I agree that akrasia is a bad thing that we should get rid of. I like to think of it as a failure to have purposeful action, rather than a preference.
My dancing around here has a purpose. You see, I have this FAI specification that purports to infer everyone’s preference and take as its utility function giving everyone some weighted average of what they prefer. If it infers that my akrasia is part of my preferences, I’m screwed, so we need a distinction there. Check http://www.fungible.com. It has a lot of bugs that are not described there, so don’t go implementing it. Please.
In general, if the FAI is going to give “your preference” to you, your preference had better be something stable about you that you’ll still want when you get it.
If there’s no fix for akrasia, then it’s hard to say in what sense I want to do something worthwhile but am stopped by akrasia; it makes as much sense to assume I’m spewing BS about stuff that sounds nice to do, but I really don’t want to do it. I certainly would want an akrasia fix if it were available. Maybe that’s the important preference.
If there’s no fix for akrasia, then it’s hard to say in what sense I want to do something worthwhile but am stopped by akrasia; it makes as much sense to assume I’m spewing BS about stuff that sounds nice to do, but I really don’t want to do it.
I agree that akrasia is a bad thing that we should get rid of. I like to think of it as a failure to have purposeful action, rather than a preference.
My dancing around here has a purpose. You see, I have this FAI specification that purports to infer everyone’s preference and take as its utility function giving everyone some weighted average of what they prefer. If it infers that my akrasia is part of my preferences, I’m screwed, so we need a distinction there. Check http://www.fungible.com. It has a lot of bugs that are not described there, so don’t go implementing it. Please.
In general, if the FAI is going to give “your preference” to you, your preference had better be something stable about you that you’ll still want when you get it.
If there’s no fix for akrasia, then it’s hard to say in what sense I want to do something worthwhile but am stopped by akrasia; it makes as much sense to assume I’m spewing BS about stuff that sounds nice to do, but I really don’t want to do it. I certainly would want an akrasia fix if it were available. Maybe that’s the important preference.
Very much agreed.