Comment by echoangle
2 years ago
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?
A mechanism that causes people to become more decisive (but much less contemplative) when short on food seems like it would be beneficial. It stops analysis paralysis, and makes someone try something rather than just accept their fate.
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I think the question is whether bodily discomfort affects cognition, probaly yes, and how large is that effect size. Could that effect be enough to change a ruling in a significant way? I personally dont think so. In my experience with driving, cognitive distraction has a much higher effect than most bodily discomfort.
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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.