Canalization in human learning agents
Thinking now what made sense then
April 9, 2022 — September 29, 2023
adaptive
cooperation
evolution
learning
mind
networks
utility
Perhaps one reason we do complicated things naïvely is that we do not notice when circumstances change. Many of our maladaptive feelings might be ones we formed for a different world. Is canalization an important concept for meditation?
Flip side: sometimes we want to canalize, to commit to feeling some way in the face of evidence. Maybe choosing this is how we commit to something that is in a sense arbitrary, but also important to commit to — like a relationship.
What is Love? Neural Annealing in the Presence of an Intentional Object.
1 Incoming
- The Canal Papers - by Scott Alexander about Carhart-Harris et al. (2023)
- Trapped Priors As A Basic Problem Of Rationality. 🚧TODO🚧 clarify NB I think this phenomenon is interesting but I wish he did not use sloppy Bayesian terminology in this case; it sounds like he is talking about an excessively tight prior, but the dynamics of this case diverge in substantive ways from a direct Bayesian update with an excessively tight prior. One would need some more complicated structure to explain the observation, such as a hierarchical model incorporating observation reliability, or an action-observation loop.
- What is Love? Neural Annealing in the Presence of an Intentional Object | Qualia Computing
- Motivated Reasoning As Mis-applied Reinforcement Learning
- Jiminy Cricket Must Die
- DRMacIver’s Notebook: Emotional reactions as legacy code
- DRMacIver’s Notebook: Your emotions are valid but probably wrong
- The Replacing Guilt series
See also the problem of growing up.
2 References
Carhart-Harris, Chandaria, Erritzoe, et al. 2023. “Canalization and Plasticity in Psychopathology.” Neuropharmacology.
Carhart-Harris, and Friston. 2019. “REBUS and the Anarchic Brain: Toward a Unified Model of the Brain Action of Psychedelics.” Pharmacological Reviews.
Clark, Watson, and Friston. 2018. “What Is Mood? A Computational Perspective.” Psychological Medicine.
Nardou, Lewis, Rothhaas, et al. 2019. “Oxytocin-Dependent Reopening of a Social Reward Learning Critical Period with MDMA.” Nature.
Nardou, Sawyer, Song, et al. 2023. “Psychedelics Reopen the Social Reward Learning Critical Period.” Nature.
Petri, Expert, Turkheimer, et al. 2014. “Homological Scaffolds of Brain Functional Networks.” Journal of The Royal Society Interface.