Simulation, Memories and Causation

Simulating the world. Or a particular scenario. The ability to do this has enormous evolutionary benefits. To understand why, consider a creature which cannot simulate any aspect, writes Max Bennett in A Brief History of Intelligence. How would it learn anything? By trial and error. Costly in energy and time, let alone the risk angle.

 

But a creature which can simulate decently or better, well, it learns by “vicarious trial and error”. Imagining what would happen with a choice rather than actually making that choice. So much more efficient and quicker.

 

A related aspect is counterfactual learning, i.e., imagining how things would have played out if a different choice had been made. Sadly, in humans at least, this ability has a side-effect we are all familiar with: regret.

“We cannot change the past, so why torture ourselves with it?”

Because it is an evolutionary habit that made sense for most of human history. For most of our species’ existence:

“Such rumination was useful because often the same situation would recur and a better choice could be made.”

 

Which brings us to the next related topic, memories. Strangely:

“Remembering past events and imagining future events use similar if not the same neural circuitry.”

This explains why episodic memory (memories of specific events) “feel so real but are much less accurate than we think”. Because episodic memories are “filled in” by the imagining logic when we try and retrieve them.

 

It is also possible that the idea/perception of causation is rooted in this ability for counterfactual learning.

“What we mean when we say “X caused Y’ is that in the counterfactual case where X did not occur, then Y did not occur either.”

When this capability misfires, we end up confusing correlation with causation!

 

All of the above means that the brain creates a model of the world. Which in many cases includes the self. This self in the model may have been added initially for the sake of completeness of the model. But, over time, the presence of the self in the brain’s model of the world may have resulted in the development of the concept of intent.

“Why try to “explain” one’s own behavior by constructing “intent”? It turns out this might be how mammals choose when to simulate things and how to select what to simulate.”

When a creature is thirsty, it simulates the options on where and how to get water. You get the idea.

 

The concepts of self and intent then resulted in the development of the concept of attention. Why was this necessary? Well, once simulations were drawn based on intent, a particular course of action was selected. It is key to stick to that plan, not get distracted by every smell, sound and sight one encounters along the way. In other words, the brain needs to supress or ignore certain sensory signals when it is executing a plan. That, as we know, is not easy – it takes self-control.

“This is why people become more impulsive when tired or stressed.”

The “ignore” logic is expensive (in energy) to run, so when other conditions (like stress or fatigue) need energy, there is less of it left for self-control.

 

To save energy, the body develops habits. If a pattern repeats itself enough times in the past (press a rod, food gets delivered), then why expend precious energy in the brain in simulating or analyzing things? Just do it without thinking:

“(The body) developed an automated motor response that will get triggered by a sensory cue and completely detached from the higher-end goal of the behavior.”