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Theories of Mind — The Skeptical Hippie

skeptical-hippie.org · 378 words · saved by 1 readers

We observe causes and effects around us and infer models to understand them. Some things are simple, like gravity. Some things are still relatively simple, requiring small notions of state or process, such as a door being locked or not. Stateful objects vary upwards in complexity and eventually are not fully understood. (Examples: animals, especially people.) But it becomes clear, nonetheless, that these agents themselves maintain models of their environments that inform their behavior. All of this is to say, we each possess a space of models for how other agents themselves model and respond to our environment. This space is our personal model of cognition, itself a model, which I call our theory of mind. This use might not be exactly the academic one; in my useage, I have a theory of mind that might overlap with but not be equal to your theory of mind. One's theory of mind includes: One's theory of mind is a great unspoken substrate in how they conceive of human behavior and the poten

Some sketchy thoughts. We observe causes and effects around us and infer models to understand them. Some things are simple, like gravity. Some things are still relatively simple, requiring small notions of state or process, such as a door being locked or not. Stateful objects vary upwards in complexity and eventually are not fully understood. (Examples: animals, especially people.) But it becomes clear, nonetheless, that these agents themselves maintain models of their environments that inform their behavior. All of this is to say, we each possess a space of models for how other agents themsel

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