It seems to me that with meals, there’s a fact of the matter that AI could help with. After all, if two copies of you went and had the different meals, one of them would probably be happier than the other.
Though that happiness might not depend only on the chosen meal. For example, if one meal is a cake that looks exactly like Justin Bieber, that might be actually not as fun as it sounds. But if you skipped it in favor of an ordinary burrito, you’d forever regret that you didn’t get to see the Justin Bieber cake.
I think you still hit the multidimension comparison problem. One of the branches may be happier, the other more satisfied. One might spend the rest of the evening doing some valuable work, the other didn’t have as much time. One consumed a slightly better mix of protein and fat, the other got the right amount of carbs and micronutrients.
Without a utility function to tell you the coefficients, there _IS_ no truth of the matter which is better.
Edit: this problem also hits intertemporally, even if you solve the comparability problem for multiple dimensions of utility. The one that’s best when eating may be different than the one that you remember most pleasurably afterward, which may be different than the one you remember most pleasantly a year from now.
It seems to me that with meals, there’s a fact of the matter that AI could help with. After all, if two copies of you went and had the different meals, one of them would probably be happier than the other.
Though that happiness might not depend only on the chosen meal. For example, if one meal is a cake that looks exactly like Justin Bieber, that might be actually not as fun as it sounds. But if you skipped it in favor of an ordinary burrito, you’d forever regret that you didn’t get to see the Justin Bieber cake.
I think you still hit the multidimension comparison problem. One of the branches may be happier, the other more satisfied. One might spend the rest of the evening doing some valuable work, the other didn’t have as much time. One consumed a slightly better mix of protein and fat, the other got the right amount of carbs and micronutrients.
Without a utility function to tell you the coefficients, there _IS_ no truth of the matter which is better.
Edit: this problem also hits intertemporally, even if you solve the comparability problem for multiple dimensions of utility. The one that’s best when eating may be different than the one that you remember most pleasurably afterward, which may be different than the one you remember most pleasantly a year from now.