Modeling Others' Minds as Code

palmotea

> Our key insight is that many everyday social interactions may follow predictable patterns; efficient "scripts" that minimize cognitive load for actors and observers, e.g., "wait for the green light, then go." We propose modeling these routines as behavioral programs instantiated in computer code rather than policies conditioned on beliefs and desires.

Aren't there already materials (made for people with autism) that catalog these scripts and make them explicit?

Edit: e.g. https://suelarkey.com.au/promoting-social-understanding-soci...

ryandv

[flagged]

dragonwriter

Not sure how you expect to accurately modeling existing social norms and end up with something that doesn’t... do exactly that.

fellowniusmonk

Looks like you may have missed it, but that user is mocking what they consider to be a liberal perspective. They are attempting to lower the level of humanity and discourse on the site.

truelson

Most automatic human behavior uses very simple logic. I spend a lot of time "not present" as my conscious part is often lost in something complicated. My automatic, unconscious actions are, well, pretty simple and subject to failure when I'm not "present."

I really really want this other part of my unconscious behavior modeled well. Would be very useful.

more_corn

One good way to model your unconscious behavior is to examine the ways adversaries exploit your unconscious behavior.

By examining the common attacks on distracted people you can build a simple rule set that accounts for a large part of unconscious behavior. The attack I love to hate is the “subscribe now” popup. It inserts into your OODA loop at exactly the moment when your mind is engaged with important or interesting concepts. It is designed to compromise your decision making. I would use that as the foundation of my model because it sets out not only the behavior but the conditions under which the behavior is active.

Another set of rules can be inferred from ways phishing tricks people. (Activating urgency, fear, irritation, authority, avarice)

A third source of rules might be inferred from the practices of illusionists and cup and ball scams. Attention is finite, I’ve got it here so it’s not available in the important direction.

FrustratedMonky

Is this basically the "Fidelity" testing in Westworld?

alganet

I think this has applications in virtual fences. For example, if you want to restrict someone's behavior to a certain pattern.

Also, you can think of it as the subject (or subjects) programming the modeling agent: if the modeled mind is able to recognize it's being modeled, it's reasonable to consider the possibility that it can influence how those inferred scripts are created just by shaping its own behavior.

It can't be like an EEG, right? "Please be quiet and predictable while I model you, sir".

Of course, what humans think of predictability might not hold water. One could think he's behaving in a random way but in reality following well-known patterns (unknown to him).

It's an interesting problem. Absolutely terrifying stuff.

joaquincabezas

when someone behaves in a very predictable way I use to say "I could code you in C!". Well, turns out is Python!

shagie

Long ago... Think Geek T-shirt: "Go away or I will replace you with a very small shell script"

https://web.archive.org/web/20081204045017/http://www.thinkg...

palmotea

> Long ago... Think Geek T-shirt: "Go away or I will replace you with a very small shell script"

Whoever bought that shirt could probably use some social skills coaching. It's not a good idea to wear a shirt that indiscriminately broadcasts contempt in all directions. I get the purchasers probably confused it for humor, but there's an important difference between humor that works on a viewer TV show and and humor embedded in the interaction of you with another real person.

I had this though recently at Walmart, after seeing the third such shirt (a visual pun meaning "fuck you"). Geeks often have the same attitude problems.

saagarjha

Ideally you pair the shirt with a personality that never leaves any doubt that it is a joke.

mindslight

Geeks were just awkwardly head of the curve, as usual. The shirt you saw was being marketed to a wider audience, right? Also the prescience of "Fuck you, I'm eating"

qsort

There's the old joke that many people who fear they could be replaced by AI are in fact too self-aggrandizing, they could be replaced by a 12-line python script.

If you want to get a bit meaner, you could profitably replace some people with the empty python script.

emp17344

Weirdly misanthropic. Jobs exist for a reason - people who could be replaced by a python script already have been.

saagarjha

You’re assuming that companies are efficient at discovering which jobs these are.

more_corn

I’ve encountered many jobs that could be replaced with a script. When I was young and dumb I proposed replacing a whole department with a simple web app. The app was already finished and showed better success rates than the team of 6. The proposal was rejected.

constantcrying

If you work in any large organization you know that there are people who exists so that other people can not do their jobs.

qsort

I'm joking, that wasn't meant to be serious commentary. I don't actually agree with the idea that most jobs are bullshit.

keybored

- I could program a person in C

- They could be replaced by a 12-line Python script

Predictably HN-misanthropic is more like it.

deadbabe

Some people could be replaced with nothing at all.

palmotea

> Some people could be replaced with nothing at all.

The kicker is it's often not the guy you think it is.

bgwalter

I remember the joke differently. I heard it first way before the "AI" craze from an Italian philosopher (the original program must have been recorded in the 1980s and then rebroadcast):

"People who think they can be replaced by AI will be replaced."

In other words, the cheerleaders are so dumb that they probably could be replaced.

PaulHoule

The classic book Remember me to God

https://www.amazon.com/Remember-Me-to-God/dp/B000LQ2SHG

talks about how people in low social positions (say a Bank Teller) have no opportunities to distinguish themself but have opportunities to make mistakes that they'll be held accountable for. Whereas if you are in a high social position you get to grade your own paper, get credit for your successes, and "fail up" when you screw up.

Given that neural networks get it wrong some of the kind they might be better to fill the high status positions (make up crazy stuff to say for Satya Nadella and Eric Schmidt for instance)

atoav

If someone pissed off our sysadmin he would say something among the lines of: "Quiet, you are aware I could replace you with a simple script?"

ryandv

Makes sense. A few of the Python developers I know mistake their predictable banality for profound insight.

Since everybody knows Python and is expressing the exact same ideas in the exact same way, thinking the exact same things as everyone else, these are not in fact echo chambers and cargo cult practices, they are actually enduring mathematical truths! Look, the LLM even comes to the same conclusions!