
Have Humans Evolved to Be Inaccurate Decision Makers? - DrDub
http://duboue.net/blog22.html
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cs702
_"...in an environment punctuated by slow, progressive changes followed by
cataclistic changes in the opposite direction, individuals that track the
enviromment better will overfit (and die). More inaccurate individuals will be
the ones surviving long term."_

Reading this made me think of the numerous financial firms in history that
become very efficient at making money in a particular type of market
environment, which inevitably changes suddenly in unexpected ways, causing
those financial firms to blow up and maybe even start a financial crisis:

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stock_market_crashes_a...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stock_market_crashes_and_bear_markets)

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banking_crises](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banking_crises)

Society might be better off with financial firms that are "dumber!"

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pjmorris
'When Genius Failed' is a terrific book about the ironically-named efficiency-
focused 'Long Term Capital Management' hedge fund which was bailed out in the
1998 crisis.

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robotcookies
I don't think humans evolve to be inaccurate - I think a better description is
that they evolve to not all be the same. If you look at two species, the one
that is very uniform is more likely to die out over the long term than the one
that has more variation. That variation can be physical, or in the mind and
how it makes choices. But this variation makes the species more adaptable when
conditions change drastically.

If you look at the long term, in the world that the article describes (slow,
gradual with rare cataclysmic changes), most wrong decision makers will still
die at a higher chance than correct decision makers. It's just in those rare
situations that they survive.

~~~
bduerst
That's a stretch, because it implies intent for diversity. Mass extinction
through a lack of robustness is definitely something that natural selection
selects for, but the inverse is true where too much genetic variability leads
to less reproduction, and a drift towards uniformity over generations.

The bigger assumption in this article is in what natural selection selects for
with humans. For sole individuals in any species, you typically need only to
live long enough to reproduce viable offspring. With humans, we've evolved
intelligence that has lead to a tribal culture.

That means that natural selection doesn't apply to the individual, but the
majority of the species. The best individual of the entire human species is
enough to hold natural selection back for everyone else (i.e. vaccines,
engineering feats, etc.). That doesn't mean we've evolved to making bad
decisions, it just means that the collective knowledge of our species is now
being subjected to natural selection instead.

~~~
robotcookies
"but the inverse is true where too much genetic variability leads to less
reproduction"

Two ant colonies A and B. Sugar is abundant in the area and all ants in colony
B prefer sugar. 95% of the ants in colony A prefer sugar while 5% prefer
peanut butter. The ants that like peanut butter have a higher risk of getting
killed because peanut butter is scarce and they must travel further. They also
use more energy in getting food. One day a truck drops sugar near the colonies
that is poisoned. Colony B is wiped out. Colony A survives on because of the
5% of ants that prefer peanut butter. The queen may die but the surviving ants
reproduce.

We all know someone who hates a particular food that most people love. We all
know someone who loves a food we think is disgusting. Why don't we all like
the same healthiest foods?

I'm not an expert on genes but it's possible that in one species, taste or
some other variable is determined by 1 or 2 genes. In another species it may
be determined by 8 or 9 genes. This complexity in taste determination may
cause more variation in how it manifests. Maybe that complexity causes odd
variations to occur over generations. Even as other factors select for sugar
in one species, individuals keep popping up that like peanut butter.

~~~
bduerst
The problem with evolutionary behavior hypotheticals is that it's too easy to
craft them to fit a narrative - even with yours the inverse is still true.

The next generation of the species is all PB-seeking high risk ants, which
expend more energy & die off faster, reproducing less. Diversity shrinks over
generations as natural selection picks off most of the high risk individuals,
leading to a uniformity.

This still doesn't apply to humans, because even food preferences weren't
really subject to natural selection (outside food neophobia in children),
because pre-agricultural humans ate whatever they could get their hands on.

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d33
Related to this topic: someone (Derbasti) once recommended me [1] "Thinking:
Fast and Slow" by economy Nobel-winning Kahneman. This is a book about dozens
of ways humans fail to reason properly and a huge part of this book addresses
the problem of heuristics we use to estimate risk, probability, costs...
absolutely a must-read.

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11555148](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11555148)

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lordnacho
Well it would make sense if that were the case.

You have some system that tried to balance bias, variance, and utility.
Sometimes that best way to do that is to have some bias. The classic example
of this is you may jump when you see something that looks like a predator, but
then turns out not to be. The cost of being wrong (see nothing when predator,
see predator when nothing) means it's optimal to sometimes see danger that
isn't there.

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PakG1
That's the argument for racial profiling. Not making any argument for or
against, just pointing out something interesting. I didn't think about the
topic in this context before, as to whether or not it's rational. It's always
only been a question of ethics to me. So the natural follow-up question: are
various ethics irrational? Again, only a theoretical exercise, not putting my
personal views into this.

~~~
BurningFrog
Well, it's an argument for racial profiling _if_ certain races actually are
more dangerous.

It's hard to answer your question, since both ethics and rationality are
fuzzy, slippery concepts that need to be nailed down firmly to reason
meaningfully about.

Or, put less pretentiously, I don't know.

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rudolf0
>Well, it's an argument for racial profiling if certain races actually are
more dangerous.

When you say "more dangerous" do you mean "inherently more dangerous" or "more
likely to commit crimes per capita"? Because if it's the latter, then
depending on how you define "race" some of these statistics are already known.

~~~
BurningFrog
The latter is the only one that's of practical interest.

"Known"is a bit strong, since the source for the statistics can be debated.

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reasonattlm
The argument seems essentially similar to theories on the evolution of aging
that suggest we age because senescence improves evolutionary fitness when the
environment changes on a comparatively short timescale [1]. The world changes,
therefore a race to the bottom arises for ways to improve fitness that also
happen to make life miserable and short for individuals. Miserable and short
outcompetes hydra-like immortality or naked-mole-rat-like negligible
senescence in the vast majority of niches.

[1]: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1103.4649](https://arxiv.org/abs/1103.4649)

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SubiculumCode
I do not think decision making is a good model for this concept. Culture is.
In particular: Traditionalism vs. Progressiveism as cultural influences: the
former acts to not overfit current conditions, while the latter tries to fit
current conditions. Both influences have been critical for human survival.

~~~
rhodri
good observation. makes me think also about the tendency of computers and the
internet to actually slow us down in our work!

their general-purpose nature means that our minds take on the additional
complexity of context switching as we use our tools for multiple simultaneous
tasks, and indeed this generality means that they can be quickly adapted to
new contexts. contrast this to specialist tools which, once learned, provide
significant increases in efficiency in the specific context to which they have
been adapted (including the benefits of increased concentration owing to lack
of distraction!) but cannot always be re-engineered easily to suit new
contexts.

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TeMPOraL
To be honest, it's the fault of current UX trends of making everything so dumb
that people can be "proficient" in a program within first few seconds of
seeing it for the first time. General-purpose computer is perfectly able to
switch between many highly-specialized tools on the fly. It's just that
powerful, efficient tools are rarely built nowadays - they've been replaced by
pretty looking toys that sell fast.

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bbctol
Interesting argument presented in the paper, though I wouldn't frame it as
"we've evolved to be inaccurate": it's really that the world can be so
suddenly unpredictable that setting up strong, working paradigms of decision
making in the short term can be worse in the long run than just winging it.

It's worth considering, especially in light of the authors' suggestion that we
use computer/human decision-making systems to improve performance, as the
world is still unpredictable, and can still break our paradigms. The biggest
danger of setting up a good system to improve knowledge is that you'll think
you've got a perfect one--we could improve our rationality and decision-making
with computers for a long time, before an unexpected case cracks the system,
and we're left floundering.

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AndrewKemendo
_maybe a hybrid computer / human solution will fare better_

This is the purpose of technology. To enhance our skills. From fire to machine
learning, tools are built to make our lives easier and help us make decisions
better.

In the end we're better off with more empirical computing in our decision
loops. Eventually hopefully we totally replace ourselves with better, more
consisitently optimized decision making systems.

~~~
rhodri
technology has no purpose. it is a natural phenomenon that arises without any
in-built ethics or direction. technology can manifest as a tool (to amplify
human potential) or a machine (to replace human labour). the effect of a
technology can be influenced broadly, for example by who owns and promotes a
technology (open-source vs proprietary models) and which groups in society it
is put to use to benefit.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
Yea actually it does, the purpose is whatever the users/builders use it for.
So a stick has any purpose that it's user can think for it - starting a fire,
hitting an animal to kill it, support for a mud wall etc...

Technology arises out of a sense of purpose from it's user. This is pretty
common understanding in philosophy of science.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I think what you say is basically equivalent - technology has no inherent
purpose in it besides the one we give to it; that purpose itself is a feature
of the human user, not the feature of any given technology (i.e. it doesn't
"stick" to an object).

Personally, I see technology as the way to extend the power of our (individual
and collective) will to make something happen.

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thedrake
A similar conclusion was made using AI. Here is the video:
[https://youtu.be/dXQPL9GooyI](https://youtu.be/dXQPL9GooyI)

The takeaways: \- The path to success is through NOT trying to succeed \- To
achieve our highest goals we must be willing to abandon them \- It is in you
interest that others DO NOT follow the path you think is right

~~~
manmal
Thank you for posting this, it has the potential to change one's outlook to
life (planning life vs going with the flow).

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digi_owl
Effectively yes. If we perceive a chance of loss, we will do our outmost to
avoid said loss even if it means forgoing massive gains.

~~~
Retric
What we perceive as massive gains does not necessarily fit the evolutionary
model of massive gains. Many types of spiders can catch a humming bird in
their web, but they can't eat it.

Put another way, animals have upper bounds on the positive value they receive
from risks. In human terms the first billion is worth _vastly_ more than the
second.

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cableshaft
Yes, of course we are inaccurate decision makers.

Although there's so many factors and chance that influence the results of
every decision and you can only have so much information and perspective, so
you can only do the best you can.

The map is not the territory. We work with models of how the world works when
deciding things, not the actual world, so it's bound to not be 100% accurate.

Computers do the same, although they can crunch a lot more data than we can,
they still work with models of the world, not the world itself.

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astrobase_go
Asked and answered decades ago[0,1].

[0]:
[https://people.hss.caltech.edu/~camerer/Ec101/JudgementUncer...](https://people.hss.caltech.edu/~camerer/Ec101/JudgementUncertainty.pdf)
[1]:
[http://www.math.mcgill.ca/vetta/CS764.dir/bounded.pdf](http://www.math.mcgill.ca/vetta/CS764.dir/bounded.pdf)

~~~
tlb
These address the question of _whether_ we are inaccurate. The paper behind
the article
([http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0026770))
addresses the question of _why_ : because evolution favors under-fitting in a
world with punctuated equilibria.

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partycoder
There's a tradeoff between accuracy and speed.

For survival reasons the brain needed to evolve to make both quick decisions
and well thought decisions.

If a predator appears in front of you you might not be able to give a lot of
thinking to the decision of what you need to do.

If you are a nomad during the ice age and you need to collect food and prepare
a shelter, or track a prey for long distances, you probably need to give it
some thought.

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projektir
I don't know if we're really that inaccurate, or that the complexity of the
problem is vastly underestimated. If we think that making accurate decisions
is so simply, we haven't we made AI yet?

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oli5679
Irrational optimism and self confidence can be really helpful...

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amelius
And machine learning is taking advantage of it.

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posterboy
... evolved from what, inaccurate decision makers?

