Meetup : West LA Meetup - The Greatest Good for the Greatest Number

When: 7:00pm Wednesday, July 17th.

Where: The Westside Tavern in the upstairs Wine Bar (all ages welcome), located inside the Westside Pavillion on the second floor, right by the movie theaters. The entrance sign says "Lounge".

Parking is free for 3 hours.

Discussion: This week we will talk about utilitarianism. We will start by exploring why it is useful to think about preferences in terms of utility functions in the first place by stating the Von Neumann-Morgenstern Utility Theorem. Then we will discuss how to combine individual utility functions to come up with a choice for the society which gives "the greatest good for the greatest number." Many of the simplest methods do not work well because they are not invariant under affine transformations of utility functions. We will also discuss the problems in getting people to honestly report their utility functions, and figuring out your own utility function or if you even have a well defined utility function. Finally, we will discuss the difference between average utilitarianism and total utilitarianism, and some of the disadvantages of each.

No prior knowledge of or exposure to Less Wrong is necessary; this will be generally accessible and useful to everyone who values thinking for themselves. There will be open general conversation until 7:30, and that's always a lot of good, fun, intelligent discussion!

There will be a probably whiteboard with Bayes' Theorem written on it.