Comment by keepamovin
2 years ago
Interesting to think that in hunger evolution chose to increase the noise (irrationality) in our system, and that actually worked to make us more likely to survive (*in aggregate, statistically).
I guess the pithy aphorism: fortune favors the brave. Make a decision, even in limited information, you'll be better off than if you didn't.
Strange confirmation of the nature of reality from the human/experiment computation that is evolution. Hahaha! :)
Is it confirmed that this effect is “intentional” by evolution? Couldn’t this also just be a side effect of how the brain works which wasn’t negative enough to evolve a defense against? Maybe the neurons becoming less reliable when having too little sugar for example?
Sure, but hard to argue there's not some advantage as well, even to traits that operate unadaptively in some situations, so evolution likely played a role.
More important that evolutionary argument is we all know how increasing the noise unfurls the decision tree into more possibilities, which seems undeniably adaptive by fanning out the search space.
You have to consdier the en masse effect, not just the obvious, "in this 1 instance it was bad." Overall, a mode where you switch to a wider search strategy (like turning up the heat in an LLM) can be what you need...to procreate (eventually) hahaha! :)
It might be a similar stressor like performing a task with a full bladder. there's definitely something that negatively impacts your cognition and you'll be more likely to refuse complexity to 'get it over with' whatever that means for the ruling of a court.
Sure, the question was if this is actually beneficial from an evolutionary perspective. Was this an advantage for survival and humans evolved to be this way or is this an accidental side effect of the working mechanism of the brain which just stayed because it wasn’t a large enough disadvantage to evolve against?
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That's a good factor too but would have to investigate how much this correlates with the findings of the original article. Plus unrelated studies that find moderate performance increase to people who restrict bowel movements before test (anal retentive hahaha! :).
Do study support that it operates as blinker on complexity or even impacts cognition, besides the judgements or increased "irrationality"? As pointed out increased irrationality, can be a boon for lateral search space exploration, and could be argued to lead discovery of better judgements. Similarly, increased focus on core tenets by carving off complexity could also lead to better performance.
Also, in legal cases, with potential for politicization of key issues, what's deemed irrational may simply be heretical from one ideology. Unsure the specifics in this case, so would have to consider such factors, too.
Works in games too, if you're in a worse situation and almost guaranteed to lose with standard strategies, might as well try high-risk/high-reward strategies instead (since you need enough "reward" to overcome the difference and the risk doesn't matter).
"High-risk/high-reward" basically translates 1:1 with increased variance. Seeing it framed that way was a helpful mental model for me.
Thanks for pointing that out. I think that will be useful for me too, even without the finance background, that I guess you back your understand up with.
This is a good point. And seen in predatory animals. Hungry animals will take the more risky food/prey.
I don’t want to quote Einstein here, or the path not taken. ;)
Ok, the latter I know (Frost). Pray quote the former? :)
If you're hungry, surely the evolutionarily 'rational' action is to prioritise eating. That seems to be what's happening, certainly for those lucky enough to be able to control who eats and when.
Maybe. But judges are also disciplined and anally retentive. Gratification delayers. I can imagine many of them just want to get it done, then eat. May even be a cerebral-overemphasis leading to lack of body awareness. So for them, the rational action would be complete work, then eat (if time haha :)).
But I guess you meant more generally in evolution. Yes, but the question is how does the body prioritize eating in situations where food is not available but hunger is? If food is not obvious, it must be sought. Increase the noise in the search algorithm, would seem to maximize state space exploration in food quest, which seems something evolution would then pass on.
Better than cargo culting anyway hahaha! :)
It's easy to propose a different explanation: brain consumes a lot of energy, and in hunger it makes sense to run it in a sort of simplified economode to avoid risk of shutting down completely. It doesn't mean that going into less rational state increases survivability vs more rational one, it does however when compared to lying down unconscious because sugar is too low to support full throttle run
I didn't totally get your last phrase on the comparison (I think you mean we evolved less rational low power state on low food to conserve energy for when we need it more, because low power but operational is more survivable than passing out due to hunger - did I get you right?), but this is a good counter. How could we test between them? It's possible it's /both, but without a good experiment hard to say. Hypothesis 1: brain on low sugar, increases variance in problem solving. Hypothesis 2: brain on low sugar low power mode prioritizes simpler solutions (I think I got you?). Your point is a good counter to mine, but I think the qualifier is that in low food situation, a less rational state is a more effective search algorithm to find key resources, than a more rational one (with definition of rational tempered by what is achievable passing as rational for most humans in aggregate). But maybe we are getting too complex for a hn comment when we might not be running the experiemnt oursleves hahaha :)
You can’t glean insight about evolution from this. Hunger doesn’t follow a steady rate of making you irrational or whatever else. People who are used to it can go 18 hours without eating just fine. In fact they might report that it makes them sharper. While other people get “hangry” if they don’t eat every four hours.
This is a fair point about different conditioning to hunger, which to some extent, we are all capable of attaining. Those responses you mention do seem like evolutionary adaptations themselves, which may nevertheless vary across individuals. Such as ketolysis making people sharper mentally, which I've certainly experienced.
Your point about that making it hard to tell what evolution may have wanted from this, given such variety, is fair. However it's not necessarily a point against an evolutionary trend here, just because responses are varied. There could be adaptiveness, in aggregate (as it always is in these considerations I think), to having some people express different responses.
I think this stressor is ripe for gleaning insight about evolution, tho. Because of how critical food is. And therefore how much effective ways to overcome food loss would have been critical for evolution to hack at. It's likely evolution has laid out a series of algorithms for us, depending on what stage of hunger we are at - each developed to be the most effective balance at that stage between resource usage, and search success.
In that sense the different modes you describe "hangry" and "hunglightened" (and possibly some more in between) are most likely evolutionarily designed "behavior algorithms" that each maximize adaptiveness for finding food and surviving at each stage of progression towards starvation.
I really think you should think more about it, because how could it be any other way? Food is so crucial, evo is obviously going to get right into how we react to its absence.
Of course if your point is more about difficulty in concluding from the paucity of data in this discussion, I'm all with you! We are just hypothesising now, which is perfectly valid. And, for me at least, insightful. I feel truly sorry for you, that you didn't find it that! :)
I'd like to end with this weird little side-note counter: another pithy aphorism about food and performance: never make any big decision on an empty stomach! Hahaha! :) Many have said that.
> Of course if your point is more about difficulty in concluding from the paucity of data in this discussion, I'm all with you!
Yes.
> I feel truly sorry for you, that you didn't find it that! :)
I’ll keep that in mind.
I’m not sure this study does anything to show that hunger increases irrationality. If anything, the authors point to rational, predictive decision-making right before meal time.
Do you see something that indicates increased irrationality?
Honestly I was responding to the title which suggests that "irrational hungry judge" is a thing. If it is not, I revise all my ideas hahaah! :)
But then again, we must question a study that questions a proceeding one and so on. I'm not getting into the weeds of it to do that right now, just speculatin :)
What did you see about it that counters the "irrational hungry judge effect"?
Got ya. There are two studies here. The first study, referenced in the title, is from years ago that purported to show that judges were harsher just before mealtime. The second study was done to re-visit the first, and found that there are confounding variables that made the original findings look stronger than they otherwise would have been.
The article is about the second study, which found that the original study missed these confounding variables.
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It would make sense to increase exploration vs. exploitation when resources in a local area seem scarce
Exactly! That's what I'm saying. Thank you! :)