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Have Humans Evolved to Be Inaccurate Decision Makers?

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Re: Have Humans Evolved to Be Inaccurate Decision Makers?

#31

Post by __jal »

aswanson wrote: post #24
rhodri wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we're certainly capable of creating the most complex models – what's interesting about this very human tendency is that the models begin to take on a reality of their own, replacing our actual observations. we can see this most clearly in our politicians' insistence on their particular model of the economy as their priority, rather than the actual concerns of the citizens they are responsible to.

Do you think our political biases themselves come from evolutionary survival schemas? e.g. right vs left, etc.

If that were so, "left" and "right" would reflect similar inclinations across polities and evolutionarily-short time periods.

They don't.

Or at least, I'd be highly amused to see someone attempt to square the Trump platform with Burkean thought, and that's a relatively smallish difference, both evolutionarily and intellectually speaking, compared to others.

Re: Have Humans Evolved to Be Inaccurate Decision Makers?

#33

Post by d33 »

Related to this topic: someone (Derbasti) once recommended me [1] "Thinking: Fast and Slow" by economy Nobel-winning Kahneman. This is a book about dozens of ways humans fail to reason properly and a huge part of this book addresses the problem of heuristics we use to estimate risk, probability, costs... absolutely a must-read.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11555148

Re: Have Humans Evolved to Be Inaccurate Decision Makers?

#34

Post by TeMPOraL »

rhodri wrote: post #18
SubiculumCode wrote: post #15

I do not think decision making is a good model for this concept. Culture is. In particular: Traditionalism vs. Progressiveism as cultural influences: the former acts to not overfit current conditions, while the latter tries to fit current conditions. Both influences have been critical for human survival.

good observation. makes me think also about the tendency of computers and the internet to actually slow us down in our work! their general-purpose nature means that our minds take on the additional complexity of context switching as we use our tools for multiple simultaneous tasks, and indeed this generality means that they can be quickly adapted to new contexts. contrast this to specialist tools which, once learned,…

To be honest, it's the fault of current UX trends of making everything so dumb that people can be "proficient" in a program within first few seconds of seeing it for the first time. General-purpose computer is perfectly able to switch between many highly-specialized tools on the fly. It's just that powerful, efficient tools are rarely built nowadays - they've been replaced by pretty looking toys that sell fast.

Re: Have Humans Evolved to Be Inaccurate Decision Makers?

#35

Post by TeMPOraL »

sametmax wrote: post #8
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #3

maybe a hybrid computer / human solution will fare better This is the purpose of technology. To enhance our skills. From fire to machine learning, tools are built to make our lives easier and help us make decisions better. In the end we're better off with more empirical computing in our decision loops. Eventually hopefully we totally replace ourselves with better, more consisitently optimized decision making systems.

While it does make our life easier, machines also brought our down our physical abilities. In modern countries, people are usually not as strong, have less stamina, and their immune system is less potent. We also see a decrease in the ability to focus with people using a lot devices with screens. I'm quite concerned of what AI is doing to our brain skills: pattern recognition, memory, data processing and summary... A…

A lot of those problems are created by technology because it's designed (as in, on purpose) to create them! There are strong commercial interests to keep you glued to various devices with screens on them. If we can somehow overcome that problem, I'm confident that the distraction/productivity loss issue will simply disappear.

Re: Have Humans Evolved to Be Inaccurate Decision Makers?

#36

Post by TeMPOraL »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #25
rhodri wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

technology has no purpose. it is a natural phenomenon that arises without any in-built ethics or direction. technology can manifest as a tool (to amplify human potential) or a machine (to replace human labour). the effect of a technology can be influenced broadly, for example by who owns and promotes a technology (open-source vs proprietary models) and which groups in society it is put to use to benefit.

Yea actually it does, the purpose is whatever the users/builders use it for. So a stick has any purpose that it's user can think for it - starting a fire, hitting an animal to kill it, support for a mud wall etc... Technology arises out of a sense of purpose from it's user. This is pretty common understanding in philosophy of science.

I think what you say is basically equivalent - technology has no inherent purpose in it besides the one we give to it; that purpose itself is a feature of the human user, not the feature of any given technology (i.e. it doesn't "stick" to an object).

Personally, I see technology as the way to extend the power of our (individual and collective) will to make something happen.

Re: Have Humans Evolved to Be Inaccurate Decision Makers?

#37

Post by TeMPOraL »

rhodri wrote: post #17
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #3

maybe a hybrid computer / human solution will fare better This is the purpose of technology. To enhance our skills. From fire to machine learning, tools are built to make our lives easier and help us make decisions better. In the end we're better off with more empirical computing in our decision loops. Eventually hopefully we totally replace ourselves with better, more consisitently optimized decision making systems.

technology has no purpose. it is a natural phenomenon that arises without any in-built ethics or direction. technology can manifest as a tool (to amplify human potential) or a machine (to replace human labour). the effect of a technology can be influenced broadly, for example by who owns and promotes a technology (open-source vs proprietary models) and which groups in society it is put to use to benefit.

> technology can manifest as a tool (to amplify human potential) or a machine (to replace human labour).

I don't see a material distinction in here. A machine is simply a more effective tool - effective enough to do the work mostly by itself. The "replace human labour" part is a consequence of the economic systems we have.

Re: Have Humans Evolved to Be Inaccurate Decision Makers?

#39

Post by rudolf0 »

BurningFrog wrote: post #26
PakG1 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the argument for racial profiling. Not making any argument for or against, just pointing out something interesting. I didn't think about the topic in this context before, as to whether or not it's rational. It's always only been a question of ethics to me. So the natural follow-up question: are various ethics irrational? Again, only a theoretical exercise, not putting my personal views into this.

Well, it's an argument for racial profiling if certain races actually are more dangerous. It's hard to answer your question, since both ethics and rationality are fuzzy, slippery concepts that need to be nailed down firmly to reason meaningfully about. Or, put less pretentiously, I don't know.

>Well, it's an argument for racial profiling if certain races actually are more dangerous.

When you say "more dangerous" do you mean "inherently more dangerous" or "more likely to commit crimes per capita"? Because if it's the latter, then depending on how you define "race" some of these statistics are already known.

Re: Have Humans Evolved to Be Inaccurate Decision Makers?

#40

Post by ThrustVectoring »

robotcookies wrote: post #29

I don't think humans evolve to be inaccurate - I think a better description is that they evolve to not all be the same. If you look at two species, the one that is very uniform is more likely to die out over the long term than the one that has more variation. That variation can be physical, or in the mind and how it makes choices. But this variation makes the species more adaptable when conditions change drastically.…

Evolution does not understand and does not optimize for the survival and flourishing of a species. There are three reasons why members of a species vary - either the variance is the result of a beneficial gene, or it's the result of random changes to irrelevant genes, or the species is partway through fixing a new beneficial mutation through the entire population.

So the more complicated explanation as to why humans vary is that humans have a specific set of adaptations for learning and filling their place in the social environment. This is the entire point of childhood - trying things, seeing what works well, doing more of it, and winding up a person who does the sorts of things that work well for them. This means that if you happen to be gifted with bad eyesight and good verbal processing, you'll get early successes at storytelling that lead you to that sort of role as an adult.

That, in a nutshell, is why humans have such variance. It's the result of childhood, which is a specific algorithm that genes use to find and exploit the things the hosts happen to be better at.

And this built-in ability to vary oneself is helpful both for the strong and the weak, the pretty and the ugly, the clever and the dull, and so forth. It means instead of over-fitting for behaviors that work for the strong, the trait enacts a strategy that does strong-person behavior in strong people and weak-person behavior in weak people.

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