Agents trade off exploring and exploiting, and when they’re exploiting they look like they’re minimizing prediction error?
That’s one hypothesis in the space I was pointing at, but not particularly the thing I expect to be true. Or, maybe I think it is somewhat true as an observation about policies, but doesn’t answer the question of how exactly variety and anti-variety are involved in our basic values.
A model which I more endorse:
We like to make progress understanding things. We don’t like chaotic stuff with no traction for learning (like TV fuzz). We like orderly stuff more, but only while learning about it; it then fades to zero, meaning we have to seek more variety for our hedonic treadmill. We really like patterns which keep establishing and then breaking expectations, especially if there is always a deeper pattern which makes sense of the exceptions (like music); these patterns maximize the feeling of learning progress.
But I think that’s just one aspect of our values, not a universal theory of human values.
That’s one hypothesis in the space I was pointing at, but not particularly the thing I expect to be true. Or, maybe I think it is somewhat true as an observation about policies, but doesn’t answer the question of how exactly variety and anti-variety are involved in our basic values.
A model which I more endorse:
We like to make progress understanding things. We don’t like chaotic stuff with no traction for learning (like TV fuzz). We like orderly stuff more, but only while learning about it; it then fades to zero, meaning we have to seek more variety for our hedonic treadmill. We really like patterns which keep establishing and then breaking expectations, especially if there is always a deeper pattern which makes sense of the exceptions (like music); these patterns maximize the feeling of learning progress.
But I think that’s just one aspect of our values, not a universal theory of human values.