We all know what it’s like to make choices from a first-person perspective, but to recognize unconventional intelligences in unconventional embodiments, we need a third-person theory of choice.
What do you think of the preference reversal phenomenon in economics? I take it that you don’t see it as accurate to think of us as having static, predefined preferences that we simply draw upon when making a decision. But then, what’s the alternative? I’m still trying to grasp what you mean here.
Is the basic idea from embodied cognition that we come to know what we want based on our interactions with the environment? That is, we only form a "preference" as we move to complete a goal and, in the process, discover what our preference is? So, instead of having a stored, static preference, our preferences emerge dynamically as we engage with a particular context or task?
I'll have to write more about this, and am still putting the picture together myself, and it would be nice to actually have specific evidence produced in a lab by a real scientist. But basically, it's something like this:
There's lots of prediction signals being constantly created and transmitted inside of you throughout your body by your cells. Each prediction signal says something about what the cell is going to do. Mostly, the plans of the cells conflict with each other, so the signals have to interact with each other to work out an equilibrium. When they do so, they create higher level group predictions that say something about what all the cells together are going to do. They don't try to create group predictions, it's just an inevitable outcome of constructing an equilibrium. Your preferences are parameters of the group level model. And yes, they're constructed dynamically by the task, as per Esther Thelen stuff. (Check out principle 4: https://interestingessays.substack.com/p/ten-principles-of-the-thelen-barrett)
As for why this results in preference reversal, I don't know, but the answer might be something like "Because the preferences are constructed by the task, and the construction process is far from perfect (maybe because cells are stupid lol), you get inconsistent constructions across instances sometimes".
Do you think cells are the right unit of analysis to think about an organism? Is there something unique about them? Tentatively, I'm thinking that the cell is the relevant unit of analysis for an organism, whilst a person is for the economy. So there is something unique about cells and persons. Are there other relevant units out there? Atoms? Electrons? Or are there lots and lots such that a cell or an organism are arbitrary conceptions.
There probably isn't a single right unit but different kinds of units interacting with each other. The economy doesn't just have people, it also has businesses as a distinct type of agent. There are governments and things as well. The body, similarly, doesn't just have cells, it also has groups of cells like muscles, tissue, bone, etc. These are also relevant units for the same reason that it's useful to distinguish businesses from the people who work in them.
Ultimately, I think it's economics all the way down, so to speak—so a cell is an economy of molecules, molecules are economies of atoms, etc. I don't know enough to say anything specific about that, but if you wanted a really, really detailed model, it would have lots of different kinds of economic actors from atoms to multinational businesses contributing to the overall economy with their self-interested behavior.
What do you think of the preference reversal phenomenon in economics? I take it that you don’t see it as accurate to think of us as having static, predefined preferences that we simply draw upon when making a decision. But then, what’s the alternative? I’m still trying to grasp what you mean here.
Is the basic idea from embodied cognition that we come to know what we want based on our interactions with the environment? That is, we only form a "preference" as we move to complete a goal and, in the process, discover what our preference is? So, instead of having a stored, static preference, our preferences emerge dynamically as we engage with a particular context or task?
I'll have to write more about this, and am still putting the picture together myself, and it would be nice to actually have specific evidence produced in a lab by a real scientist. But basically, it's something like this:
There's lots of prediction signals being constantly created and transmitted inside of you throughout your body by your cells. Each prediction signal says something about what the cell is going to do. Mostly, the plans of the cells conflict with each other, so the signals have to interact with each other to work out an equilibrium. When they do so, they create higher level group predictions that say something about what all the cells together are going to do. They don't try to create group predictions, it's just an inevitable outcome of constructing an equilibrium. Your preferences are parameters of the group level model. And yes, they're constructed dynamically by the task, as per Esther Thelen stuff. (Check out principle 4: https://interestingessays.substack.com/p/ten-principles-of-the-thelen-barrett)
As for why this results in preference reversal, I don't know, but the answer might be something like "Because the preferences are constructed by the task, and the construction process is far from perfect (maybe because cells are stupid lol), you get inconsistent constructions across instances sometimes".
Do you think cells are the right unit of analysis to think about an organism? Is there something unique about them? Tentatively, I'm thinking that the cell is the relevant unit of analysis for an organism, whilst a person is for the economy. So there is something unique about cells and persons. Are there other relevant units out there? Atoms? Electrons? Or are there lots and lots such that a cell or an organism are arbitrary conceptions.
There probably isn't a single right unit but different kinds of units interacting with each other. The economy doesn't just have people, it also has businesses as a distinct type of agent. There are governments and things as well. The body, similarly, doesn't just have cells, it also has groups of cells like muscles, tissue, bone, etc. These are also relevant units for the same reason that it's useful to distinguish businesses from the people who work in them.
Ultimately, I think it's economics all the way down, so to speak—so a cell is an economy of molecules, molecules are economies of atoms, etc. I don't know enough to say anything specific about that, but if you wanted a really, really detailed model, it would have lots of different kinds of economic actors from atoms to multinational businesses contributing to the overall economy with their self-interested behavior.