So there's this argument that utilitarianism doesn't work because (per work by behavioral economists) preferences are non-transitive. That is, you can't make a top to bottom list of preferences for each person where the higher position is always a higher preference.
But, like, surely preferences are *pretty* transitive? You can construct weird non-transitive cases. But for most purchase you could construct a list.
@ZachWeinersmith isn't that more of a math issue? If you can't have a utility function (because it requires transitivity), what do you sum?
But we estimate utility functions all the time and they're pretty useful. Do we have any specific examples of a violation that would really mess up an estimate and subsequently really mess up an aggregation?
@dancer_storm @ZachWeinersmith the 2024 American presidential election?
It's amazing in retrospect how much and how effectively the Republican party was able to elevate secondary concerns to primary just for a moment, resulting in a government that no one really likes.
@buckfiftyseven @ZachWeinersmith that's not an issue with transitivity, it's more about persistence ("I like broccoli now") and mismatches between stated/revealed preferences and experienced utility ("I bought this treadmill for a fair price but I hate running" or "I bought this thing from Temu for what I thought was a fair price but the thing that arrived was not what I thought it was and I can't return it")
Both are important issues too, but they don't mean there is no utility function, just that the system failed to reveal it.
@dancer_storm @ZachWeinersmith I'm not sure it's that different, if people thought they were voting their preferences.
*Our* perception is that they were deceived, but certainly the moment theirs was not. For many still.
@buckfiftyseven @dancer_storm @ZachWeinersmith
I don't understand. If you sort a list by preference, it won't be sorted by preference? 🤔
@Phosphenes @dancer_storm @ZachWeinersmith someone linked Kenneth Arrow’s “impossibility” theorem.
I think that applies, and "it's even worse" for reasons described above
Zach Weinersmith
economística
John
Phosphenes