I’ve reconsidered, and this is addressed to the author: It’s actually difficult to get things quite this degree of perfectly wrong in order to arrive at these conclusions; it’s the mathematical equivalent of proving that 1+1=3, and, like said proofs, does a better job confusing people than providing any useful insights. Which is indicative either that you’re trolling, or communication issues.
Which is certainly not to rule out communication issues, of which I had considerable issue when I first joined, and which can look similar to such trolling. If this is a communication issue, however, I must advise you to be a little more cautious of doubling down on the wrong conclusions (another issue I had considerable issue with, getting involved in arguments arising entirely from miscommunication) - which this post has a bit of a smell of, in insisting on definitions that have already been challenged.
If the whole of your argument is that a finite number is always smaller than infinity—well, yes. Unbounded utility functions wreck all kinds of havoc in utilitarianism, for exactly this reason, and are generally rejected. Insisting that utility can be unlimited is making an assertion of an unbounded utility—if one of your assumptions going into utilitarianism is that utility functions are unbounded, you’re making a foray into an area of utility theory that is acknowledged to be full of weird outcomes. Of a similar nature are your infinitesimal arguments, which avoid the immediate problem of unbounded utility functions, but which you supplement with zero opportunity cost (which results in an infinitesimal number divided by zero when calculating opportunity cost, and further weirdness). Furthermore, not all rationalists are even utilitarians (I’m not, and I consider the concept of “utility” to be so poorly defined as to be worthless).
But regardless of all of that, I’ll revert to the more substantive criticism of your criticisms of rationality: Deliberately creating questions without an answer, and using them to criticize an answer-generating system for its inability to arrive at the correct answer, is just sass without substance.
Actually, unbounded utility doesn’t necessarily provide too much in the way of problems, unless you start averaging. It’s more infinite utility that you have to worry about.
“Unbounded utility functions wreck all kinds of havoc in utilitarianism, for exactly this reason, and are generally rejected”—not because they are invalid, but because they complicate things. That isn’t a particularly good reason.
“zero opportunity cost”—Again, that’s a problem with your tool, not the situation. If I offer you 10 utility for 0 opportunity cost as a once off offer, you take it. You don’t need to divide by 0.
“Deliberately creating questions without an answer, and using them to criticize an answer-generating system for its inability to arrive at the correct answer, is just sass without substance.”—that has been more than adequately addressed several times on the comment threads.
Again, that’s a problem with your tool, not the situation. If I offer you 10 utility for 0 opportunity cost as a once off offer, you take it. You don’t need to divide by 0.
I’m glad you agree you should wait forever in the utilon-trading game, which after all has 0 opportunity cost in exchange for a free utilon.
that has been more than adequately addressed several times on the comment threads.
That’s because it is a once off offer. You can’t get stuck in a loop by accepting it.
“The argument that you can’t choose infinity, so you can’t win anyway, is just a distraction. Suppose perfect rationality didn’t exist for a particular scenario, what would this imply about this scenario? The answer is that it would imply that there was no way of conclusively winning, because, if there was, then an agent following this strategy would be perfectly rational for this scenario. Yet, somehow people are trying to twist it around the other way and conclude that it disproves my argument. You can’t disprove an argument by proving what it predicts”
I’ve reconsidered, and this is addressed to the author: It’s actually difficult to get things quite this degree of perfectly wrong in order to arrive at these conclusions; it’s the mathematical equivalent of proving that 1+1=3, and, like said proofs, does a better job confusing people than providing any useful insights. Which is indicative either that you’re trolling, or communication issues.
Which is certainly not to rule out communication issues, of which I had considerable issue when I first joined, and which can look similar to such trolling. If this is a communication issue, however, I must advise you to be a little more cautious of doubling down on the wrong conclusions (another issue I had considerable issue with, getting involved in arguments arising entirely from miscommunication) - which this post has a bit of a smell of, in insisting on definitions that have already been challenged.
If the whole of your argument is that a finite number is always smaller than infinity—well, yes. Unbounded utility functions wreck all kinds of havoc in utilitarianism, for exactly this reason, and are generally rejected. Insisting that utility can be unlimited is making an assertion of an unbounded utility—if one of your assumptions going into utilitarianism is that utility functions are unbounded, you’re making a foray into an area of utility theory that is acknowledged to be full of weird outcomes. Of a similar nature are your infinitesimal arguments, which avoid the immediate problem of unbounded utility functions, but which you supplement with zero opportunity cost (which results in an infinitesimal number divided by zero when calculating opportunity cost, and further weirdness). Furthermore, not all rationalists are even utilitarians (I’m not, and I consider the concept of “utility” to be so poorly defined as to be worthless).
But regardless of all of that, I’ll revert to the more substantive criticism of your criticisms of rationality: Deliberately creating questions without an answer, and using them to criticize an answer-generating system for its inability to arrive at the correct answer, is just sass without substance.
Actually, unbounded utility doesn’t necessarily provide too much in the way of problems, unless you start averaging. It’s more infinite utility that you have to worry about.
“Unbounded utility functions wreck all kinds of havoc in utilitarianism, for exactly this reason, and are generally rejected”—not because they are invalid, but because they complicate things. That isn’t a particularly good reason.
“zero opportunity cost”—Again, that’s a problem with your tool, not the situation. If I offer you 10 utility for 0 opportunity cost as a once off offer, you take it. You don’t need to divide by 0.
“Deliberately creating questions without an answer, and using them to criticize an answer-generating system for its inability to arrive at the correct answer, is just sass without substance.”—that has been more than adequately addressed several times on the comment threads.
I’m glad you agree you should wait forever in the utilon-trading game, which after all has 0 opportunity cost in exchange for a free utilon.
Then address it. Copy and paste, if necessary.
That’s because it is a once off offer. You can’t get stuck in a loop by accepting it.
“The argument that you can’t choose infinity, so you can’t win anyway, is just a distraction. Suppose perfect rationality didn’t exist for a particular scenario, what would this imply about this scenario? The answer is that it would imply that there was no way of conclusively winning, because, if there was, then an agent following this strategy would be perfectly rational for this scenario. Yet, somehow people are trying to twist it around the other way and conclude that it disproves my argument. You can’t disprove an argument by proving what it predicts”
It’s not what it predicts, it’s what you say about what it predicts, that is problematic.
??? The whole point of utility is to average it. That’s what motivations the decision-theoretic definition of utility.
Not if you are a total utilitarian (average utilitarianism is largely incoherent anyway)
If you compute expected utilities, you’re averaging utility over possible worlds.