Why would your brain assign positive valence to these thoughts? These thoughts about persons specifically, beyond what it learns of what thinking and speaking and acting related to them entail?
I feel like you could ask the same question about any valence-of-a-concept (§2.4). Why would your brain assign positive valence to “democracy”, beyond what it learns of what thinking and speaking and acting related to democracy entails? And my answer is: it’s a learned normative heuristic (§2.4.3). By the same token, if, on many occasions, I find myself having a good time in Tom-Hanks-associated movies, impressing my friends with Tom-Hanks-associated witticisms, etc., so my brain winds up with a more general heuristic that I should be motivated by Tom-Hanks-involving things (with the caveats in §2.4.1.1), and then it applies that normative heuristic to novel situations like “other things equal I want to buy a Tom Hanks action figure” or “other things equal, if I learn that Tom Hanks does X, I should update in the direction of X being a good idea”.
I think there is a risk of self-reinforcing or circularity. Thinking of people is rewarding because thinking of people is warding, so do more of it.
There’s an “inference algorithm” (what the brain should do right now) and there’s a “learning algorithm” (how the brain should self-modify so as to be more effective in the future). I’ve been focusing almost exclusively on the inference algorithm in this series. Your comment here is kinda mixing up the inference algorithm and learning algorithm in a weird-to-me way. Like, if my brain right now is assigning positive valence to thoughts-involving-Tom-Hanks, then I will find such thoughts and ideas motivating right now (inference algorithm), but my brain won’t necessarily update those thoughts and ideas to be even more motivating in the future (learning algorithm). That would depend on the error signal going into the learning algorithm, which is a different thing and outside the scope of this series. Does that help?
I feel like you could ask the same question about any valence-of-a-concept (§2.4). Why would your brain assign positive valence to “democracy”, beyond what it learns of what thinking and speaking and acting related to democracy entails? And my answer is: it’s a learned normative heuristic (§2.4.3). By the same token, if, on many occasions, I find myself having a good time in Tom-Hanks-associated movies, impressing my friends with Tom-Hanks-associated witticisms, etc., so my brain winds up with a more general heuristic that I should be motivated by Tom-Hanks-involving things (with the caveats in §2.4.1.1), and then it applies that normative heuristic to novel situations like “other things equal I want to buy a Tom Hanks action figure” or “other things equal, if I learn that Tom Hanks does X, I should update in the direction of X being a good idea”.
There’s an “inference algorithm” (what the brain should do right now) and there’s a “learning algorithm” (how the brain should self-modify so as to be more effective in the future). I’ve been focusing almost exclusively on the inference algorithm in this series. Your comment here is kinda mixing up the inference algorithm and learning algorithm in a weird-to-me way. Like, if my brain right now is assigning positive valence to thoughts-involving-Tom-Hanks, then I will find such thoughts and ideas motivating right now (inference algorithm), but my brain won’t necessarily update those thoughts and ideas to be even more motivating in the future (learning algorithm). That would depend on the error signal going into the learning algorithm, which is a different thing and outside the scope of this series. Does that help?