You can always redefine pumping as non-pumping by saying that the victim derives utility from being pumped.
And this is why you can’t (necessarily) distinguish a preference from a bias with behavioral studies alone, which should weaken our faith in the results of the heuristics and biases research program (at least, slightly).
In the money pump, the agent isn’t extracting the surplus from the cycle, because they trade everything they get back at some point and end up with strictly less than they started with, including intangibles.
If this is a strict requirement of a money pump, (and I can see the argument for it), it seems like the bases for human intransitive preferences don’t qualify as intransitive if ephemeral / insubstantial gains are treated as concrete cases of surplus.
In fact, if it is a strict requirement, it seems like the money pump is a fairly useless model unless agents literally had “hard-coded” exogenous intransitive preferences, which doesn’t seem to make it much of a practical worry in AI, either.
The presence or absence of an ephemeral/insubstantial gain in a given transaction is a fact independent of any other transaction. Rational agents with well-ordered values that consider insubstantial benefits not easily viewable to an outside observer could engage in behavior where they traded money for insubstantial benefits in a manner that looked exactly like a money pump to an outside observer. They would also seek ways to acquire those insubstantial benefits in ways that cost less.
Really, though, convincing someone that you have an intangible benefit that they want enough to pay for is simply good marketing.
You can always redefine pumping as non-pumping by saying that the victim derives utility from being pumped.
And this is why you can’t (necessarily) distinguish a preference from a bias with behavioral studies alone, which should weaken our faith in the results of the heuristics and biases research program (at least, slightly).
Then you aren’t modeling the pumping properly; the agent is getting something out of the cycle.
Any money-pumped agent is getting surplus from each transaction. That’s why they’re carrying out the transaction.
In the money pump, the agent isn’t extracting the surplus from the cycle, because they trade everything they get back at some point and end up with strictly less than they started with, including intangibles.
If this is a strict requirement of a money pump, (and I can see the argument for it), it seems like the bases for human intransitive preferences don’t qualify as intransitive if ephemeral / insubstantial gains are treated as concrete cases of surplus.
In fact, if it is a strict requirement, it seems like the money pump is a fairly useless model unless agents literally had “hard-coded” exogenous intransitive preferences, which doesn’t seem to make it much of a practical worry in AI, either.
The presence or absence of an ephemeral/insubstantial gain in a given transaction is a fact independent of any other transaction. Rational agents with well-ordered values that consider insubstantial benefits not easily viewable to an outside observer could engage in behavior where they traded money for insubstantial benefits in a manner that looked exactly like a money pump to an outside observer. They would also seek ways to acquire those insubstantial benefits in ways that cost less.
Really, though, convincing someone that you have an intangible benefit that they want enough to pay for is simply good marketing.