Kaj_Sotala comments on An attempt to dissolve subjective expectation and personal identity - LessWrong

35 Post author: Kaj_Sotala 22 February 2013 08:44PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (68)
Tags: psychology anthropic wireheading anthropic_trilemma consciousness

Comments (68)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 23 February 2013 06:53:42AM *  0 points [-]

I mean, sure, in principle it could totally do that, but presumably all the copies of such erratic systems got eaten by tigers instead of successfully passing on their genes.

There's the question of the absolute effort needed in order to get the abstract reasoning system to work reliably each time, versus just wiring them into a balance where the non-abstract system dominates most of the time when the abstract system gets things wrong. Evolution will pick the easier and faster solution.

I'm not sure whether you're saying that personal identity is an evolutionary kludge (like the appendix or something), or whether it's absolutely required in order for any abstract reasoning system to function properly.

The former.

Comment author: Bugmaster 23 February 2013 07:50:52AM 0 points [-]

...just wiring them into a balance where the non-abstract system dominates most of the time when the abstract system gets things wrong.

Agreed, but IMO this non-abstract system doesn't have to be the personal identity system; it could just be pure reflex, or a limited set of heuristics. We already have plenty of reflexes, after all.

The former.

Ok, that makes sense. Do you have any evidence that this is indeed the case ? Do we know when and how personal identity evolved ?

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 23 February 2013 08:16:17AM 0 points [-]

Agreed, but IMO this non-abstract system doesn't have to be the personal identity system; it could just be pure reflex, or a limited set of heuristics.

Possible, but the personal identity system does seem to be the thing that we actually ended up with.

Do you have any evidence that this is indeed the case ?

It would seem to be the most straightforward explanation that fits the facts, but of course that's not conclusive evidence and my speculation about the evolutionary origin of our current state of affairs might be completely off. But even if the origin story was wrong, we do still seem to be running with an architecture that prioritizes anticipated experiences in its decision-making and depends on a personal identity component for that to be meaningful: the reason for why it evolved this way will just be different.

Comment author: Bugmaster 24 February 2013 10:02:28PM 0 points [-]

Ok, that makes sense to me: we've got this personal identity thing, it may not be optimal, but then, neither is bipedal walking, and we're stuck with both.

I guess the next question is, how would we test whether this is true ? Has anyone done it already ?

Comment author: shminux 23 February 2013 07:10:09AM 0 points [-]

The former

Can you write a model and run it, or is it all pure logic?

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 23 February 2013 08:16:34AM 0 points [-]

Just logic so far.

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit