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Report from the year 2054: Empirical Correlates of "Utility"
It is the 50th anniversary of the HES bulletin board's discussion of "What is Something
Worth?," in which the notion of "utility" was alternatively castigated (in a scholarly
way, of course) and defended. Thus, it seems
appropriate, if not timely, to revisit that discussion in light of the empirical
breakthroughs in developing empirical correlates of "utility" in the decades since.
The major breakthrough, came, of course, in 2032, when the noted econo-psychologist/
psycho-economist and experimentalist (and generally smart cookie) Dr. Samuelson
Snickerdoodle employed widely available technologies to measure what is arguably an
empirical correlate of "utility." These technologies, widely available since the mid-20th
century, allowed the measurement of changes in the level of brain activity caused by
various stimuli the individual experienced. To put this in a way consistent with utility
notions, some heightened brain activities involved increased pleasurable sensations,
others involved increased discomfort, and the experimenter could distinguish the two kinds
of activities, and measure their frequency and intensity. Restating this in language more
acceptable to current researchers in psychology, who today shy away from notions of
"pleasure" and "pain," correlated brain activities could be distinguished and their
frequency, intensity and topography measured.
Dr. Snickerdoodle's contribution had at least two components. One was conceptual. He
recognized that heightened pleasurable brain activities might represent a convenient
empirical interpretation of "utility", or (in
more understandable language not wrapped up in arcane philosophical baggage)
"satisfaction." His second contribution was technological. He developed an inexpensive
miniaturization of the electronic machinery that allowed one to actually measure these "
utility-correlate" changes using a small machine the size of a hearing aid, so that data
could be collected by simply "sticking it in your ear", so to speak.[1] This allowed
experimentalists at campuses (to say nothing of drug rehab clinics) to use
the device to collect data from massive numbers of "subjects." Because Dr. Snickerdoodle
was not lacking in wit, he called the units he was measuring "Jollies", as opposed to the
more arcane "Utils" and the insufficiently
poetic "SATs", which also had the problem of reading suspiciously like a college entrance
exam.
As with most measurement breakthroughs, the device and the results it produced were not
universally accepted, for a wide variety of reasons. These included:
1. The idea that, since man is, at least allegedly, a thinking being, there is more to
"satisfaction" (or "utility")--if those concepts have any meaning--than "mere" changes in
"pleasurable sensation" levels.
2. The Heisenberg Ear problem: By trying to measure how the individual feels while he has
something in his ear, we may not be getting measures of how (s)he would in fact feel
without something in his ear.
3. The Interpersonal Comparison Heisenberg Ear (or ICHE) problem: What if different
individuals are differentially affected by having something in their ear? The long-
standing problem of the probable illegitimacy of interpersonal "utility-correlate"
comparisons once again raises its ugly head.
4. The idea that the market would create incentives to misreport results, such as
overstating the Jollies produced, and understating the possibility of satiation from,
drinking a whole bunch of Pepsi s. (To guard against
such dangers, many universities established Internal Ear Review Boards to monitor
compliance with sound ear research. Attempts to study the utility effects of trying to
deal with such Internal Ear Review Boards have gotten
no place, since the Boards typically refuse to approve such research).
5. A generalized fear that allowing psycho-economists to try to measure Jollies was a Dr.
Strangelovian step into a kind of world we did not want to enter, one in which the
government could monitor, and therefore manipulate, our perceptions of our own well-being.
As one would expect, research proceeded even in the face of these potential difficulties.
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