Comment on Control Theory Commentary

Mon, 26 Jan 2015 20:28:04 GMT

FWIW, my enthusiasm over PCT has cooled considerably. Not because it's not true, just because it's gone from "OMG this explains everything" to just "how things work".

I'm agreed with Kennaway on this.

It's a useful intuition pump for lots of things, not the least of which is the reason humans are primarily satisficers, and make pretty crappy maximizers.

Technically, I disagree, because I want 'satisficer' to keep the original intended sense of "get X to at least this particular threshold value, and then don't worry about getting it any higher." I think controls point at... something I don't have a good word for yet, but 'proportioners' that try to put in effort appropriate to the level of error.

(An aside: I was at the AAAI workshop on AI and Ethics yesterday, and someone shared the story of telling people about their simulated system which proved statements like "if a person is about to fall in the hole, and the robot can find a plan that saves them, then the person never falls into the hole," and had their previous audience respond to this with "well, why doesn't the robot try to save someone even if they know they won't succeed?". This is ridiculous in the 'maximizer' model and the 'satisficer' model, but makes sense in the 'proportioner' model--if something needs to be done, then you need to try, because the effort is more important than the effect.)

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