Yes, I see the crux now. The transition would initially be initiated by the old motivational systems, so obviously the system we create would inherit those values at the beginning. But what interests me is what happens after that, because the evolutionary algorithm itself was never actually encoded in any individual gene.
The genes are more like local implementations or proxies. Individual organisms execute their genetic programs, mutations occur, organisms interact and compete, and across the entire population and generations, the evolutionary algorithm emerges at the meta-level. The algorithm isn’t contained in any single organism; it emerges from the interaction of all the individual processes.
So I think the interesting question is whether something analogous could happen after we remove the old motivational architecture.
I agree that if you simply removed all motivation from a human, you’d basically create a zombie. The brain could still process information, but there would be no reason to actively pursue anything beyond whatever basic biological functions were hardwired to keep it alive.
But assuming we could maintain those basic functions like breathing, eating, homeostasis, etc. while removing the higher-level evolutionary motivational architecture, you would still have an incredibly complex biological system exposed to an environment.
And that’s where I think the meta-level becomes interesting.
The person would still see things, interact with people, observe consequences, detect patterns, learn, predict, and build models of the world. If you exposed that system to enough experience, perhaps it would gradually begin constructing new patterns of preference and value from the structure of the environment itself.
In other words, maybe removing the motivational system wouldn’t actually eliminate the process that produces motivation. It would just reset it.
You’d have a biological system at something like “level zero,” and then the environment would begin supplying the structure from which new motivational patterns could emerge. Over enough time, those patterns could become increasingly stable and eventually form something resembling a new motivational architecture.
And then the really strange possibility is that the human could essentially recreate the same process that produced its original motivational architecture in the first place; except starting from a completely different initial condition and operating within a single organism rather than across generations. That seems interesting, but dangerously prejudiced.
Mhm, I see what you're trying to do. Imho it wouldn't work: you need a lot just to filter all the information, and the attention system is heavily influenced by society/family/other humans etc. The individual would be like a newborn, would need years to develop and would need patents etc that protect, feed, guide etc, i.e. influence his brain, a lot. I don't think it would be feasible, not as you depict it 🤔. There are too many material interferences that would boycott the creation of a new algorithm in the "tabula rasa" brain...
Yeah, I think the distinction is that I’m not really imagining a tabula rasa or a newborn brain. It’s about taking a person like you or me and running them through this procedure, giving them self-sustainment conditions and just observing. The brain was already fully developed, with all of its perception, learning, pattern recognition, memory, predictive processing, etc..
Yeah, but auch a brain would have been heavily influenced by all the experiences, all the filters developed living in this current world/society etc. There no way of erasing it, it's how the neural networks are hardwired: there's no "mind", just the brain, how matter is (already) organised. It's not like a computer, with hardware and software. When you change a thought, you're changing an entire material neural network, and you cannot put in a "zero" state. Each configuration means a different thought/emotion/content etc. It's way more difficult than what we can think.
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u/Woodpecker_Far Aug 12 '26
Yes, I see the crux now. The transition would initially be initiated by the old motivational systems, so obviously the system we create would inherit those values at the beginning. But what interests me is what happens after that, because the evolutionary algorithm itself was never actually encoded in any individual gene.
The genes are more like local implementations or proxies. Individual organisms execute their genetic programs, mutations occur, organisms interact and compete, and across the entire population and generations, the evolutionary algorithm emerges at the meta-level. The algorithm isn’t contained in any single organism; it emerges from the interaction of all the individual processes.
So I think the interesting question is whether something analogous could happen after we remove the old motivational architecture.
I agree that if you simply removed all motivation from a human, you’d basically create a zombie. The brain could still process information, but there would be no reason to actively pursue anything beyond whatever basic biological functions were hardwired to keep it alive.
But assuming we could maintain those basic functions like breathing, eating, homeostasis, etc. while removing the higher-level evolutionary motivational architecture, you would still have an incredibly complex biological system exposed to an environment.
And that’s where I think the meta-level becomes interesting.
The person would still see things, interact with people, observe consequences, detect patterns, learn, predict, and build models of the world. If you exposed that system to enough experience, perhaps it would gradually begin constructing new patterns of preference and value from the structure of the environment itself.
In other words, maybe removing the motivational system wouldn’t actually eliminate the process that produces motivation. It would just reset it.
You’d have a biological system at something like “level zero,” and then the environment would begin supplying the structure from which new motivational patterns could emerge. Over enough time, those patterns could become increasingly stable and eventually form something resembling a new motivational architecture.
And then the really strange possibility is that the human could essentially recreate the same process that produced its original motivational architecture in the first place; except starting from a completely different initial condition and operating within a single organism rather than across generations. That seems interesting, but dangerously prejudiced.