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I have a theory that everything is search. Protein folding? Search for minimal energy. DNA evolution - search for ecological niche fit. Cognition? attention is

I have a theory that everything is search. Protein folding? Search for minimal energy. DNA evolution - search for ecological niche fit. Cognition? attention is search, memory is search, imagination is also search, problem solving - of course is search. Scientific progress? It is (re)search. Optimizing an AI model? Search for optimal parameters to fit the data. Reinforcement learning? Search for optimal behavior to maximize rewards. Even speaking is search - we output words in sequence, searching the next word like LLMs. Now I can add comedy to the list. <rant>Search is a nice concept, it defines everything clearly - search space, goal space, action space. Compare it with fuzzy concepts like understanding, intelligence and consciousness. We can never define them, precisely because they gloss over their input-output domains and try to present a distributed process as centralized in the brain. Search has a bunch of properties - it is compositional, hierarchical, recurrent (iterative in time) and recursive. This pattern holds across many fields, I think it is based on the fundamental properties of space-time which are also compositional, hierarchical and recurrent (object state at time t+1 depends on its state at time t) Search can be personal, inter-personal, physical or information based. It can explain away much of the mystery of the three fuzzy concepts I mentioned. I describe cognition as two search loops - search externally by applying known behavior to collect experience, and search internally to compress experience and update behavior.</>

CooCooCaCha 2y ago
Lately I’ve come to think of science as a large-scale search algorithm so I think there’s truth to what you’re saying and it’s interesting to think about.
nxobject 2y ago
I think another way to put that really good idea is simply to say that humans are innately wired to explore and discover!
- duderific 2y ago
  Not surprising I guess, since our survival literally depended on that capability for tens of thousands of years (and still does, to a lesser extent)
smokedetector1 2y ago
How does this explain away the mystery of consciousness?
- patcon 2y ago
  One take: Chasing the Rainbow: The Non-conscious Nature of Being (2017) https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01924/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.0192... You might get a kick out of this paper (though some may find it's proposal a bit bleak, I think there's a way to integrate it without losing any of the sense of wonder of the experience of being alive :) ) It analogizes conscious experience to the a rainbow "which accompanies physical processes in the atmosphere but exerts no influence over them". > Though it is an end-product created by non-conscious executive systems, the personal narrative serves the powerful evolutionary function of enabling individuals to communicate (externally broadcast) the contents of internal broadcasting. This in turn allows recipients to generate potentially adaptive strategies, such as predicting the behavior of others and underlies the development of social and cultural structures, that promote species survival. Consequently, it is the capacity to communicate to others the contents of the personal narrative that confers an evolutionary advantage—not the experience of consciousness (personal awareness) itself.
  - smokedetector1 2y ago
    I find these types of arguments very odd, though at one point in my life I would certainly have endorsed them. What is it about the modern scientific mindset that makes people say "actually, the ubiquitous experience of being alive, having thoughts, feelings, and making choices, is actually 100% an illusion." Don't get me wrong, obviously there is interaction between evolutionary functions, the brain, etc - I mean, there's anesthesia, there's being drunk, horny, fight or flight.. there's all sorts of ways that it's obvious there's a link. But why do so many theorists want to go from "there's a link" to "this is 100% an illusion?" I just don't get it. Is it that uncomfortable to have something that is outside the reach of physical systems theorizing, or something that is unexplainable (i.e., the link) that we'd rather fit reality into the theory than the other way around? We have to have the courage to live with something that is inexplicable, at least for now (and, honestly, maybe forever), rather than lose faith in our own existence.
patcon 2y ago
Strong agree. I'm on a similar path as you, travelling through related thoughts I think this hypothesis goes a long way to explaining why the math of transformers (doing mathematical operations on language) create something that rhymes so much with intelligent thought. Though I should clarify that LLMs do not share the same processes or verbs of our intelligence, only the snapshot moment-in-time of a mind-like object ;)
smilliken 2y ago
You're spot on that all problems can be interpreted as a search problem. Similarly, all problems can be interpreted as a compression problem. Or parsing, boolean satisfiability, or halting, etc. It's helpful to keep them all in mind because sometimes a different problem domain has a tool that your preferred one doesn't, or just the mindset shift can be useful to unblock.
ma9o 2y ago
I think a more specific denominator you might wanna look into is free energy minimization as you mention in your first example. I really liked reading Active Inference and What Is Life? on the subject.

CooCooCaCha 2y ago

Lately I’ve come to think of science as a large-scale search algorithm so I think there’s truth to what you’re saying and it’s interesting to think about.

nxobject 2y ago

I think another way to put that really good idea is simply to say that humans are innately wired to explore and discover!

duderific 2y ago
Not surprising I guess, since our survival literally depended on that capability for tens of thousands of years (and still does, to a lesser extent)

smokedetector1 2y ago

How does this explain away the mystery of consciousness?

patcon 2y ago
One take: Chasing the Rainbow: The Non-conscious Nature of Being (2017) https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01924/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.0192... You might get a kick out of this paper (though some may find it's proposal a bit bleak, I think there's a way to integrate it without losing any of the sense of wonder of the experience of being alive :) ) It analogizes conscious experience to the a rainbow "which accompanies physical processes in the atmosphere but exerts no influence over them". > Though it is an end-product created by non-conscious executive systems, the personal narrative serves the powerful evolutionary function of enabling individuals to communicate (externally broadcast) the contents of internal broadcasting. This in turn allows recipients to generate potentially adaptive strategies, such as predicting the behavior of others and underlies the development of social and cultural structures, that promote species survival. Consequently, it is the capacity to communicate to others the contents of the personal narrative that confers an evolutionary advantage—not the experience of consciousness (personal awareness) itself.
- smokedetector1 2y ago
  I find these types of arguments very odd, though at one point in my life I would certainly have endorsed them. What is it about the modern scientific mindset that makes people say "actually, the ubiquitous experience of being alive, having thoughts, feelings, and making choices, is actually 100% an illusion." Don't get me wrong, obviously there is interaction between evolutionary functions, the brain, etc - I mean, there's anesthesia, there's being drunk, horny, fight or flight.. there's all sorts of ways that it's obvious there's a link. But why do so many theorists want to go from "there's a link" to "this is 100% an illusion?" I just don't get it. Is it that uncomfortable to have something that is outside the reach of physical systems theorizing, or something that is unexplainable (i.e., the link) that we'd rather fit reality into the theory than the other way around? We have to have the courage to live with something that is inexplicable, at least for now (and, honestly, maybe forever), rather than lose faith in our own existence.

patcon 2y ago

Strong agree. I'm on a similar path as you, travelling through related thoughts I think this hypothesis goes a long way to explaining why the math of transformers (doing mathematical operations on language) create something that rhymes so much with intelligent thought. Though I should clarify that LLMs do not share the same processes or verbs of our intelligence, only the snapshot moment-in-time of a mind-like object ;)

smilliken 2y ago

You're spot on that all problems can be interpreted as a search problem. Similarly, all problems can be interpreted as a compression problem. Or parsing, boolean satisfiability, or halting, etc. It's helpful to keep them all in mind because sometimes a different problem domain has a tool that your preferred one doesn't, or just the mindset shift can be useful to unblock.

ma9o 2y ago

I think a more specific denominator you might wanna look into is free energy minimization as you mention in your first example. I really liked reading Active Inference and What Is Life? on the subject.