There’s also the possibility that a maximum doesn’t exist.
Suppose you had a one-shot utility machine, where you simply punch in a number, and the machine will generate that many utils then self-destruct. The machine has no limit in the number of utils it can generate. How many utils do you select?
“Maximise utility” has no answer to this, because there is no maximum.
In real life, we have a practically infinite number actions available to us. There might be a sense in which due to field quantisation and finite negentropy there are technically finite actions available, but certainly there are more actions available than we could ever enumerate, let alone estimate the expected utility for.
In practice, it seems like the best way to actually maximise value is just to do lots of experimental utility-generating projects, and greedily look for low-effort, high-reward strategies.
There’s also the possibility that a maximum doesn’t exist.
Suppose you had a one-shot utility machine, where you simply punch in a number, and the machine will generate that many utils then self-destruct. The machine has no limit in the number of utils it can generate. How many utils do you select?
“Maximise utility” has no answer to this, because there is no maximum.
In real life, we have a practically infinite number actions available to us. There might be a sense in which due to field quantisation and finite negentropy there are technically finite actions available, but certainly there are more actions available than we could ever enumerate, let alone estimate the expected utility for.
In practice, it seems like the best way to actually maximise value is just to do lots of experimental utility-generating projects, and greedily look for low-effort, high-reward strategies.