I think what we need is some notion of mediation. That is, a way to recognize that your liver’s effects on your bank account are mediated by effects on your health and it’s therefore better thought of as a health optimizer.
This has to be counteracted by some kind of complexity penalty, though, or else you can only ever call a thing a [its-specific-physical-effects-on-the-world]-maximizer.
I wonder if we might define this complexity penalty relative to our own ontology. That is, to me, a description of what specifically the liver does requires lots of new information, so it makes sense to just think of it as a health optimizer. But to a medical scientist, the “detoxifies...” description is still pretty simple and obviously superior to my crude ‘health optimizer’ designation.
The model of the bank account compresses the target function of the brain, even when expressed in terms of specific physical effects on the world. Further, the model of health compresses the target function of the liver better than the bank account.
I think what we need is some notion of mediation. That is, a way to recognize that your liver’s effects on your bank account are mediated by effects on your health and it’s therefore better thought of as a health optimizer.
This has to be counteracted by some kind of complexity penalty, though, or else you can only ever call a thing a [its-specific-physical-effects-on-the-world]-maximizer.
I wonder if we might define this complexity penalty relative to our own ontology. That is, to me, a description of what specifically the liver does requires lots of new information, so it makes sense to just think of it as a health optimizer. But to a medical scientist, the “detoxifies...” description is still pretty simple and obviously superior to my crude ‘health optimizer’ designation.
The model of the bank account compresses the target function of the brain, even when expressed in terms of specific physical effects on the world. Further, the model of health compresses the target function of the liver better than the bank account.