You are confusing utility with happiness. But you’re confusing them even afterwards.
To see whether the utility of information can be negative, you shouldn’t be thinking of scenarios like “I learned my girlfriend is cheating on me” -- (which is useful info to have in terms of determining her future trustworthiness and reliability), you should be thinking of scenarios like “My mother just told me she once discovered my father doing it doggy-style with his secretary on the kitchen table I’m currently eating on.” which gross you out but don’t really provide much more useful information than “My mother just told me she caught my father cheating on her; she let me know so I wouldn’t be confused about why she’s divorcing him”.
There’s a reason the sentence “TMI”=”Too Much Information” has been invented. There’s worth in information you can act on. Information that just makes you unhappy but you can’t significantly act on is a negative, unless you value information for its own sake more than you value your own happiness.
People’s happiness isn’t the same as people’s utility, but people are allowed to have a term for their own happiness in their utility function; most people do.
You are confusing utility with happiness. But you’re confusing them even afterwards.
To see whether the utility of information can be negative, you shouldn’t be thinking of scenarios like “I learned my girlfriend is cheating on me” -- (which is useful info to have in terms of determining her future trustworthiness and reliability), you should be thinking of scenarios like “My mother just told me she once discovered my father doing it doggy-style with his secretary on the kitchen table I’m currently eating on.” which gross you out but don’t really provide much more useful information than “My mother just told me she caught my father cheating on her; she let me know so I wouldn’t be confused about why she’s divorcing him”.
There’s a reason the sentence “TMI”=”Too Much Information” has been invented. There’s worth in information you can act on. Information that just makes you unhappy but you can’t significantly act on is a negative, unless you value information for its own sake more than you value your own happiness.
People’s happiness isn’t the same as people’s utility, but people are allowed to have a term for their own happiness in their utility function; most people do.