Regardless, they form corrseopond to something like a collection of contextually activated algorithms, composed together to make another contextually activated algorithm. These contexts get modified, activating on more abstract inputs as the person reads through the list of applications of the technique.
I agree that the part of shard theory that claims that agents can be thought of as consisting of policy fragments feels very obvious to me. I don’t think this is informative about shard theory vs other models of learned agents—it’s clear that you can almost always chunk up an agent’s policy into lots of policy fragments (and indeed, I can chunk up the motivation of many things I do into various learned heuristics). Even the rational agent model I presented above lets you chunk up the computation of the learned policy into policy fragments!
Shard theory does argue that the correct unit of analysis is a shard i.e. “a contextually activated computation that influences decisions”, but it also argues also that various shards should be modeled as caring about different things (that is, they are shards of value and not shards of cognition) and uses examples of shards like “juice-shard”, “ice-cream shard” and “candy-shard”. It’s the latter claim that I think doesn’t match my internal experience.
Shard theory does argue that the correct unit of analysis is a shard i.e. “a contextually activated computation that influences decisions”, but it also argues also that various shards should be modeled as caring about different things (that is, they are shards of value and not shards of cognition) and uses examples of shards like “juice-shard”, “ice-cream shard” and “candy-shard”. It’s the latter claim that I think doesn’t match my internal experience
My apologies, I didn’t convey what I was wanted clearly. Could you give a detailed example of your internal experiences as they conflict with shard theory, and perhaps what you think generates such experiences, so that we as readers can better grasp your crux with the theory. I should have tried to give such an example myself, instead of rambling on about shards of cognition.
I agree that the part of shard theory that claims that agents can be thought of as consisting of policy fragments feels very obvious to me. I don’t think this is informative about shard theory vs other models of learned agents—it’s clear that you can almost always chunk up an agent’s policy into lots of policy fragments (and indeed, I can chunk up the motivation of many things I do into various learned heuristics). Even the rational agent model I presented above lets you chunk up the computation of the learned policy into policy fragments!
Shard theory does argue that the correct unit of analysis is a shard i.e. “a contextually activated computation that influences decisions”, but it also argues also that various shards should be modeled as caring about different things (that is, they are shards of value and not shards of cognition) and uses examples of shards like “juice-shard”, “ice-cream shard” and “candy-shard”. It’s the latter claim that I think doesn’t match my internal experience.
My apologies, I didn’t convey what I was wanted clearly. Could you give a detailed example of your internal experiences as they conflict with shard theory, and perhaps what you think generates such experiences, so that we as readers can better grasp your crux with the theory. I should have tried to give such an example myself, instead of rambling on about shards of cognition.