My writing is unclear. Some things could have been better explained or explained in more detail (I got similar feedback on LW here). Or, my sentence structure is bad/āhard to follow.
I think this subject is very important and underrated, so Iām glad you wrote the post, and you raised some points that I wasnāt aware of, and I would like to see people write more posts like this one. The post didnāt do as much for me as it could have because I found two of its three main arguments hard to understand:
For your first argument (āUnbounded utility functions are irrationalā), the post spends several paragraphs setting up a specific function that I could have easily constructed myself (for me itās pretty obvious that there exist finite utility functions with infinite EV), and then ends by saying utilitarianism ālead[s] to violations of generalizations of the Independence axiom and the Sure-Thing Principleā, which I take to be the central argument, but I donāt know what the Sure-Thing Principle is. I think I know what Independence is, but I donāt know what you mean by āgeneralizations of Independenceā. So it feels like I still have no idea what your actual argument is.
I had no difficulty following your money pump argument.
For the third argument, the post claims that some axioms rule out expectational total utilitarianism, but the axioms arenāt defined and I donāt know what they mean, and I donāt know how they rule out expectational total utilitarianism. (I tried to look at the cited paper, but itās not publicly available and it doesnāt look like itās on Sci-Hub either.)
I can see how naming them without defining them would throw people off. In my view, itās acting seemingly irrationally, like getting money pumped, getting Dutch booked or paying to avoid information, that matters, not satisfying Independence or the STP. If you donāt care about this apparently irrational behaviour, then you wouldnāt really have any independent reason to accept Independence or the STP, except maybe that they seem directly intuitive. If I introduced them, that could throw other people off or otherwise take up much more space in an already long post to explain with concrete examples. But footnotes probably would have been good.
Good to hear!
Which argument do you mean? I defined and motivated the axioms for the two impossibility theorems with SD and Impartiality I cite, but I did that after stating the theorems, in the Anti-utilitarian theorems section. (Maybe I should have linked the section in the summary and outline?)
My writing is unclear. Some things could have been better explained or explained in more detail (I got similar feedback on LW here). Or, my sentence structure is bad/āhard to follow.
I think this subject is very important and underrated, so Iām glad you wrote the post, and you raised some points that I wasnāt aware of, and I would like to see people write more posts like this one. The post didnāt do as much for me as it could have because I found two of its three main arguments hard to understand:
For your first argument (āUnbounded utility functions are irrationalā), the post spends several paragraphs setting up a specific function that I could have easily constructed myself (for me itās pretty obvious that there exist finite utility functions with infinite EV), and then ends by saying utilitarianism ālead[s] to violations of generalizations of the Independence axiom and the Sure-Thing Principleā, which I take to be the central argument, but I donāt know what the Sure-Thing Principle is. I think I know what Independence is, but I donāt know what you mean by āgeneralizations of Independenceā. So it feels like I still have no idea what your actual argument is.
I had no difficulty following your money pump argument.
For the third argument, the post claims that some axioms rule out expectational total utilitarianism, but the axioms arenāt defined and I donāt know what they mean, and I donāt know how they rule out expectational total utilitarianism. (I tried to look at the cited paper, but itās not publicly available and it doesnāt look like itās on Sci-Hub either.)
Thanks, this is helpful!
To respond to the points:
I can see how naming them without defining them would throw people off. In my view, itās acting seemingly irrationally, like getting money pumped, getting Dutch booked or paying to avoid information, that matters, not satisfying Independence or the STP. If you donāt care about this apparently irrational behaviour, then you wouldnāt really have any independent reason to accept Independence or the STP, except maybe that they seem directly intuitive. If I introduced them, that could throw other people off or otherwise take up much more space in an already long post to explain with concrete examples. But footnotes probably would have been good.
Good to hear!
Which argument do you mean? I defined and motivated the axioms for the two impossibility theorems with SD and Impartiality I cite, but I did that after stating the theorems, in the Anti-utilitarian theorems section. (Maybe I should have linked the section in the summary and outline?)