If the brain were naturally a universal learner, then surely we wouldn't have to learn universal learning (e.g. we wouldn't have to learn to overcome cognitive biases, Bayesian reasoning wouldn't be a recent discovery, etc.)? The system seems too gappy and glitchy, too full of quick judgement and prejudice, to have been designed as a universal learner from the ground up.
You are conflating the ideas of universal learning and rational thinking. They are not the same thing.
I'm a strong believer in the idea that the human intelligence emerges from a strong general purpose reinforcement learning algorithm. If that's true, then it's very consistent with our problems of cognitive bias.
You are conflating the ideas of universal learning and rational thinking. They are not the same thing.
I'm a strong believer in the idea that the human intelligence emerges from a strong general purpose reinforcement learning algorithm. If that's true, then it's very consistent with our problems of cognitive bias.
If the... (read 618 more words →)