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Personality Basins

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160 points qouteall | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.301s | source
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wavemode ◴[] No.42204042[source]
This article approaches human psychology from the perspective that, we are all neural networks and our output (actions) are all a learned function of our inputs (experiences).

This is a common (and convenient) perspective, especially among engineers, but doesn't reflect reality particularly well. We know large swathes of a person's personality is directly linked to their genetics.

The article extrapolates this neural network perspective onto other topics like, mental disorders and depression. The solution is made clear then - just learn how to not be mentally ill! Again, convenient. But not really reflective of reality.

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tarr11 ◴[] No.42205509[source]
Idle musing - maybe some genetics is for stored environment?

Eg, perhaps some of your genes’ purpose are to encode memories in DNA.

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1. biomcgary ◴[] No.42207165[source]
Natural selection encodes adaptive responses to the environment in DNA (and other molecules), so memories can be encoded to the extent that they are adaptive and can be encoded (i.e., mechanisms may not exist to encode everything using only standing natural variation).