It’s likely that some experiences are non-linear in utility per intensity.
In the post, I defined intensity as linearly proportional to utility. If you think wording it as “intensity” is misleading because what we generally think of as “experience intensity” isn’t linearly proportional to utility, then I agree, but can’t think of a better term to use.
Or that you’d have to crank up some parts of the experience and not others. For instance, enjoying the contrast of bitter and fruity in a shot of espresso—there’s no way to scale the whole thing up 10x, you have to pick and choose what to intensify, and then your result is subject to those modeling choices.
If I’m understanding you correctly, you’re saying that the experience of enjoying the contrast of bitter and fruity can be modeled as the individual experiences “bitter 1, bitter 2, bitter 3, … ,fruity 1, fruity 2, fruity 3, …” and the total utility of the 10x scaled experience depends on which ones you group together when summing the utilities. For example, if your “utility groups” are bitter 1 + fruity 1, bitter 2 + fruity 2, etc., it comes out with higher utility than if you group them as bitter 1 +bitter 2 + etc and fruity 1 + fruity 2 + etc, because the specific combination of bitter and fruity is what makes it a good experience.
I disagree that the individual experiences are bitter 1, bitter 2, …, fruity 1, fruity 2, … ; I feel like it should be more like bitter-fruity 1, bitter-fruity 2, …, bitter 1, bitter 2, …, fruity 1, fruity 2, … The combination of bitter and fruity (“bitter-fruity”) is a distinct individual experience in the set of experiences occurring at that moment, and in that set might also be included individual “bitter” and “fruity” experiences. Here, we can just intensify each individual experience by 10 (i.e. multiply the utility of the experience by 10 while keeping it as the same “type” of experience) and sum their utilities.
Also, why 10x rather than 0.1x, or 0x (direct comparison of experienced to not-experienced).
I don’t really know what it would mean to prefer to “not experience” something. You’re always experiencing something; your baseline mental state is an experience. If your baseline mental state has exactly 0 utility, this would work, but your baseline mental state isn’t necessarily exactly 0 utility. If “not experiencing” something means shaving that much time off the rest of your life, this still feels like a conceptually weaker version of a “preference”. When comparing two experiences, I can imagine being on experience 1, then deciding I want to switch to experience 2, then actually deciding experience 1 is better, etc., until some sort of equilibrium is reached and I make up my mind. (Keep in mind that how tired you are of the experience is itself part of the experience, and held constant, so you wouldn’t keep jumping back and forth endlessly.) Theoretically, the analogous way to compare an experience with the absence of experience would be jumping between [your entire mind being turned off except for the part that allows you to think and make decisions] and the experience, but that’s a harder thought experiment to have than imagining jumping between two different experiences.
I hadn’t thought of comparing 1x to 0.1x; that’s a good idea, and I don’t object to it. I imagine 1x to 0.1x is more useful if each individual experience has a lot of utility (or disutility), and 1x to 10x is more useful if each individual experience only has a little utility (or disutility).
(I will respond to 3) and 4) tomorrow, it’s getting late and I should sleep)
Responding to 2):
In the post, I defined intensity as linearly proportional to utility. If you think wording it as “intensity” is misleading because what we generally think of as “experience intensity” isn’t linearly proportional to utility, then I agree, but can’t think of a better term to use.
If I’m understanding you correctly, you’re saying that the experience of enjoying the contrast of bitter and fruity can be modeled as the individual experiences “bitter 1, bitter 2, bitter 3, … ,fruity 1, fruity 2, fruity 3, …” and the total utility of the 10x scaled experience depends on which ones you group together when summing the utilities. For example, if your “utility groups” are bitter 1 + fruity 1, bitter 2 + fruity 2, etc., it comes out with higher utility than if you group them as bitter 1 +bitter 2 + etc and fruity 1 + fruity 2 + etc, because the specific combination of bitter and fruity is what makes it a good experience.
I disagree that the individual experiences are bitter 1, bitter 2, …, fruity 1, fruity 2, … ; I feel like it should be more like bitter-fruity 1, bitter-fruity 2, …, bitter 1, bitter 2, …, fruity 1, fruity 2, … The combination of bitter and fruity (“bitter-fruity”) is a distinct individual experience in the set of experiences occurring at that moment, and in that set might also be included individual “bitter” and “fruity” experiences. Here, we can just intensify each individual experience by 10 (i.e. multiply the utility of the experience by 10 while keeping it as the same “type” of experience) and sum their utilities.
I don’t really know what it would mean to prefer to “not experience” something. You’re always experiencing something; your baseline mental state is an experience. If your baseline mental state has exactly 0 utility, this would work, but your baseline mental state isn’t necessarily exactly 0 utility. If “not experiencing” something means shaving that much time off the rest of your life, this still feels like a conceptually weaker version of a “preference”. When comparing two experiences, I can imagine being on experience 1, then deciding I want to switch to experience 2, then actually deciding experience 1 is better, etc., until some sort of equilibrium is reached and I make up my mind. (Keep in mind that how tired you are of the experience is itself part of the experience, and held constant, so you wouldn’t keep jumping back and forth endlessly.) Theoretically, the analogous way to compare an experience with the absence of experience would be jumping between [your entire mind being turned off except for the part that allows you to think and make decisions] and the experience, but that’s a harder thought experiment to have than imagining jumping between two different experiences.
I hadn’t thought of comparing 1x to 0.1x; that’s a good idea, and I don’t object to it. I imagine 1x to 0.1x is more useful if each individual experience has a lot of utility (or disutility), and 1x to 10x is more useful if each individual experience only has a little utility (or disutility).
(I will respond to 3) and 4) tomorrow, it’s getting late and I should sleep)