I currently guess that even the most advanced shards won’t have private world-models which they can query in relative isolation from the rest of the shard economy.
What’s your take on “parts work” techniques like IDC, IFS, etc. seeming to bring up something like private (or at least not completely shared) world models? Do you consider the kinds of “parts” those access as being distinct from shards?
I would find it plausible to assume by default that shards have something like differing world models since we know from cognitive psychology that e.g. different emotional states tend to activate similar memories (easier to remember negative things about your life when you’re upset than if you are happy), and different emotional states tend to activate different shards.
The proposal is that humans make choices based on subjective value [...] by perceiving a possible option and then retrieving memories which carry information about the value of that option. For instance, when deciding between an apple and a chocolate bar, someone might recall how apples and chocolate bars have tasted in the past, how they felt after eating them, what kinds of associations they have about the healthiness of apples vs. chocolate, any other emotional associations they might have (such as fond memories of their grandmother’s apple pie) and so on.
Shadlen & Shohamy further hypothesize that the reason why the decision process seems to take time is that different pieces of relevant information are found in physically disparate memory networks and neuronal sites. Access from the memory networks to the evidence accumulator neurons is physically bottlenecked by a limited number of “pipes”. Thus, a number of different memory networks need to take turns in accessing the pipe, causing a serial delay in the evidence accumulation process.
Under that view, I think that shards would effectively have separate world models, since each physically separate memory network suggesting that an action is good or bad is effectively its own shard; and since a memory network is a miniature world model, there’s a sense in which shards are nothing but separate world models.
E.g. the memory of “licking the juice tasted sweet” is a miniature world model according to which licking the juice lets you taste something sweet, and is also a shard. (Or at least it forms an important component of a shard.) That miniature world model is separate from the shard/memory network/world model holding instances of times when adults taught the child to say “thank you” when given something; the latter shard only has a world model of situations where you’re expected to say “thank you”, and no world model of the consequences of licking juice.
What’s your take on “parts work” techniques like IDC, IFS, etc. seeming to bring up something like private (or at least not completely shared) world models? Do you consider the kinds of “parts” those access as being distinct from shards?
I would find it plausible to assume by default that shards have something like differing world models since we know from cognitive psychology that e.g. different emotional states tend to activate similar memories (easier to remember negative things about your life when you’re upset than if you are happy), and different emotional states tend to activate different shards.
I suspect that something like the Shadlen & Shohamy take on decision-making might be going on:
Under that view, I think that shards would effectively have separate world models, since each physically separate memory network suggesting that an action is good or bad is effectively its own shard; and since a memory network is a miniature world model, there’s a sense in which shards are nothing but separate world models.
E.g. the memory of “licking the juice tasted sweet” is a miniature world model according to which licking the juice lets you taste something sweet, and is also a shard. (Or at least it forms an important component of a shard.) That miniature world model is separate from the shard/memory network/world model holding instances of times when adults taught the child to say “thank you” when given something; the latter shard only has a world model of situations where you’re expected to say “thank you”, and no world model of the consequences of licking juice.