Sven Neth - Against OptimizationSven Neth (University of Pittsburgh)
1117 Cathedral of Learning - 11th Floor
University of Pittsburgh, 4200 Fifth Avenue
Pittsburgh 15260
United States
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The Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh invites you to join us for our Lunch Time Talk. Attend in person at 1117 Cathedral of Learning or visit our live stream on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrRp47ZMXD7NXO3a9Gyh2sg.
LTT: Sven Neth
Friday, February 14th @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm EST
Title: Against Optimization
Abstract: Value is complex and hard to measure. So we often measure and optimize a simplified proxy metric. It’s easy to feel uneasy about this. For example, Nguyen (2024) describes this phenomenon as “value capture” and thinks it is bad. Similar phenomena are discussed as “Goodhart’s law” and “reward hacking”. But it is difficult to pinpoint exactly what is going wrong here. I will (i) discuss a theorem which attempts to give a general explanation of why optimizing a proxy metric is bad, (ii) ask whether the theorem rests on plausible assumptions and (iii) speculate about what this means for consequentialism, capitalism and various other topics.
This talk will also be available live streamed on:
Zoom: https://pitt.zoom.us/j/93319281376
YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrRp47ZMXD7NXO3a9Gyh2sg.
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