Posted: Oct 07, 2017 6:20 pm
zoon wrote:John Platko wrote::book:
and this is interesting.
Moreover, to reduce the odds of missing future reward, an optimal agent may trade the risk of immediate pain for information gain and thus forget faster after aversive conditioning. A simple neuronal network reproduces these features. Our theory shows that forgetting in Drosophila appears as an optimal adaptive behavior in a changing environment. This is in line with the view that forgetting is adaptive rather than a consequence of limitations of the memory system.
They seem to understand how the future can cause effects in the present.
You are bringing up the argument from design. Yes, living things show a huge amount of design which seems to be planned ahead, acorns grow into oaks etc. All of it is explained by the theory of evolution by natural selection, which operates over populations and over many generations to produce individuals which appear to be designed for the future.
Are you saying that my bringing an umbrella on my walk out of anticipation of future rain as predicted by my phone does not make the future rain the primary cause of my action but rather it is long term evolutionary forces that are responsible?
This appearance of forethought design is misleading, since it only reflects differential survival in the past.
I feel certain that it's just my desire not to get wet that is the first order driving function of my accessorizing with an umbrella.
Fruitflies of the past which forgot aversive experiences over time, and tried again, were more likely to survive and leave offspring which were, like their parents, capable of strategic forgetfulness. This is not an example of the future causing effects in the present.
I certainly think that we can credit evolutionary forces for the basic mechanism which allows forgetfulness. But how that mechanism is adapting to the environment in individual fruit flies in their lifetime is a different matter. But what I'm suggesting is that there is something fundamentally different from a cue ball haplessly bounding into the rack when struck without regard to the upcoming future event and a fruit fly which weighs it beliefs about a possible future and chooses a course of action based on that belief. (ummm I feel I should mention, I am engaging in a bit of thinking out loud in this conversation - I'm not saying this is gospel, however, the more I read about fruit flies the more obvious it becomes that they too have free will, I will shortly post what seems to be the definitive paper on the matter.)
The language researchers use often implies forethought design, although they have no intention of implying any cause of design other than natural selection, because this kind of language is very much less cumbersome.
The aspect of the behavior on focusing on is not genetically passed on down the line. It pertains to the unique personality of individual fruit flies.