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Which is more likely to contain bugs? The part of us we call "rational", which seems to be evolutionarily late, or our highly-evolved instincts, which served us

Which is more likely to contain bugs? The part of us we call "rational", which seems to be evolutionarily late, or our highly-evolved instincts, which served us for millions of years?

incompatible 8y ago
Living in a developed city today is a kind of virtual reality. It is different in many ways from the kind of existence that created those instincts.
- laretluval 8y ago
  Yeah, the raw sensory input is pretty different. But how different are the basic incentives?
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    Not just raw sensory inputs are different, the probability distributions behind those inputs are all different. Consider sugars in food. Our taste buds, and instincts behind them, are totally not handling the amount of signals modern processed foods send. What used to be a proxy for quality is now usually a good proxy for lack of it. Consider availability heuristic. In the ancient past, all events you've learned about from someone else were involving your local community. The frequency of those "news" were related to how important those events are to you personally. Today, it's the inverse - the more something is in the news, the more it's utterly irrelevant to you personally. The real dangers don't have novelty factor, so they aren't talked about. The result is people afraid of terrorists - with all the disastrous consequences when that fear is expressed as public policy - instead of car accidents. The result is FOMO. The result is people feeling inadequate because world's top 1% of celebrities is more familiar to them than their neighbours, so they've lost the perception of actual distribution of wealth and beauty in a population.
    - andai 8y ago
      How do I subscribe to a user on HN?
      - TeMPOraL 8y ago
        You don't? But you can review their comments through the "Threads" link in their profile, like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=andai https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=andai. (It probably wouldn't be hard to whip out a script that would periodically fetch this URL and turn it into RSS feed.)
mmirate 8y ago
The former, obviously; but in the modern day, most usage of the latter in preference to the former is, in itself, arguably a bug overall. The modern world is mostly outside the operational parameters of our highly-evolved instincts.
TeMPOraL 8y ago
Of course the latter, as in the past couple hundred years we've transcended biological evolution - with writing, printing, and now instant communication, we've created an environment that's fundamentally different (and changing, ever faster) than what humans have experienced before. In the timescale of recent developments, all those "highly-evolved instincts" are static.

Which is more likely to contain bugs? The part of us we call "rational", which seems to be evolutionarily late, or our highly-evolved instincts, which served us for millions of years?

incompatible 8y ago

Living in a developed city today is a kind of virtual reality. It is different in many ways from the kind of existence that created those instincts.

laretluval 8y ago
Yeah, the raw sensory input is pretty different. But how different are the basic incentives?
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  Not just raw sensory inputs are different, the probability distributions behind those inputs are all different. Consider sugars in food. Our taste buds, and instincts behind them, are totally not handling the amount of signals modern processed foods send. What used to be a proxy for quality is now usually a good proxy for lack of it. Consider availability heuristic. In the ancient past, all events you've learned about from someone else were involving your local community. The frequency of those "news" were related to how important those events are to you personally. Today, it's the inverse - the more something is in the news, the more it's utterly irrelevant to you personally. The real dangers don't have novelty factor, so they aren't talked about. The result is people afraid of terrorists - with all the disastrous consequences when that fear is expressed as public policy - instead of car accidents. The result is FOMO. The result is people feeling inadequate because world's top 1% of celebrities is more familiar to them than their neighbours, so they've lost the perception of actual distribution of wealth and beauty in a population.
  - andai 8y ago
    How do I subscribe to a user on HN?
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      You don't? But you can review their comments through the "Threads" link in their profile, like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=andai https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=andai. (It probably wouldn't be hard to whip out a script that would periodically fetch this URL and turn it into RSS feed.)

mmirate 8y ago

The former, obviously; but in the modern day, most usage of the latter in preference to the former is, in itself, arguably a bug overall. The modern world is mostly outside the operational parameters of our highly-evolved instincts.

TeMPOraL 8y ago

Of course the latter, as in the past couple hundred years we've transcended biological evolution - with writing, printing, and now instant communication, we've created an environment that's fundamentally different (and changing, ever faster) than what humans have experienced before. In the timescale of recent developments, all those "highly-evolved instincts" are static.