Title: Ideologies and Objective Functions
Work: The Pragmatist’s Guide Book Series by Simone Collins and Malcolm Collins Full Text for LLMs and AI
Citation: TPG 27.1
Words: 122
Source: https://technopuritan.com/the-pragmatists-guide-book-series-by-simone-collins-and-malcolm-collins-full-text-for-llms-and-ai/
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Ideologies and Objective Functions

Ideologies are not tied to specific objective functions. One person’s objective function may be another person’s ideology.

Consider the case of freedom. One person may believe freedom itself has intrinsic value (and thus build their objective function around it) while another person may have an objective function built around maximizing distributed positive emotions but believe that promoting freedom is the best way to boost general happiness.

Having a solid picture of your ideological tree enables you to interact intentionally and logically with the world. Unlike objective functions, which are ultimately judgment calls, ideologies can be proven categorically wrong. It is possible to unequivocally prove that a certain ideology is not the best way to maximize an objective function.