Indeed. It’s an improvement over “utils”, though, which has the same problem and also suggests linearity.
I am reluctant to accept a terminology change to something that is broken, even if the current terminology is broken as well. Accepting such incomplete solutions serves to reduce the incentive to come up with an actual workable fix to the problem and gives people the illusion that they have something that is solved.
“Degrees Utility” is not analogous to “Degrees Fahrenheit” or “Degrees Celsius”. When 34 degrees Fahrenheit is compared to 54 degrees Fahrenheit it is correct (and meaningful) to say that the latter is hotter than the former. When, using your terminology, “34 degrees Utility” is compared to “54 degrees Utility” the result is not meaningful even though it sometimes should be. For example when looking at a payoff matrix for a game involving agent A and agent B the 54 degrees Utility that B gets in some outcome cannot be compared meaningfully to “34 degrees Utility” that A gets in an outcome but can be compared to the “34 degrees Utility” that B gets in a different outcome (with the result “better”). That’s just sloppy expression with the illusion of rigour.
“34 DegreesUtility” would be viable but that sort of parametrised nomenclature is not sufficiently high status to reliably enforce as a standard just now.
...actually, now that I think about it some more, I agree that there is something to your line of thinking; I’m just not certain it leads to the conclusion you suggest.
The problem is that we don’t have any way of talking about this that intuitively prompts how it actually works, and “degrees utility” is problematic because it suggests it accounts for all the problems. OK. However, the thing is, so does “utils”. I mean, it’s possible that people see that and know to tread carefully; I don’t have any data here. I just feel like I’ve seen people try to add 1 util and 1 util often enough that I suspect that that isn’t the case, and that most people do read “utils” as indicating that it is correct to treat it as an amount of stuff.
But perhaps reverting to an even worse solution would suggest to tread carefully—namely, bare numbers. Again, this is pure speculation, I have no data; but I get the feeling that bare numbers will raise people’s hackles more than “utils”. Bare numbers suggest “something’s been left out here; tread carefully”; using a unit suggests “yes, this is a sensible way to measure it.”
So, if I’m correct about that, “utils” actually seems like the worst suggestion of the three—compared to “degrees utility”, it’s more misleading, but doesn’t come with an additional warning sign; compared to a bare number, it lacks the obvious warning sign, and isn’t that much more misleading. (Because adding and scaling will be the most tempting meaningless things to do anyway; multiplication seems a bit more exotic...)
Again: “Utils” has all the same problems, and more. For a single agent, the comparison is meaningful.
If you prefer sticking to stick with the existing terminology despite it suggesting even worse meaningless comparisons, OK, but don’t act like you are pointing out anything that isn’t obvious, or that is specific to my suggestion.
I am reluctant to accept a terminology change to something that is broken, even if the current terminology is broken as well. Accepting such incomplete solutions serves to reduce the incentive to come up with an actual workable fix to the problem and gives people the illusion that they have something that is solved.
“Degrees Utility” is not analogous to “Degrees Fahrenheit” or “Degrees Celsius”. When 34 degrees Fahrenheit is compared to 54 degrees Fahrenheit it is correct (and meaningful) to say that the latter is hotter than the former. When, using your terminology, “34 degrees Utility” is compared to “54 degrees Utility” the result is not meaningful even though it sometimes should be. For example when looking at a payoff matrix for a game involving agent A and agent B the 54 degrees Utility that B gets in some outcome cannot be compared meaningfully to “34 degrees Utility” that A gets in an outcome but can be compared to the “34 degrees Utility” that B gets in a different outcome (with the result “better”). That’s just sloppy expression with the illusion of rigour.
“34 DegreesUtility” would be viable but that sort of parametrised nomenclature is not sufficiently high status to reliably enforce as a standard just now.
...actually, now that I think about it some more, I agree that there is something to your line of thinking; I’m just not certain it leads to the conclusion you suggest.
The problem is that we don’t have any way of talking about this that intuitively prompts how it actually works, and “degrees utility” is problematic because it suggests it accounts for all the problems. OK. However, the thing is, so does “utils”. I mean, it’s possible that people see that and know to tread carefully; I don’t have any data here. I just feel like I’ve seen people try to add 1 util and 1 util often enough that I suspect that that isn’t the case, and that most people do read “utils” as indicating that it is correct to treat it as an amount of stuff.
But perhaps reverting to an even worse solution would suggest to tread carefully—namely, bare numbers. Again, this is pure speculation, I have no data; but I get the feeling that bare numbers will raise people’s hackles more than “utils”. Bare numbers suggest “something’s been left out here; tread carefully”; using a unit suggests “yes, this is a sensible way to measure it.”
So, if I’m correct about that, “utils” actually seems like the worst suggestion of the three—compared to “degrees utility”, it’s more misleading, but doesn’t come with an additional warning sign; compared to a bare number, it lacks the obvious warning sign, and isn’t that much more misleading. (Because adding and scaling will be the most tempting meaningless things to do anyway; multiplication seems a bit more exotic...)
Again: “Utils” has all the same problems, and more. For a single agent, the comparison is meaningful.
If you prefer sticking to stick with the existing terminology despite it suggesting even worse meaningless comparisons, OK, but don’t act like you are pointing out anything that isn’t obvious, or that is specific to my suggestion.