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Timeline for Formal definition of 'useful' ?

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Apr 13, 2017 at 12:57 history edited CommunityBot
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Nov 3, 2011 at 2:53 vote accept Jacques Carette
Apr 13, 2010 at 22:35 comment added Jacques Carette Not just 'convenience' is important. And utility theory is too general, one needs to narrow down the notion of 'value' more for this to be meaningful. So part of the question is to also understand what should be the notion of 'value'. PageRank and Kolmogorov Complexity are two guides here.
Apr 13, 2010 at 20:49 comment added Joel David Hamkins But why should utility just measure convenience? The point of utility theory is that the utility function is measuring some kind of value, whatever notion of value is desired. If you want a formal theory of "usefulness", then let utility measure it and you have a formal account of usefulness.
Apr 13, 2010 at 20:18 comment added Jacques Carette [Thanks for the reminder to look more closely at Reverse Mathematics]. I agree that 'logical equivalence' is too crude a metric: the length of the necessary contortions (the computational content of the proof?) to use one of the 'equivalent' theorems should be counted as part of the utility measurement. Utility is related to convenience, and it is inconvenient to have to translate. Your point that this is a problem of measurement is well-made, I will have to think about that some more.
Apr 13, 2010 at 20:07 history edited Joel David Hamkins CC BY-SA 2.5
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Apr 13, 2010 at 20:02 history answered Joel David Hamkins CC BY-SA 2.5