THEM: The gating’s not selective. When the spider shows up in the dark corner, the argument predicts I get scared of everything co-active in cortex: the spider, that corner, the person who happens to be standing next to me, the kind of fabric I happen to be wearing that day, etc. Where does it end?
ME: I think fewer things are “co-active in the cortex” than you suggest. I think attention flits around like ten times a second, and my whole argument in that section was that involuntary attention would ensure that I’m mostly thinking about the spider when the corresponding visceral thought assessor update happens.
THEM: Let me try a couple specific examples.
You and I are exploring a dark basement together. A spider lands on you. I get more scared of spiders, plausibly more scared of dark corners, not more scared of you.
More sharply, I’m exploring a dark basement alone, and a spider lands on an old unused exercise bike. I don’t think I’m going to get more scared of that or any other exercise bike.
I think in these example, the spider lands on you or the exercise bike, so I’m going to be paying substantive attention to you / the bike?
ME: Hmmm. You’re right about my previous reply. But I think I kinda bite those bullets. I think something visceral is learned, and will manifest in the future, but calling the result “I am scared of [blah]” has some wrong connotations.
For one thing, the ground-truth reaction from seeing a spider is generally stronger than the defer-to-predictor anticipation of that reaction. So e.g. if you have strong reason to believe that a spider might jump out at you soon, you might say “I’m scared right now”, but you might also say something more specific: “I’m scared that a spider will jump out at me”. The nervousness is real and unpleasant, but the actual spider would be worse.
For another thing, if a spider jumps out from an exercise bike once ever, then the short-term predictor is learning something like: “Exercise bike is weak evidence of danger, AND this particular basement is weak evidence of danger, AND this one specific exercise bike is weak evidence of danger, AND this lighting condition is weak evidence of danger, …”. And then later you see a different exercise bike in a different location, different lighting, etc. The predictor would see this as quite weak but nonzero evidence for physiological arousal, and maybe it would be too weak to notice. How would the evidence become stronger? (A) If you see that same exercise bike in the same basement in the same lighting, that would add up to stronger evidence. Also, (B) if you see spiders jumping out of five exercise bikes in five different contexts over the course of a few months, then the predictor will keep strengthening and strengthening the connection from “exercise bike” to physiological arousal, until the effect is very noticeable. I think both of those match my experience.
Also, if a predictor learns that “exercise bike” is weak-but-nonzero evidence for physiological arousal, and then you see a bunch of other exercise bikes where nothing goes wrong, presumably that weak evidence is erased (or overridden by a different system) (cf. “extinction” in psych jargon).
(Copying a discussion I had elsewhere.)
THEM: The gating’s not selective. When the spider shows up in the dark corner, the argument predicts I get scared of everything co-active in cortex: the spider, that corner, the person who happens to be standing next to me, the kind of fabric I happen to be wearing that day, etc. Where does it end?
ME: I think fewer things are “co-active in the cortex” than you suggest. I think attention flits around like ten times a second, and my whole argument in that section was that involuntary attention would ensure that I’m mostly thinking about the spider when the corresponding visceral thought assessor update happens.
THEM: Let me try a couple specific examples.
You and I are exploring a dark basement together. A spider lands on you. I get more scared of spiders, plausibly more scared of dark corners, not more scared of you.
More sharply, I’m exploring a dark basement alone, and a spider lands on an old unused exercise bike. I don’t think I’m going to get more scared of that or any other exercise bike.
I think in these example, the spider lands on you or the exercise bike, so I’m going to be paying substantive attention to you / the bike?
ME: Hmmm. You’re right about my previous reply. But I think I kinda bite those bullets. I think something visceral is learned, and will manifest in the future, but calling the result “I am scared of [blah]” has some wrong connotations.
For one thing, the ground-truth reaction from seeing a spider is generally stronger than the defer-to-predictor anticipation of that reaction. So e.g. if you have strong reason to believe that a spider might jump out at you soon, you might say “I’m scared right now”, but you might also say something more specific: “I’m scared that a spider will jump out at me”. The nervousness is real and unpleasant, but the actual spider would be worse.
For another thing, if a spider jumps out from an exercise bike once ever, then the short-term predictor is learning something like: “Exercise bike is weak evidence of danger, AND this particular basement is weak evidence of danger, AND this one specific exercise bike is weak evidence of danger, AND this lighting condition is weak evidence of danger, …”. And then later you see a different exercise bike in a different location, different lighting, etc. The predictor would see this as quite weak but nonzero evidence for physiological arousal, and maybe it would be too weak to notice. How would the evidence become stronger? (A) If you see that same exercise bike in the same basement in the same lighting, that would add up to stronger evidence. Also, (B) if you see spiders jumping out of five exercise bikes in five different contexts over the course of a few months, then the predictor will keep strengthening and strengthening the connection from “exercise bike” to physiological arousal, until the effect is very noticeable. I think both of those match my experience.
Also, if a predictor learns that “exercise bike” is weak-but-nonzero evidence for physiological arousal, and then you see a bunch of other exercise bikes where nothing goes wrong, presumably that weak evidence is erased (or overridden by a different system) (cf. “extinction” in psych jargon).