Here’s my stab at a summary of your comment: “Before complex brains evolved, evolution had already optimized organisms to trade off a range of complex goals, from meeting their metabolic needs to finding mates. Therefore, in laying down motivational circuitry in our ancient ancestors, evolution did not have to start from scratch, and already had a reasonably complex ‘API’ for interoceptive variables.”
This sounds right to me. Reasons like this also contribute to my uncertainty about how much weight to put on “But a sensory food-scent-detector would be simpler to specify than a world-model food-detector”, because “simpler” gets weird in the presence of uncertain initial conditions. For example, what kinds of “world models” did our nonhuman precursors have, and, over longer evolutionary timescales, could evolution have laid down some simpler circuitry which detected food in their simpler world models, which we inherited? It’s not that I find such possibilities probable on their own, but marginalizing over all such possibilities, I end up feeling somewhat uncertain.
I don’t see how complex interoceptive variables + control systems help accomplish “love for family” more easily, though, although that one doesn’t seem very inaccessible to the genome anyways (in part since at least some of your family is usually proximate to sensory inputs).
I would correct “Therefore, in laying down motivational circuitry in our ancient ancestors, evolution did not have to start from scratch, and already had a reasonably complex ‘API’ for interoceptive variables.”
from the summary to something like this
”Therefore, in laying down motivational circuitry in our ancient ancestors, evolution did have to start locating ‘goals’ and relevant world-features in the learned world models. Instead, it re-used the the existing goal-specifying circuits, and implicit-world-models, existing in older organisms. Most of the goal specification is done via “binding” the older and newer world-models in some important variables. From within the newer circuitry, important part of the “API” between the models is interoception”
(Another way how to think about it: imagine a more blurry line between a “sensory signal” and “reward signal”)
Jan—well said, and I strongly agree with your perspective here.
Any theory of human values should also be consistent with the deep evolutionary history of the adaptive origins and functions of values in general—from the earliest Cambrian animals with complex nervous systems through vertebrates, social primates, and prehistoric hominids.
As William James pointed out in 1890 (paraphrasing here), human intelligence depends on humans have more evolved instincts, preferences, and values than other animals, not having fewer.
Here’s my stab at a summary of your comment: “Before complex brains evolved, evolution had already optimized organisms to trade off a range of complex goals, from meeting their metabolic needs to finding mates. Therefore, in laying down motivational circuitry in our ancient ancestors, evolution did not have to start from scratch, and already had a reasonably complex ‘API’ for interoceptive variables.”
This sounds right to me. Reasons like this also contribute to my uncertainty about how much weight to put on “But a sensory food-scent-detector would be simpler to specify than a world-model food-detector”, because “simpler” gets weird in the presence of uncertain initial conditions. For example, what kinds of “world models” did our nonhuman precursors have, and, over longer evolutionary timescales, could evolution have laid down some simpler circuitry which detected food in their simpler world models, which we inherited? It’s not that I find such possibilities probable on their own, but marginalizing over all such possibilities, I end up feeling somewhat uncertain.
I don’t see how complex interoceptive variables + control systems help accomplish “love for family” more easily, though, although that one doesn’t seem very inaccessible to the genome anyways (in part since at least some of your family is usually proximate to sensory inputs).
I would correct “Therefore, in laying down motivational circuitry in our ancient ancestors, evolution did not have to start from scratch, and already had a reasonably complex ‘API’ for interoceptive variables.”
from the summary to something like this
”Therefore, in laying down motivational circuitry in our ancient ancestors, evolution did have to start locating ‘goals’ and relevant world-features in the learned world models. Instead, it re-used the the existing goal-specifying circuits, and implicit-world-models, existing in older organisms. Most of the goal specification is done via “binding” the older and newer world-models in some important variables. From within the newer circuitry, important part of the “API” between the models is interoception”
(Another way how to think about it: imagine a more blurry line between a “sensory signal” and “reward signal”)
Jan—well said, and I strongly agree with your perspective here.
Any theory of human values should also be consistent with the deep evolutionary history of the adaptive origins and functions of values in general—from the earliest Cambrian animals with complex nervous systems through vertebrates, social primates, and prehistoric hominids.
As William James pointed out in 1890 (paraphrasing here), human intelligence depends on humans have more evolved instincts, preferences, and values than other animals, not having fewer.