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Max Learning FI

Notes | Tutorial 44

Date: 2020-09-28

SSOL

  • WR down to 1:53 (by me)
    • Discovered some speed tech – up to 4s save in first 30s
  • Tied by AC a few hours later
  • Also I’m a mod on speedrun.com now

Debate Stuff?

Genes - Mind

Genes (or other biology) don’t have any direct influence over our intelligence or personality. We have free will. What kind of person someone grows up to be depends on the ideas they’re exposed to and accept, and their own choices. Genes play fairly non-controlling indirect roles, e.g. if you’re tall more people will encourage you to play basketball. All people are born with essentially equal intellectual capacity. Dumb people are people with bad ideas about how to think.

Genes (or other biology) don’t have any direct influence over our intelligence or personality.

I’m not sure about this. I don’t think humans being universal understanders/explainers means genes don’t have a direct influence over our mind/personality (esp. starting conditions). It seems reasonable that physical effects on the brain can have an effect on our mind/thinking (e.g. brain tumors, head trauma), and genes affect things in ways we don’t fully understand, so there’s room for them to have a direct effect.

#18153 What sort of effect or influence do you have in mind, via what causal mechanisms?

I’m not sure about this possibility, but it’s a thing I’ve heard or seems to be a somewhat common idea:

  • temperament: Say someone has a gene that means they produce lots of some hormone. That hormone makes them angry more often / more easily.

Does this sort of thing count as a direct influence over our personality? I can see a person like this ‘learning to control’ themselves or something, but I’m not sure exactly what you mean by directly influencing personality.

More broadly, I see room for unknown causal mechanisms, esp. relating to things that make sense to have evolutionary roles, like social stuff. I could see some genes play a role in how readily someone accepts static memes based around certain social signals (e.g. ingroup-outgroup stuff).

For example, genes could make it so we’re better at integer math than floating point math. I don’t think this would cause someone to be more inclined to solipsism than an alien that excels at floating point math. And there could be variance among humans, but I don’t think that would cause some people to be atheists.

I agree that there are ways it could affect our brains like an instruction set affects CPU performance, and that this sort of effect isn’t substantial.

(curi’s reply)

  • temperament: Say someone has a gene that means they produce lots of some hormone. That hormone makes them angry more often / more easily.

Hormones are low level. Behaviors and emotions are high level. It’s kinda like suggesting that heating a room with a CPU in it might result in video game bosses attacking more aggressively. Low level changes do not cause high level changes that have the appearance of complex design unless there’s a specific causal mechanism set up to enable this (e.g. sleep or volume button on a computer).

Does this sort of thing count as a direct influence over our personality?

You could get annoyed more when hot or cold. Does that mean heat and cold influence personality? I think how one responds to heat, cold or hormones is part of what one’s personality is. But they aren’t controlling your reactions. The reactions are your choice based on your ideas.

Low level changes do not cause high level changes that have the appearance of complex design unless there’s a specific causal mechanism set up to enable this

A: Don’t we have a (rudimentary) explanation for hormones affecting thoughts, though? I know–personally–I think different things when in different moods (at least I think that’s the case).

I think how one responds to heat, cold or hormones is part of what one’s personality is. But they aren’t controlling your reactions. The reactions are your choice based on your ideas.

B: It feels like you’re implying reactions are core to understanding personality, like the only way we can inspect personality is via its effect on our reactions.

I googled ‘personality’ and found a sensible-feeling definition about patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. Those are all based on ideas, so by that definition personality is just a collection of ideas.

I’m not sure if part A and B contradict each other.

Don’t we have a (rudimentary) explanation for hormones affecting thoughts, though? I know–personally–I think different things when in different moods (at least I think that’s the case).

Are you linking hormones to moods? You bring up something about hormones affecting thoughts but then the next sentence doesn’t mention hormones.

It feels like you’re implying reactions are core to understanding personality, like the only way we can inspect personality is via its effect on our reactions.

I don’t think that and I don’t see how my text implied it.

so by that definition personality is just a collection of ideas.

I agree with that.

Are you linking hormones to moods? You bring up something about hormones affecting thoughts but then the next sentence doesn’t mention hormones.

Yes. I think most ppl presume a super tight relationship between them. That doesn’t seem right–thinking about it now.

Some effect might be there, but that’s like a transition between levels of emergence, and probably means I don’t have a point here.

Going to drop this angle for the moment.

It feels like you’re implying reactions are core to understanding personality, like the only way we can inspect personality is via its effect on our reactions. I don’t think that and I don’t see how my text implied it.

Given you agreed with “personality is just a collection of ideas” I’m not sure this is important to discuss unless you think so. I can explain why I thought the implication was there if you want.

concluding comment: I think I agree with you that hormones don’t influence personality/thoughts in a substantial way (I think you agree with that at least).

I think at this point it’s up to me to come up with some other causal mechanism? Or the only other node on my conversation tree I have to look into atm is mine about unknown causal mechanism.

Do you think your made an error? If so how’d that happen?

Yes, will do a post mortem in a different post.

Yes I’m curious.

Cool, will also put this in a diff post because it feels off-topic.

That’s an option. Another is …

I want to take a bit to think about where to go from here. I didn’t really consider how many possibilities there were. Some of those options I might be able to follow myself (like a thought experiment) to see where they lead.

TODO

  • discussion with someone else and make a tree
  • read
  • reflect on convo
  • continue convo

note to self: keep in mind the ask-one,answer-one idea for doing a discussion.

et 69min: ET responds to smaller thing - ppl think is picky/pedantic

  • can’t say “I have lots of diff knowledge to you”, seen as condescending / w/e
  • 76min - ppl dishonest about thinking, not about painting

max: “

other

Human minds aren’t a collection of modules or compartments

I think it’s fair to say that the core of a mind isn’t modular.

Example via universality of computation: a turing machine is able to be structurally broken down (like on/off registers or the tape and feeder mechanism), but you can’t break down a turing machine itself and have something meaningfully related to computation (or at least not anything like a full turing machine).

I think human minds could be different, though – like the way my computer is a

There are no conflicts of interest between rational men.

Bitcoin is a worthless investment (fraud)

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