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Personality Basins

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160 points qouteall | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | 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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jw1224 ◴[] No.42204120[source]
That’s not how I read it, I think you’re missing some nuance here.

The article doesn’t imply genetics have no effect, it just treats them as a baseline which are then adjusted over time according to the person’s lived experiences.

Likewise with mental disorders and depression, the “solution” you claim it states as “not being mentally ill” is the outcome of a process, not the process itself.

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1. Balgair ◴[] No.42208512[source]
> it just treats them as a baseline which are then adjusted over time according to the person’s lived experiences.

So like the randomization process that seeds the values for RNN weights?

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2. Nevermark ◴[] No.42208709[source]
And the architecture which determines what units have weights between them.

And the training rules, that determine which weights are adjusted in response to what units.