Wes_W comments on Uncategories and empty categories - Less Wrong

16 Post author: PhilGoetz 16 February 2015 01:18AM

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Comment author: Wes_W 16 February 2015 10:35:31PM *  1 point [-]

The traits of evolved organisms are usually a reasonable approximation of fitness-maximizing, because they're the output of billions of years of a fitness-maximizing process; I'm with you on not being willing to call it "coincidence". But this seems silly:

Your cognitive algorithms, executed in a human body, maximize its inclusive genetic fitness.

My cognitive algorithms are the results of a process which maximizes inclusive genetic fitness. This does not mean these algorithms themselves maximize that.

On the margin, a large fraction of the outputs of this process definitely don't maximize fitness. Otherwise, there would be nothing for selection to eventually weed out!

Comment author: PhilGoetz 16 February 2015 10:42:16PM 1 point [-]

My cognitive algorithms are the results of a process which maximizes inclusive genetic fitness. This does not mean these algorithms themselves maximize that.

I'm using "maximize" loosely. I agree with your observations.