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Powers
Let us try to justify the statement of Moliere's? anti-hero
that the sleeping powder put him to sleep because it had "dormitive
power". Suppose a search for dormitive power were undertaken
and it were found to be conserved as matter was transformed. Suppose
that "wakefulness" in food was also conserved as the food was
transformed, but decayed with time once eaten. Suppose further
that dormitive power counteracted wakefulness in a fixed ratio,
i.e. the person would go to sleep if the dormitive power of the
sleeping powder exceeded the wakefulness remaining, but the
ratio was different for men and women though fixed within a sex.
This would be quite an elegant and useful theory were it true.
Other equally elegant theories could be devised. The original
statement that the "dormitive power" of the sleeping powder put
the man to sleep might be taken as a belief that some such theory
would eventually be found. In this case the statement would be
sensible, even though it eventually turned out to be nonsense.
Dealing with complexity
The world has too many aspects for a human to have a single
utility function that takes into account all aspects of the world.
Therefore we typically switch our attention over varying periods
among collections of aspects of the world. Our attention is often
switched by random events that make one or another aspect of the
world momentarily salient. The essence of politics is to make
salient those aspects of the world about which the electorate
can hope to benefit by giving the politician power.
Is there not a goal of having goals?
Besides complex goal-directed behavior, we also indulge
in reflexive behavior, but sometimes the reflex action is the
triggering of complex behavior.
Because we have such poor short term memories, we use the external
world for memory as much as possible. Thus we program ourselves
so that the next step in a complex behavior sequence is triggered
by the completion of the previous step - rather than being remembered
as the next step.