From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Sat Aug 09 2003 - 02:50:11 MDT
On Fri, Aug 08, 2003 at 05:54:47PM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:
> Anders writes a nice piece in reference to an article
> that I haven't read, but which is attempting to get
> the "rational" meme (which can tolerate "trade-offs")
> out to the public.
Not really; it was published in a fairly broad journal,
but hardly Scientific American. He is undermining the
taboo of researching taboos and making it more clear that
even the sacred can be studied, so in the long run I
think this research will produce more rationality as it
seeps out thanks to popularizers (anyone want to do
that?). Bur right now it is mainly academic studies.
It is interesting to note another article in TICS I noted
recently: Pascal Boyer, Religious thought and behaviour
as by-products of brain function, Trends in Cognitive
Sciences Volume 7, Issue 3 , March 2003, Pages 119-124
Religious concepts activate various functionally
distinct mental systems, present also in
non-religious contexts, and `tweak' the usual
inferences of these systems. They deal with
detection and representation of animacy and
agency, social exchange, moral intuitions,
precaution against natural hazards and
understanding of misfortune. Each of these
activates distinct neural resources or families
of networks. What makes notions of supernatural
agency intuitively plausible? This article
reviews evidence suggesting that it is the joint,
coordinated activation of these diverse systems,
a supposition that opens up the prospect of a
cognitive neuroscience of religious beliefs.
A cognitive neuroscience of religion would be as
dangerous for ill-considered religion as the fields of
comparative religion and literary analysis of the Bible
has been.
Tetlock has quite a few interesting papers:
http://www.psy.ohio-state.edu/social/tetlock/tetlock.htm
> In my opinion, one aspect that we need to look at is
> our *own* urge to break icons.
Yes, why is iconoclasm so fun? To some extent it is
because it is easy attention from others - if you can
take some criticism, then you can mine it for all its
worth. Then there is the thrill of questioning the
unquestionable - but why do we get it? Tetlock's theory
only explain why people refrain from doing it, not why
some people delight in it.
> Does anyone really believe that Robin Hanson does not,
> in some tiny recess of his mind, enjoy tweaking
> conventional tastes by proposing something that is
> quite logical, but simultaneously outrageous to usual
> tastes?
I don't know about Robin, but this is definitely true for
me.
> Yes, we *should* exult in the novel, along with all true
> SF writers, part of whose theme in the trade is to
> shock. We should indeed be held only in check---in
> this medium---by logic and reason, and otherwise
> truly enjoy wherever our imaginations take us.
We might be enjoying it even more because thinking the
unthinkable brings us to the new. And we orient ourselves
towards new sources of information - we are curious, we
place value in learning new things or possibilities even
when they do not have a direct use.
A reinforcement learning agent will normally only deviate
randomly from its learned behavior and does not get any
reward for it other than whatever reward or punishment it
gets from the deviation. But imagine an agent that gets a
slight reward for exploring. It will seek out unknown
parts of its environment, learning where the greatest
rewards are and then (since it now is hard to get the
exploration rewards) exploit them, earning much more
reward than the "stay at home" agent.
But the optimal level of exploration is impossible to
know a priori, it depends on the environment and luck. So
evolution would not set us all to the same level of
exploration reward. We are distributed in this respect,
with some people with more explorative personalities and
others less. The explorers would get internal rewards for
finding out more, even when it is useless or goes against
the beliefs of others. Maybe this is another partial
explanation for iconoclasm.
It should also be noted that society is far more open
today than in the 50's (largely due to the iconoclasts!).
This means that there is less need to rebel, and
iconoclasm can be aimed into "safe" pursuits such as art,
gaming or showing off at the beach. The number of
iconoclasts may not have decreased, but they are less
visible.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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