stuck when getting thirsty. Albeit it IS the case that some people act as misers, which is probably due to some confusion.