If a utility maximizer that has its utility function in terms of ‘attention gotten’ sneezes, is it “trying” to make achoo noises?
It seems like the question we’re asking here is “to what extent can we model this animal as if it made choices based on its prediction of future events?” Or a closely related question, “to what extent does it act like a utility maximizer?”
And the answer seems to be “pretty well within a limited domain, not very well at all outside that domain.” Small fish in their natural environment do a remarkable utility-maximizer impression, but when kept as pets they have a variety of inventive ways to kill themselves. The fish can act like utility maximizers because evolution stamped it into them, with lots and lots of simplifications to make the program run fast in tiny brains. When those simplifications are valid, the fish acts like the utility maximizer. When they’re broken, the ability to act like a utility maximizer evaporates.
The trouble with this context-dependent approach is that it’s context-dependent. But for animals that aren’t good at learning, that context seems pretty clearly to be the environment they evolved in, since evolution is the causal mechanism for them acting like utility maximizers, and by assumption they won’t have learned any new values.
So judging animals by their behavior, when used on dumb animals in ancestral environments, seems to be a decent way of assigning “wants” to animals.
If a utility maximizer that has its utility function in terms of ‘attention gotten’ sneezes, is it “trying” to make achoo noises?
It seems like the question we’re asking here is “to what extent can we model this animal as if it made choices based on its prediction of future events?” Or a closely related question, “to what extent does it act like a utility maximizer?”
And the answer seems to be “pretty well within a limited domain, not very well at all outside that domain.” Small fish in their natural environment do a remarkable utility-maximizer impression, but when kept as pets they have a variety of inventive ways to kill themselves. The fish can act like utility maximizers because evolution stamped it into them, with lots and lots of simplifications to make the program run fast in tiny brains. When those simplifications are valid, the fish acts like the utility maximizer. When they’re broken, the ability to act like a utility maximizer evaporates.
The trouble with this context-dependent approach is that it’s context-dependent. But for animals that aren’t good at learning, that context seems pretty clearly to be the environment they evolved in, since evolution is the causal mechanism for them acting like utility maximizers, and by assumption they won’t have learned any new values.
So judging animals by their behavior, when used on dumb animals in ancestral environments, seems to be a decent way of assigning “wants” to animals.