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Sympathetic Minds — LessWrong

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"Mirror neurons" are neurons that are active both when performing an action and observing the same action—for example, a neuron that fires when you hold up a finger or see someone else holding up a finger. Such neurons have been directly recorded in primates, and consistent neuroimaging evidence has been found for humans. You may recall from my previous writing on "empathic inference" the idea that brains are so complex that the only way to simulate them is by forcing a similar brain to behave similarly. A brain is so complex that if a human tried to understand brains the way that we understand e.g. gravity or a car—observing the whole, observing the parts, building up a theory from scratch—then we would be unable to invent good hypotheses in our mere mortal lifetimes. The only possible way you can hit on an "Aha!" that describes a system as incredibly complex as an Other Mind, is if you happen to run across something amazingly similar to the Other Mind—namely your own brain—which y

x Sympathetic Minds — LessWrong Value Theory Complexity of value Evolutionary Psychology Personal Blog 81 Sympathetic Minds by Eliezer Yudkowsky 19th Jan 2009 6 min read 27 81 "Mirror neurons" are neurons that are active both when performing an action and observing the same action—for example, a neuron that fires when you hold up a finger or see someone else holding up a finger. Such neurons have been directly recorded in primates, and consistent neuroimaging evidence has been found for humans. You may recall from my previous writing on " empathic inference " the idea that brains are so comple

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