cousin_it comments on Fundamentally Flawed, or Fast and Frugal? - Less Wrong

41 Post author: Kaj_Sotala 20 December 2009 03:10PM

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Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 20 December 2009 09:01:16PM *  5 points [-]

Changed tradeoffs. Evolution ‘‘designed’’ the system for operation in one type of environment, but now we wish to deploy it in a very different type of environment

An important question - how changed is the environment, really? Yes, there are plenty of cases where a changed environment is obviously breaking our evolved reasoning algorithms, but I suspect many people might be overstating the difference.

Value discordance. There is a discrepancy between the standards by which evolution measured the quality of her work, and the standards that we wish to apply.

At the risk of falling into a purely semantic discussion, this doesn't mean the algorithms wouldn't be optimal. It just makes them optimized for some other purpose than the one we'd prefer.

Comment author: cousin_it 20 December 2009 09:33:22PM *  8 points [-]

An important question - how changed is the environment, really?

That's a great discussion to have. I'd say the biggest changes are that a modern person interacts with a lot of other people and receives a lot of symbolic information. Other "major" changes, like increased availability of food or better infant healthcare, look to me minor by comparison. Not sure how to weigh this stuff, though.

Comment author: whpearson 20 December 2009 09:55:16PM 2 points [-]

We now also have computers.

I suspect the optimal evolved system in a modern environment (efficient and effective) is an idiot savant that can live long enough to spit out the source code for an AI guaranteed to increase the inclusive fitness of the genes of the host.

Genetic engineering and sperm/egg donation are other modern inventions I don't think we are all exploiting to increase our fitness optimally.