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.