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Utility
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Utility

Utility is a measure of a party's satisfaction with a certain state of the world.

The measure is intended to account for unintuitive quirks of human perception of value. A rich man is not as satisfied by receiving one dollar as a poor man would be, therefore the utility of the dollar is contextual, not objective.

In This Notebook

I use "utility" perhaps a bit loosely compared to Wikipedia.

If I say that some voluntary activity "has high utility", I mean that it is worth doing, even considering the expense (usually labor or dollars).

In this way "utility" is more of a signal that I'm speaking objectively, and that I've thought about

See Also

Sorites paradox in utility theory

Normative and Descriptive Utility

Normative utility is utility as self-reported, subject to the biases of the party.

Descriptive utility is utility as determined from the party's behavior.