Right; assuming (falsely of course) that humans have coherent preferences satisfying the VNM axioms, what can be measured in utilons are not “amount of dollars” in the abstract, but “amount of dollars obtained in such-and-such way in such-and-such situation”. But I wouldn’t call this “not being meaningfully comparable”. And there is nothing special about dollars here, any other object, event or experience is subject to the same.
Every time there’s an argument that goes like, “Would you pay a penny to avoid scenario X?”, which in real life means actually “Would you sacrifice a utilon to avoid scenario X?” and therefore requires us to presuppose that dollars can stand in for utilons, something special is being assumed about dollars.
But “Would you pay a penny to avoid scenario X?” in no way means “Would you sacrifice a utilon to avoid scenario X?” (the latter is meaningless, since utilons are abstractions subject to arbitrary rescaling). The meaningful rephrasing of the penny question in terms of utilons is “Ceteris paribus, would you get more utilons if X happens, or if you lose a penny and X doesn’t happen?” (which is just roundabout way of asking which you prefer). And this is unobjectionable as a way of testing whether you have really a preference and getting a vague handle on how strong it is.
I would prefer if people avoided the word “utilon” altogether (and also “utility” outside of formal decision theory contexts) because there is an inevitable tendency to reify these terms and start using them in meaningless ways. But again, nothing special about money here.
Right; assuming (falsely of course) that humans have coherent preferences satisfying the VNM axioms, what can be measured in utilons are not “amount of dollars” in the abstract, but “amount of dollars obtained in such-and-such way in such-and-such situation”. But I wouldn’t call this “not being meaningfully comparable”. And there is nothing special about dollars here, any other object, event or experience is subject to the same.
Every time there’s an argument that goes like, “Would you pay a penny to avoid scenario X?”, which in real life means actually “Would you sacrifice a utilon to avoid scenario X?” and therefore requires us to presuppose that dollars can stand in for utilons, something special is being assumed about dollars.
But “Would you pay a penny to avoid scenario X?” in no way means “Would you sacrifice a utilon to avoid scenario X?” (the latter is meaningless, since utilons are abstractions subject to arbitrary rescaling). The meaningful rephrasing of the penny question in terms of utilons is “Ceteris paribus, would you get more utilons if X happens, or if you lose a penny and X doesn’t happen?” (which is just roundabout way of asking which you prefer). And this is unobjectionable as a way of testing whether you have really a preference and getting a vague handle on how strong it is.
I would prefer if people avoided the word “utilon” altogether (and also “utility” outside of formal decision theory contexts) because there is an inevitable tendency to reify these terms and start using them in meaningless ways. But again, nothing special about money here.
Seconded. But then we would also need to avoid using language that sneaks disguised utilons into the conversation.