Gunnar_Zarncke | v1.5.0Feb 8th 2022 | (+22/-23) added link to ancestral environment, two typo fixes | ||
Ruby | v1.4.0Oct 1st 2020 | (+249/-18) | ||
brook | v1.3.0Aug 10th 2020 | (+13) | ||
brook | v1.2.0Aug 10th 2020 | (+678) | ||
Multicore | v1.1.0Jul 31st 2020 | (+286/-219) | ||
Grognor | v0.0.9Mar 10th 2012 | (+63/-63) | ||
Grognor | v0.0.8Mar 10th 2012 | (+121/-59) | ||
Zack_M_Davis | v0.0.7Nov 16th 2009 | (-42) byline removal | ||
PeerInfinity | v0.0.6Sep 28th 2009 | |||
Vladimir_Nesov | v0.0.5Sep 25th 2009 |
See also: Evolutionary Psychology, Goodhart'Goodhart's Law, Wireheading
A candy bar is a superstimulus: it contains more concentrated sugar, salt, and fat than anything that exists in the ancestral environment.
A candy bar matches taste buds that evolved in a hunter-gatherer environment, but it matches those taste buds much more strongly than anything that actually existed in the hunter-gatherer environment. The signal that once reliably correlated to healthy food has been hijacked, blotted out with a point in tastespace thatwasn'wasn't in the training dataset - an impossibly distant outlier on the old ancestral graphs.
See also: Evolutionary Psychology, Goodhart's Law, Wireheading
See also: Evolutionary Psychology, Goodhart's Law
A candy bar is a superstimulus: it contains more concentrated sugar, salt, and fat than anything that exists in the ancestral environment. A candy bar matches taste buds that evolved in a hunter-gatherer environment, but it matches those taste buds much more strongly than anything that actually existed in the hunter-gatherer environment. The signal that once reliably correlated to healthy food has been hijacked, blotted out with a point in tastespace that wasn't in the training dataset - an impossibly distant outlier on the old ancestral graphs.
-- Eliezer Yudkowsky, Superstimuli and the Collapse of Western Civilisation
ancestral environment. Superstimuli are modern inventions that satisfy desires better than anything in the ancestral environment could, but are detrimental to survival, reproduction, or other high level goals.
Humans evolved various desires that promoted survival and reproductive success in the ancestral
environment.environment. Superstimuli are modern inventions that satisfy desires better than anything in the ancestral environmentcould,could but are detrimental to survival, reproduction, or otherhighhigh-level goals.