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Yes, utility as a concept in decision theory is great, but it’s not the same as the concept by the same name from utilitarianism. In my understanding, coldtea i
by mudita 5y ago
Yes, utility as a concept in decision theory is great, but it’s not the same as the concept by the same name from utilitarianism. In my understanding, coldtea is doubting not decision theoretic utility functions, but utilities as they are used here.
Most importantly a decision theoretic utility function is only defined up to any positive definite transformation. Inter-agent comparisons like "Imagine that the gifted boy has a total utility of 80, and the disabled boy has a total utility of 40” don’t make any sense in terms of decision theoretic utility functions.