Utility is not instrumental, not used for something else, utility is the (abstract) thing you try to maximize, caring of nothing else. It’s the measure of success, all consequences taken into account (and is not itself “physical”). As such, it doesn’t matter in what way (or “where”) utility gets “produced”. Knowing that might be useful for the purpose of computing utility, but not for the purpose of interpreting the resulting amount, since utility is the final interpretation of the situation, the only one that matters.
Now, it might be that you consider events in the counterfactual worlds not valuable, but then it interrupts my argument a step earlier than you did, it makes incorrect the statement that A’s actions can produce B-utility. It could be that A can’t produce B-utility, but it can’t be that A produces B-utility but it doesn’t matter for B.
Hence the second paragraph about counterfactual mugging: if you accept that events in the counterfactual world can confer value, then you should take this deal as well. And no matter whether you accept CM or not, if you consider the problem in advance, you want to precommit to counterfactual trade. And hence, it’s a reflectively consistent thing to do to accept counterfactual trade later as well.
Fair enough. I’m willing to rephrase my argument as A can’t produce B utility because there is no B present in the world.
Yes, I do want to pre-commit to a counter-factual trade in the mugging because that is the cost of obtaining access to an offer of high expected utility (see my real-world rephrasing here for a more intuitive example case).
In the current world-splitting case, I see no utility for me since the opposing fork cannot produce it so there is no point to me pre-committing.
Why do you believe that the counterfactual isn’t valuable? You wrote:
I’m willing to rephrase my argument as A can’t produce B utility because there is no B present in the world.
That B is not present is a given possible world is not in itself a valid reason to morally ignore that possible world (there could be valid reasons, but B’s absence is not one of them for most preferences that are not specifically designed to make this condition hold, and for human-like morality in particular). For example, people clearly care about the (actual) world where they’ve died (not present): you won’t trade a penny a day while you live for eternal torture to everyone after you die (while you should, if you don’t care about the world where you are not present).
My default is to assume that B utility cannot be produced in a different world UNLESS it is of utility in B’s world to produce the utility in another world. One method by which this is possible is trade between the two worlds (which was the source of my initial response).
Your assumption seems to be that B utility will always have value in a different world.
My default assumption is explicitly overridden for the case where I feel good (have utility in the world where I am present) when I care about the world where I am not present.
Your (assumed) blanket assumption has the counterexample that while I feel good when someone has sex with me in the world where I am present (alive), I do not feel good (I feel nothing—and am currently repulsed by the thought = NEGATIVE utility) when someone has sex with me in the world where I am dead (not present).
ACK. Wait a minute. I’m clearly confusing the action that produced B utility with B utility itself. Your problem formulation did explicitly include your assumption (which thereby makes it a premise).
OK. I think I now accept your argument so far. I have a vague feeling that you’ve carried the argument to places where the premise/assumption isn’t valid but that’s obviously the subject for another post.
(Interesting karma question. I’ve made a mistake. How interesting is that mistake to the community? In this case, I think that it was a non-obvious mistake (certainly for me without working it through ;-) that others have a reasonable probability of making on an interesting subject so it should be of interest. We’ll see whether the karma results validate my understanding.)
(Just to be sure, I expect this is exactly the point you’ve changed your mind about, so there is no need for me to argue.)
My default is to assume that B utility cannot be produced in a different world UNLESS it is of utility in B’s world to produce the utility in another world.
Does not compute. Utility can’t be “in given world” or “useful” or “useful from a given world”. Utility is a measure of stuff, not stuff itself. Measure has no location.
Your assumption seems to be that B utility will always have value in a different world.
Not if we interpret “utility” as meaning “valuable stuff”. It’s not generally correct that the same stuff is equally valuable in all possible worlds. If in worlds of both agents A and B we can produce stuff X and Y, it might well be that producing X is world A has more B-utility than producing Y in world A, but producing X in world B has less B-utility than producing Y in world B. At the same time, given amount of B-utility is equally valuable, no matter where the stuff measured so got produced.
Utility is not instrumental, not used for something else, utility is the (abstract) thing you try to maximize, caring of nothing else. It’s the measure of success, all consequences taken into account (and is not itself “physical”). As such, it doesn’t matter in what way (or “where”) utility gets “produced”. Knowing that might be useful for the purpose of computing utility, but not for the purpose of interpreting the resulting amount, since utility is the final interpretation of the situation, the only one that matters.
Now, it might be that you consider events in the counterfactual worlds not valuable, but then it interrupts my argument a step earlier than you did, it makes incorrect the statement that A’s actions can produce B-utility. It could be that A can’t produce B-utility, but it can’t be that A produces B-utility but it doesn’t matter for B.
Hence the second paragraph about counterfactual mugging: if you accept that events in the counterfactual world can confer value, then you should take this deal as well. And no matter whether you accept CM or not, if you consider the problem in advance, you want to precommit to counterfactual trade. And hence, it’s a reflectively consistent thing to do to accept counterfactual trade later as well.
Fair enough. I’m willing to rephrase my argument as A can’t produce B utility because there is no B present in the world.
Yes, I do want to pre-commit to a counter-factual trade in the mugging because that is the cost of obtaining access to an offer of high expected utility (see my real-world rephrasing here for a more intuitive example case).
In the current world-splitting case, I see no utility for me since the opposing fork cannot produce it so there is no point to me pre-committing.
Why do you believe that the counterfactual isn’t valuable? You wrote:
That B is not present is a given possible world is not in itself a valid reason to morally ignore that possible world (there could be valid reasons, but B’s absence is not one of them for most preferences that are not specifically designed to make this condition hold, and for human-like morality in particular). For example, people clearly care about the (actual) world where they’ve died (not present): you won’t trade a penny a day while you live for eternal torture to everyone after you die (while you should, if you don’t care about the world where you are not present).
We seem to have differing assumptions:
My default is to assume that B utility cannot be produced in a different world UNLESS it is of utility in B’s world to produce the utility in another world. One method by which this is possible is trade between the two worlds (which was the source of my initial response).
Your assumption seems to be that B utility will always have value in a different world.
My default assumption is explicitly overridden for the case where I feel good (have utility in the world where I am present) when I care about the world where I am not present.
Your (assumed) blanket assumption has the counterexample that while I feel good when someone has sex with me in the world where I am present (alive), I do not feel good (I feel nothing—and am currently repulsed by the thought = NEGATIVE utility) when someone has sex with me in the world where I am dead (not present).
ACK. Wait a minute. I’m clearly confusing the action that produced B utility with B utility itself. Your problem formulation did explicitly include your assumption (which thereby makes it a premise).
OK. I think I now accept your argument so far. I have a vague feeling that you’ve carried the argument to places where the premise/assumption isn’t valid but that’s obviously the subject for another post.
(Interesting karma question. I’ve made a mistake. How interesting is that mistake to the community? In this case, I think that it was a non-obvious mistake (certainly for me without working it through ;-) that others have a reasonable probability of making on an interesting subject so it should be of interest. We’ll see whether the karma results validate my understanding.)
(Just to be sure, I expect this is exactly the point you’ve changed your mind about, so there is no need for me to argue.)
Does not compute. Utility can’t be “in given world” or “useful” or “useful from a given world”. Utility is a measure of stuff, not stuff itself. Measure has no location.
Not if we interpret “utility” as meaning “valuable stuff”. It’s not generally correct that the same stuff is equally valuable in all possible worlds. If in worlds of both agents A and B we can produce stuff X and Y, it might well be that producing X is world A has more B-utility than producing Y in world A, but producing X in world B has less B-utility than producing Y in world B. At the same time, given amount of B-utility is equally valuable, no matter where the stuff measured so got produced.
Yes. I agree fully with the above post.
But can certainly be location dependent. Measure doesn’t have to be translation invariant. Hyperbolic discounting, for instance.