The pigeons engage the problem with reinforcement learning
How do you know? When a scientist rewards pigeons for learning, the fact that the pigeons learn doesn’t prove anything about how the pigeons are doing it.
Of course they are a black box and could in theory use a different method. On the other hand their choices are comparable with the ones that an RL algorithm would make while the ones of the humans are father apart.
I agree with Richard Loosemore’s interpretation (but I am not familiar with the neuroscience he is referring to):
First, virtually any circuit can be made to look like it has RL in it, if there is just a bit of feedback and some adaptation—so in that sense finding evidence for RL in some circuit is like saying “we found a bit of feedback and some adaptation”, which is a trivial result.
The main point that I wanted to make wasn’t about Pigeon intelligence but that the heuristics humans use differ from RL results and that in cases like this the Pigeons produce results that are similar to RL and therefore it’s not a problem of cognitive resources.
The difference tells us something worthwhile about human reasoning.
How do you know? When a scientist rewards pigeons for learning, the fact that the pigeons learn doesn’t prove anything about how the pigeons are doing it.
Of course they are a black box and could in theory use a different method. On the other hand their choices are comparable with the ones that an RL algorithm would make while the ones of the humans are father apart.
I agree with Richard Loosemore’s interpretation (but I am not familiar with the neuroscience he is referring to):
The main point that I wanted to make wasn’t about Pigeon intelligence but that the heuristics humans use differ from RL results and that in cases like this the Pigeons produce results that are similar to RL and therefore it’s not a problem of cognitive resources.
The difference tells us something worthwhile about human reasoning.