The overfitted brain: Dreams evolved to assist generalization • Hacker News Board

Re: The overfitted brain: Dreams evolved to assist generalization

#81

Post by canjobear » Fri, May 21, 2021, 2:23 PM UTC

t-writescode wrote: post #80

canjobear wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It speaks nothing of ‘fitness’ in any useful sense beyond ‘was successful at mating’. That's the definition of fitness. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_equation

And yet this still speaks nothing to the 'purpose' implied by so many. Even the article says it's a statistical reality and nothing more.

Similarly your brain acts in ways that are correlated with things like dopamine release. If you analyze it at the level of interacting atoms, you won’t see anything like “purpose” or intentionality there.

The idea of intention is something that only emerges after some abstraction. It’s just as much a metaphor when applied to humans as when applied to evolution, and just as valid.

Re: The overfitted brain: Dreams evolved to assist generalization

#82

Post by t-writescode » Fri, May 21, 2021, 6:00 PM UTC

canjobear wrote: post #81

t-writescode wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet this still speaks nothing to the 'purpose' implied by so many. Even the article says it's a statistical reality and nothing more.

Similarly your brain acts in ways that are correlated with things like dopamine release. If you analyze it at the level of interacting atoms, you won’t see anything like “purpose” or intentionality there. The idea of intention is something that only emerges after some abstraction. It’s just as much a metaphor when applied to humans as when applied to evolution, and just as valid.

That's like calling love exclusively a response to a chemical reactions, and I don't think the broad audience believes in that way when using the word 'love'.

Re: The overfitted brain: Dreams evolved to assist generalization

#83

Post by thisismyswamp » Sun, May 23, 2021, 9:13 PM UTC

zuzun wrote: post #11

slfnflctd wrote: post #6

All I know is my dog sometimes yips in his sleep, and it can be fairly loud-- I will forever wonder what he's yipping at, or how that behavior could possibly be selected for. Brains are weird.

I noticed mine seems to have vivid dreams with barking after being woken up at night. Interestingly, the paper claims: > It is notable that approximately 50% to 70% of the time subjects report having a dream upon a sudden waking during sleep.

Waking up and realizing you were dreaming is not the same as waking up and then dreaming