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Our Brain Uses Statistics to Calculate Confidence, Make Decisions

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Re: Our Brain Uses Statistics to Calculate Confidence, Make Decisions

#61

Post by steego »

Normal_gaussian wrote: post #48
steego wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not necessarily convinced statistics is the ultimate language of the brain. Like you, I imagine there are a number of legacy systems in the brain that coordinate in interesting ad-hoc ways. What do you think I should read?

> Like you, I imagine there are a number of legacy systems in the brain that coordinate in interesting ad-hoc ways. I'm sorry if I have missed something obvious, but where does haberman claim such a belief? As far as I can see they are just questioning the application of the scientific method and the strength of conclusions that can be drawn from the results.

You didn't miss anything, I misspoke. I didn't mean to imply he held that that specific belief.

Re: Our Brain Uses Statistics to Calculate Confidence, Make Decisions

#62

Post by dfischer »

coldtea wrote: post #15
dfischer wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should we have an advantage ?

Because we are we, and it makes sense to root for the home team. DUH! Why would you say should you not be killed by advanced robo-zombie AI?

Why would I assume an that AI is robo zombie and wants to kill me?

Re: Our Brain Uses Statistics to Calculate Confidence, Make Decisions

#63

Post by intrasight »

Slime molds also use statistics to calculate confidence, make decisions:

http://phys.org/news/2014-01-slime-molds.html

"Looking toward the future, Adamatzky is designing a hybrid device that combines a slime mold with conventional electronic computers. A year ago he received a $2.1 million GBP by the European Commission to build such a computer. Now with funding from the EU Unconventional Computation program, he is building a slime mold computer named PhyChip (http://www.phychip.eu/)"

Re: Our Brain Uses Statistics to Calculate Confidence, Make Decisions

#64

Post by nitrogen »

Retra wrote: post #40
Maken wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are also applying a biased viewpoint. Your are assuming rational decision making always leads to "correct" decisions. Statistics and rationality merely work by measuring current events against your previous experiences and inferring the most probable outcome of your possible actions. That means that your previous life experiences and how you have interpreted and classified them are key in what your brain…

You'll need to explain what you mean by "correct" if "rational" isn't it. Rational decisions are those that maximize success, and if you've managed to find a rational decision that doesn't, it ceases to be rational given that information.

Most likely definitions from the context: "correct" means producing optimal outcomes, or producing beliefs most closely aligned with objective reality. "Rational" means obtained from available data using a rational process, whether or not the data is good.

So someone with bad priors can come to bad conclusions through entirely "rational" means.

Re: Our Brain Uses Statistics to Calculate Confidence, Make Decisions

#65

Post by mitchtbaum »

jlgray wrote: post #41
haberman wrote: post #12

> It is Kepecs' thesis that statistics - generated by the objective processing of sensory and other data - is the ultimate language of the brain. Every time I read stuff like this, I lose more confidence that the scientific method as currently applied, funded, and published is capable of truly conquering complex systems like the brain or nutrition. I read article after article like this one, where a prominent researc…

To quote wikipedia's article on statistics: Statistics is the study of the collection, analysis, interpretation, presentation, and organization of data. Isn't that more or less what human brains do? A neural network is just a curve fitting algorithm optimized to fit a bunch of data, that is, a statistical method. NNs are, to the best of my knowledge, a fairly good analogy for what the physical computation process of…

"Statistics", like "Science", is only a name which came much later than each field's and approach's discovery, use, and study that its followers want to believe make it up, eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_probability_and_st...

If you want to see which institutions they serve, you can look deeper into etymology and environments where they emerged.

Re: Our Brain Uses Statistics to Calculate Confidence, Make Decisions

#66

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #37
haberman wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your are assuming rational decision making always leads to "correct" decisions. I didn't say anything of the sort. > The reality is that likely they are acting based on very different premises from your own, extracted from their own life experiences and those of their ancestors. That is true. That doesn't imply however that their beliefs draw solid statistical conclusion from those experiences. For example, take ri…

"For example, take rituals like rainmaking that are intended to change the weather. These were performed over many years and generations, and yet (we presume) never brought about any actual statistical improvement over not performing them. Those people would have experienced that (lack of) improvement directly. And yet they continued to believe i" That's a great example given it is long-term, repetitive, and even non…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement_theory

The occasional spectacular random success is far more memorable than a string of failures, because the string of failures simply proves the ritual wasn't done correctly. Or there's some other unknown reason why it didn't work.

It's also known that rewarding a behaviour at random is better at reinforcing it than constant reward - perhaps because the reward stimulus is fresh each time it's re-experienced.

Re: Our Brain Uses Statistics to Calculate Confidence, Make Decisions

#67

Post by nickpsecurity »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #66
nickpsecurity wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"For example, take rituals like rainmaking that are intended to change the weather. These were performed over many years and generations, and yet (we presume) never brought about any actual statistical improvement over not performing them. Those people would have experienced that (lack of) improvement directly. And yet they continued to believe i" That's a great example given it is long-term, repetitive, and even non…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement_theory The occasional spectacular random success is far more memorable than a string of failures, because the string of failures simply proves the ritual wasn't done correctly. Or there's some other unknown reason why it didn't work. It's also known that rewarding a behaviour at random is better at reinforcing it than constant reward - perhaps because the reward stimulus is…

Damn. That's good counterpoints. Forgot about that. I shouldn't given I have to counter it all the time in risk management. Yeah, example might not work.

Re: Our Brain Uses Statistics to Calculate Confidence, Make Decisions

#68

Post by haberman »

notahacker wrote: post #53
haberman wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What shocked me was how many of these kids created internal narratives that they somehow caused the storm, or the storm was manifested as a personal lesson for them. Exactly. I would argue that internal narratives like this are inherently anti-statistical. They attempt to give greater meaning to something than the direct observations support. What experiment would convince you that statistics is not "the ultimate l…

I'm not sure I'm convinced that statistics is the language of the brain, but I am convinced that statistical inference is one of the main reasons why individuals (and later, populations) come to believe in some highly irrational superstitions - the ones where there's no reason to assume causality at all save for correlation of rare events (particularly if we're assuming imperfect use of statistics influenced by our c…

> "This cattle-killing sounds crazy but since she was right about some other low probability events..."

Ok you have a story. I can tell a different story: "My tendency towards religious/supernatural belief that has helped me and my ancestors form moral codes and act tribally has in this case caused me to embrace a belief that will lead to the ruin of me and my people. These religious/supernatural beliefs are inherently anti-statistical and lead to lots of incorrect ideas like witchcraft and rainmaking, but these systems of belief are selected by evolution because they overall increase our chances of survival."

Now we have two stories, two narratives. Why do you believe yours over mine? And how can we objectively decide which story reflects the truth about the human brain?

Re: Our Brain Uses Statistics to Calculate Confidence, Make Decisions

#70

Post by haberman »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #67
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement_theory The occasional spectacular random success is far more memorable than a string of failures, because the string of failures simply proves the ritual wasn't done correctly. Or there's some other unknown reason why it didn't work. It's also known that rewarding a behaviour at random is better at reinforcing it than constant reward - perhaps because the reward stimulus is…

Damn. That's good counterpoints. Forgot about that. I shouldn't given I have to counter it all the time in risk management. Yeah, example might not work.

How are those counterpoints? None of the effects mentioned are rational statistically speaking. If anything they reinforce the example, because they show that some likely thought processes that would support belief in rainmaking are inherently anti-statistical.
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