The Blue-Minimizing Robot

A sequence on models of the human mind, drawing on psychology and neuroscience to discuss motivation, learning and behaviour.

The Blue-Min­i­miz­ing Robot

Ba­sics of An­i­mal Reinforcement

Ba­sics of Hu­man Reinforcement

Time and Effort Discounting

Want­ing vs. Lik­ing Revisited

Prospect The­ory: A Frame­work for Un­der­stand­ing Cog­ni­tive Biases

Phys­i­cal and Men­tal Behavior

Vol­un­tary Be­hav­ior, Con­scious Thoughts

Trivers on Self-Deception

To what de­gree do we have goals?

The limits of introspection

Ego syn­tonic thoughts and values

Ap­prov­ing re­in­forces low-effort behaviors

Con­nec­tion­ism: Model­ing the mind with neu­ral networks

Se­crets of the eliminati

Ten­den­cies in re­flec­tive equilibrium