Podcasts Technology Astral Codex Ten Podcast Trapped Priors As A Basic Problem Of Rationality

Trapped Priors As A Basic Problem Of Rationality

Published: March 11, 2021, 3:52 a.m.

b'

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/trapped-priors-as-a-basic-problem

\\xa0

Introduction and review

Last month I talked about\\xa0van der Bergh et al\\u2019s work on\\xa0the precision of sensory evidence, which introduced the idea of a\\xa0trapped prior. I think this concept has far-reaching implications for the rationalist project as a whole. I want to re-derive it, explain it more intuitively, then talk about why it might be relevant for things like intellectual, political and religious biases.

To review: the brain combines raw experience (eg sensations, memories) with context (eg priors, expectations, other related sensations and memories) to produce perceptions. You don\\u2019t notice this process; you are only able to consciously register the final perception, which feels exactly like raw experience.

A typical optical illusion. The top chess set and the bottom chess set are the same color (grayish). But the top appears white and the bottom black because of the context (darker vs. lighter background). You perceive not the raw experience (grayish color) but the final perception modulated by context; to your conscious mind, it just seems like a brute fact that the top is white and the bottom black, and it is hard to convince yourself otherwise.

Or: maybe you feel like you are using a particular context independent channel (eg hearing). Unbeknownst to you, the information in that channel is being context-modulated by the inputs of a different channel (eg vision). You don\\u2019t feel like \\u201cthis is what I\\u2019m hearing, but my vision tells me differently, so I\\u2019ll compromise\\u201d. You feel like \\u201cthis is exactly what I heard, with my ears, in a way vision didn\\u2019t affect at all\\u201d.

'