Vladimir_Nesov comments on Do Humans Want Things? - Less Wrong

23 Post author: lukeprog 04 August 2011 05:00AM

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Comment author: lukeprog 11 August 2011 07:35:00PM 1 point [-]

Sure, but that depends on a different mechanism we don't know much about, then. What I'm saying is that "Whaddyaknow, we discovered a mechanism that actually encodes value for stimuli with neuron firing rates! Ah, but it can't encode value for the objective intensities of stimuli, because the brain doesn't have that information. So that constrains our theories about the motivation of human behavior."

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 11 August 2011 08:48:51PM *  1 point [-]

(Strictly speaking, it's not necessary to know something in order to be motivated by it. If a fact is considered relevant, but isn't known, that creates instrumental motivation for finding out what it is! And even if you can't learn something, you might want to establish a certain dependence of the outcome on that fact, no matter what the fact is.)