anonymous12 comments on Searching for Bayes-Structure - Less Wrong

19 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 28 February 2008 10:01PM

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Comment author: anonymous12 29 February 2008 06:11:40PM 0 points [-]

Evolutions would tend to give humans brains with beliefs that largely matched the world, else they would be weeded out. So, after conception, as the mind grows, it would build itself up (as per its genetic code, proteome, bacteria, etc.) with beliefs that match the world, even if it didn't perform any Bayesian inferences.

Note that natural selection can be seen as a process of Bayesian inference: gene frequencies represent prior and posterior probabilities, while the fitness landscape is equivalent to a likelihood function. However, evolution can only provide the mind with prior beliefs; presumably, these beliefs would have to match the ancestral evolutionary environment.