You can also trivially model a thermostat using lego bricks. However, you don’t need a lego-based model to understand a thermostat, it doesn’t lend itself to the task, just like you don’t arbitrarily choose a programming language regardless of your task just because it’s Turing complete.
Nothing about a simple finite state machine like a thermostat that would cause a model-er to go “how can I drag utility functions into this”, even if it is, of course, possible. I’d go so far as to assert that you could (but shouldn’t) model anything that is computable in a way involving a utility function.
You can also trivially model a thermostat using lego bricks. However, you don’t need a lego-based model to understand a thermostat
That’s a complete straw man. I never claimed that you did. What I said was: “a utility function models its behaviour pretty well”—which is perfectly true.
I’d go so far as to assert that you could (but shouldn’t) model anything that is computable in a way involving a utility function.
Any computable agent. If it iisn’t clear how to decompose a system into sensors and actuators, representation in terms of a utility function is not so useful—because it is not unique. It is convenient to use utility functions when you want to compare the values of different agents. If that’s what you are doing, utility functions seem like a suitable tool.
You can also trivially model a thermostat using lego bricks. However, you don’t need a lego-based model to understand a thermostat, it doesn’t lend itself to the task, just like you don’t arbitrarily choose a programming language regardless of your task just because it’s Turing complete.
Nothing about a simple finite state machine like a thermostat that would cause a model-er to go “how can I drag utility functions into this”, even if it is, of course, possible. I’d go so far as to assert that you could (but shouldn’t) model anything that is computable in a way involving a utility function.
That’s a complete straw man. I never claimed that you did. What I said was: “a utility function models its behaviour pretty well”—which is perfectly true.
Any computable agent. If it iisn’t clear how to decompose a system into sensors and actuators, representation in terms of a utility function is not so useful—because it is not unique. It is convenient to use utility functions when you want to compare the values of different agents. If that’s what you are doing, utility functions seem like a suitable tool.