Good point Somehow I’ve always been attracted to taking the road less taken. Maybe there is a group level reason for that, it would be nice if it turns out my actions are not entirely egoistic. I don’t make much of a distinction between processes inside humans and processes between humans. For me, pjeby’s akrasia theory about conflicting motor programs can be explained in a similar way as you are doing now for scientific progress that uses differences between scientific theories as a way to generate enough diversity for an optimization process to work with. In that light I am a bit skeptical about the negative attitude about akrasia I often find here (even the term itself seems a bit hostile). In fact, observing different motor programs or scientific theories battling it out amongst themselves can be a way to gain knowledge, it should not be something to be fought. Even if the desired outcome is one of coherent action, it matters a lot which action, and we need to keep that pool of optional actions alive as much as we need to effectively handle a current situation. Maybe it would be possible to find a balance between exploration and solidification (does anyone know a better term?) with a mathematical or theoretical basis. It could be akin to the heuristics used in programming genetic algorithms.
Good point Somehow I’ve always been attracted to taking the road less taken. Maybe there is a group level reason for that, it would be nice if it turns out my actions are not entirely egoistic. I don’t make much of a distinction between processes inside humans and processes between humans. For me, pjeby’s akrasia theory about conflicting motor programs can be explained in a similar way as you are doing now for scientific progress that uses differences between scientific theories as a way to generate enough diversity for an optimization process to work with. In that light I am a bit skeptical about the negative attitude about akrasia I often find here (even the term itself seems a bit hostile). In fact, observing different motor programs or scientific theories battling it out amongst themselves can be a way to gain knowledge, it should not be something to be fought. Even if the desired outcome is one of coherent action, it matters a lot which action, and we need to keep that pool of optional actions alive as much as we need to effectively handle a current situation. Maybe it would be possible to find a balance between exploration and solidification (does anyone know a better term?) with a mathematical or theoretical basis. It could be akin to the heuristics used in programming genetic algorithms.