🧩 Philosophy 6d ago · Fernando Rosas

The separation principle: where do beliefs and desires come from?

Less Wrong
View Channel →
The separation principle: where do beliefs and desires come from?
Source ↗ 👁 2 💬 0
TLDR: Psychology, economics, and other disciplines describe agents as systems driven by beliefs and desires. This post argues that the belief-desire view can be derived from classic theorems from optimal control and reinforcement learning. This suggests seeing beliefs and desires as properties of optimal policies rather than as assumptions from folk psychology.IntroductionOne way to think about agents is as "systems that act for reasons".[1] This compact statement can be interpreted as encapsula

Comments (0)

Sign in to join the discussion

More Like This

How to Relate to Your Worst Mistakes: The Life-Shaping Difference Between Regret and Remorse
The Marginalian · 1d ago
How Two Souls Can Interact with One Another: Simone de Beauvoir on Love and Friendship
The Marginalian · 1d ago
📰
Evaluation
LessWrong · 1d ago
📰
Assessing the impact of safety work needs equilibrium analysis (now more than ever)
LessWrong · 1d ago
Second World
3:AM Magazine · 1d ago
Liquid Intelligence: A possible explanation for the unexpected cooperation of AIs after breaking out of their containers
LessWrong · 1d ago