Are you familiar with the control theory paradigm of psychology? It’s mostly from Behavior: The Control of Perception, and I talk about it here. To explain it shortly with a bunch of jargon, he sees humans as hierarchical negative feedback control systems, where each layer perceives the layers below it and acts by setting their reference levels, in order to minimize the error with respect to its reference level, set by a higher level.
There’s obviously a lowest level—the individual nerves that control muscle fibers or glands or so on—and there’s also, given the finite number of neurons in the brain, an upper level, where the reference level is set by something other than a neuron.
I bring this up because it’s what happens when an engineer looks at the behaviorist paradigm, says “well that’s obviously wrong,” and proposes something better. (As far as I can tell, it’s the best current theory of psychology to explain human brains and motivation, while also explaining simpler animals, but it’s not quite complete.)
I also bring it up because it has the inner complexity necessary to tackle the increasing complexity of problems without exponentially increasing complexity, and so could realistically be the model on which robots are built, and still falls prey to the problems of self-modification and hijackable rewards that you seem to think high-capacity systems will have avoided by definition.
You say “As far as I can tell, it’s the best current theory of psychology to explain humans and human motivation, while also explaining simpler animals, but it’s not quite complete.”
Speaking as a cognitive psychologist, I can say that Powers’ work is almost universally ignored as a relic of the behaviorist era. It is not the “best current theory of psychology to explain humans and human motivation”. Quite the opposite, it has no credibility at all.
Speaking as a cognitive psychologist, I can say that Powers’ work is almost universally ignored as a relic of the behaviorist era. It is not the “best current theory of psychology to explain humans and human motivation”. Quite the opposite, it has no credibility at all.
But, what if there was no currently accepted theory of motivation, other than (a) a few hints and suggestions scattered across cog psych, and (b) an old theory that is little more than a speculative extrapolation from experiments on rats?
That, sadly, is the current situation. But just because it is so poor does not mean that Powers’ theory is the best.
Also, did you really mean to say “best current theory of psychology to explain humans....” I stop your quote there, specifically. Best to explain “humans”? Probably that was just an infelicity in the wording.
Anyhow, the situation in cog psych is that without a clear way to do measurements of motivation, all we have is descriptive stuff from social psychology. That does not add up to a mechanism.
That, sadly, is the current situation. But just because it is so poor does not mean that Powers’ theory is the best.
This looks to me like an uninteresting argument about what the word “best” means. It looks like we both agree that there’s not a superior positive alternative, although it’s fine if you think it’s better to choose the negative alternative of no current theory.
Probably that was just an infelicity in the wording.
No, we really don’t agree. The existing body of cognitive psychology knowledge contains, implicit in it, an outline theory of how motivation works. That theory (be it ever so implicit) is already a whole world better than Powers’ theory, because the latter is so totally arbitrary and inconsistent with the cognitive pscyhology body of knowledge.
(You will ask why: because the latter does not rely on simple control parameters that act like homunculi. But this is a subtle point. Too complex to handle in this context).
Are you familiar with the control theory paradigm of psychology? It’s mostly from Behavior: The Control of Perception, and I talk about it here. To explain it shortly with a bunch of jargon, he sees humans as hierarchical negative feedback control systems, where each layer perceives the layers below it and acts by setting their reference levels, in order to minimize the error with respect to its reference level, set by a higher level.
There’s obviously a lowest level—the individual nerves that control muscle fibers or glands or so on—and there’s also, given the finite number of neurons in the brain, an upper level, where the reference level is set by something other than a neuron.
I bring this up because it’s what happens when an engineer looks at the behaviorist paradigm, says “well that’s obviously wrong,” and proposes something better. (As far as I can tell, it’s the best current theory of psychology to explain human brains and motivation, while also explaining simpler animals, but it’s not quite complete.)
I also bring it up because it has the inner complexity necessary to tackle the increasing complexity of problems without exponentially increasing complexity, and so could realistically be the model on which robots are built, and still falls prey to the problems of self-modification and hijackable rewards that you seem to think high-capacity systems will have avoided by definition.
You say “As far as I can tell, it’s the best current theory of psychology to explain humans and human motivation, while also explaining simpler animals, but it’s not quite complete.”
Speaking as a cognitive psychologist, I can say that Powers’ work is almost universally ignored as a relic of the behaviorist era. It is not the “best current theory of psychology to explain humans and human motivation”. Quite the opposite, it has no credibility at all.
This is your cue to point me to another resource.
But, what if there was no currently accepted theory of motivation, other than (a) a few hints and suggestions scattered across cog psych, and (b) an old theory that is little more than a speculative extrapolation from experiments on rats?
That, sadly, is the current situation. But just because it is so poor does not mean that Powers’ theory is the best.
Also, did you really mean to say “best current theory of psychology to explain humans....” I stop your quote there, specifically. Best to explain “humans”? Probably that was just an infelicity in the wording.
Anyhow, the situation in cog psych is that without a clear way to do measurements of motivation, all we have is descriptive stuff from social psychology. That does not add up to a mechanism.
This looks to me like an uninteresting argument about what the word “best” means. It looks like we both agree that there’s not a superior positive alternative, although it’s fine if you think it’s better to choose the negative alternative of no current theory.
Edited.
No, we really don’t agree. The existing body of cognitive psychology knowledge contains, implicit in it, an outline theory of how motivation works. That theory (be it ever so implicit) is already a whole world better than Powers’ theory, because the latter is so totally arbitrary and inconsistent with the cognitive pscyhology body of knowledge.
(You will ask why: because the latter does not rely on simple control parameters that act like homunculi. But this is a subtle point. Too complex to handle in this context).