One other interesting quirk of your model of green is that it appears most of the central (and natural) examples of green for humans involve the utility function box adapting to these stimulating experiences so that their utility function is positively correlated with the way latent variables change over the course of one of an experience. In other words, the utility function gets “attuned” to the result of that experience.
For instance, taking the Zadie Smith example from the essay, her experience of greenness involved starting to appreciate the effect that Mitchell’s music had on her, as opposed to starting to dislike it. Environmentalist greenness, in the same vein, might arise from humans’ utility boxes attuning to the current processes of life, leading to a wish for it to continue.
Notably, I can’t really think of any examples where green alone goes against one of these processes in humans, with most examples of people being “attuned” against an experience being caused by it simply conflicting with a separate, already-existing goal. While disgust does technically conflict with what changes during the process of becoming physically sick, I can’t think of any reason that might occur other than how it prevents a human from achieving goals (black, or perhaps red). Desires for immortality, while conflicting with the process of death, seem to mostly extend from a red desire to have things continue to live (which would, by this model, was a desire that stemmed itself from green). If I attempt to think of some experience that would be completely uncorrelated with a human’s prior preferences (e.g. an infant looking at a flowing river for the first time from a distance), it doesn’t seem natural to imagine the human suddenly disliking that in any particular circumstance (the infant wouldn’t start despising flowing rivers), but I could still see a small chance of it beginning to appreciate it (as long as I’m not missing some obvious counterexample).
This natural positive correlation (or “attunement”, “appreciation”, or for especially spicy takes, “alignment”), if I had to guess, could be explained from either humans simply gaining reward from expanding their world models (maybe this just simplifies to “humans naturally like learning”, but that feels a little anti-climactically blue). It is also possible that attunement as opposed to indifference is only created just by some minor positive association generated from deeper levels in the brain, although that would imply that green could just be a consequence of red for a human’s utility function box.
For example, if you didn’t know that walking near a wasp nest is a bad idea, and then you do so, then I guess you could say “some part of the world comes forward … strangely new, and shining with meaning”, because from now on into the future, whenever you see a wasp nest, it will pop out with a new salient meaning “Gah those things suck”.
You wouldn’t use the word “attunement” for that obviously. “Attunement” is one of those words that can only refer to good things by definition, just as the word “contamination” can only refer to bad things by definition (detailed discussion here).
One other interesting quirk of your model of green is that it appears most of the central (and natural) examples of green for humans involve the utility function box adapting to these stimulating experiences so that their utility function is positively correlated with the way latent variables change over the course of one of an experience. In other words, the utility function gets “attuned” to the result of that experience.
For instance, taking the Zadie Smith example from the essay, her experience of greenness involved starting to appreciate the effect that Mitchell’s music had on her, as opposed to starting to dislike it. Environmentalist greenness, in the same vein, might arise from humans’ utility boxes attuning to the current processes of life, leading to a wish for it to continue.
Notably, I can’t really think of any examples where green alone goes against one of these processes in humans, with most examples of people being “attuned” against an experience being caused by it simply conflicting with a separate, already-existing goal. While disgust does technically conflict with what changes during the process of becoming physically sick, I can’t think of any reason that might occur other than how it prevents a human from achieving goals (black, or perhaps red). Desires for immortality, while conflicting with the process of death, seem to mostly extend from a red desire to have things continue to live (which would, by this model, was a desire that stemmed itself from green). If I attempt to think of some experience that would be completely uncorrelated with a human’s prior preferences (e.g. an infant looking at a flowing river for the first time from a distance), it doesn’t seem natural to imagine the human suddenly disliking that in any particular circumstance (the infant wouldn’t start despising flowing rivers), but I could still see a small chance of it beginning to appreciate it (as long as I’m not missing some obvious counterexample).
This natural positive correlation (or “attunement”, “appreciation”, or for especially spicy takes, “alignment”), if I had to guess, could be explained from either humans simply gaining reward from expanding their world models (maybe this just simplifies to “humans naturally like learning”, but that feels a little anti-climactically blue). It is also possible that attunement as opposed to indifference is only created just by some minor positive association generated from deeper levels in the brain, although that would imply that green could just be a consequence of red for a human’s utility function box.
For example, if you didn’t know that walking near a wasp nest is a bad idea, and then you do so, then I guess you could say “some part of the world comes forward … strangely new, and shining with meaning”, because from now on into the future, whenever you see a wasp nest, it will pop out with a new salient meaning “Gah those things suck”.
You wouldn’t use the word “attunement” for that obviously. “Attunement” is one of those words that can only refer to good things by definition, just as the word “contamination” can only refer to bad things by definition (detailed discussion here).