Kaj_Sotala comments on Applying utility functions to humans considered harmful - Less Wrong

26 Post author: Kaj_Sotala 03 February 2010 07:22PM

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Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 04 February 2010 05:27:33PM 0 points [-]

Well, yes, "so complex and chaotic that you might as well call it random" is what I meant. That's what's usually meant by the term - the results of dice rolls aren't mainly driven by quantum randomness either.

Comment author: mattnewport 04 February 2010 06:24:12PM 2 points [-]

Complex yes, chaotic I doubt. I'm reasonably confident that there is some kind of meaningful pattern to attentional shifts that is correlated with features of the environment and that is adaptive to improve outcomes in our evolutionary environment. Randomness in this model reflects a lack of sufficient information about the environment or the process that drives attention rather than a belief that attention shifts do not have a meaningful correlation with the environment.