[gherkinnn]

> First, much like LLMs, lots of people don’t really have world models.

This is interesting and something I never considered in a broad sense.

I have noticed how the majority of programmers I worked with do not have a mental model of the code or what it describes – it's basically vibing without an LLM, the result accidental. This is fine and perfectly workable. You need only a fraction of devs to purposefully shape the architecture so that the rest can continue vibing.

But never have I stopped to think whether this extends to the world at large.

[vintermann]

Everyone has a "world model". These models just differ on how much they care about various things. No one has a "world model" which literally encompasses everything about the world, that wouldn't be a model at all, it'd just be the world, much like a 1:1 map.

Also, no one has a "world model" that is purely based on experiment and reason. Everyone gets their beliefs via other people first and foremost. Some get it from few people, some get it from many people (many people can still be wrong!).

For code, you may have the model of what it does strictly from reason and experience - but probably only if you're the only author. And you can still damn well be wrong, as we all know.

[AstralStorm]

For a lot of people, the world models are really rough and incomplete, so they really really on common opinion on these matters.

This is the same if you tried asking a general populace ethical questions in a vacuum sneakily. You're going to be dismayed after collecting the set of approved behaviors per culture.

There's not really a way to evaluate one of these.

[UncleMeat]

I am enormously skeptical of unsourced claims that boil down to "most people are substantially dumber than me, the enlightened one."

[pnutjam]

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/605/transcript

[Cthulhu_]

It's a good and succinct insight, and also often explains the "racist uncle" stereotype - there are a lot of people who don't get out much, whose world is limited to e.g. home, work, maybe friends, and TV and/or a subset of the internet. Some of those will develop close-minded viewpoints, often spoonfed through TV or the internet (for example, recently there's been a lot of comments on the internet saying "you get arrested in the UK more than in Russia for having an opinion"). If they talk to people that are more worldly - not even "leftists" per se - you'll quickly discover the friction between those two. Because the more worldly person will have a broader general knowledge and can weigh the uncle's standpoint against their own reality.

But if racist uncle talks to his other racist uncle friends who have similar insular lifestyles, the ideas will quickly spread. Until they become big enough to e.g. affect voting behaviour.

[suddenlybananas]

Yes everyone with my political beliefs has a well-structured world model, everyone without my political beliefs is a model-free slop machine that just goes by vibes.

[kaibee]

> Yes everyone with my political beliefs has a well-structured world model

As nice as that would be, its only marginally less true.

> everyone without my political beliefs is a model-free slop machine that just goes by vibes.

Nah, some of them are evil on purpose.

but like, in all seriousness. Politics is downstream of a world-model right? And the two predominant world models are giving very different predictions, right? So what are the odds that both models are somehow equally valid, equally wrong (even if its on different cases that somehow happen to add to the same 'moral value')? And we also know that one of the models predicts that climate change isn't real? at some point, a world-model is so bad that it is indistinguishable being a model-free slop machine.

[dragonwriter]

> but like, in all seriousness. Politics is downstream of a world-model right?

Politics is (if systematically grounded, which for many individuals it probably isn't-and this isn't a statement about one faction or another, it is true across factions) necessarily downstream of a moral/ethical value framework. If that is a consequentialist framework, it necessarily also requires a world model. If it is a deontological framework, a world model may or may not be necessary.

> And the two predominant world models are giving very different predictions, right?

I...don't agree with the premise of the question that there are "two dominant world models". Even people in the same broad political faction tend to have a wide variety of different world models and moral frameworks; political factions are defined more by shared political conclusions than shared fundamental premises, whether of model or morals; and even within a system like the US where there are two broad electoral coalitions, there more than two identifiable political factions, so even if factions were cohesive around world models, partisan duopoly wouldn't imply a limitation to two dominant world models.

[kaibee]

> Politics is (if systematically grounded, which for many individuals it probably isn't-and this isn't a statement about one faction or another, it is true across factions)

Yeah, I agree with this.

> necessarily downstream of a moral/ethical value framework. If that is a consequentialist framework, it necessarily also requires a world model. If it is a deontological framework, a world model may or may not be necessary.

I kinda think that deontological frameworks are basically vibes? And if you start to smuggle in enough context about the precise situation where the framework is being applied, it starts to look a lot like just doing consequentialism.

> I...don't agree with the premise of the question that there are "two dominant world models". Even people in the same broad political faction tend to have a wide variety of different world models and moral frameworks; political factions are defined more by shared political conclusions than shared fundamental premises, whether of model or morals; and even within a system like the US where there are two broad electoral coalitions, there more than two identifiable political factions, so even if factions were cohesive around world models, partisan duopoly wouldn't imply a limitation to two dominant world models.

A 'world-model' is a matter of degree and, at a minimum, pluralities of people in any faction don't really have something that meets the bar. And sure, at the limit you could say that reality is entirely subjective because every individual has a unique to them 'world-model'. But I think that goes a bit too far. And I think there's a pretty strong correlation between the accuracy of a given individual's world model and the party they vote for.

[simianwords]

It could also be that politics are downstream from emotions and world models are downstream from politics.

But I think both are true to an extent.

[suddenlybananas]

Politics are largely a function of self-interest rather than world model per se.

[N_Lens]

Different people have different conceptions of “self”, sometimes vastly different.

[saubeidl]

I think that in itself is already an ideological statement. Not everyone sees politics through that lens.

[suddenlybananas]

Of course it's an ideological statement, there is no way to define a concept without having beliefs about that concept.

[_Algernon_]

It's also absurdly wrong, and a quote that only a self-identified rationalist could smugly tout.

Of course everyone has world models. Otherwise people would wander into traffic like headless chickens, if they'd even be capable of that. What he likely means is that not everyone explicitly things of possibilities in terms of probabilities that are a function of Bayesian updating. That does not imply the absence of world models.

You could argue that some people have simpler world models, but claiming the absence of world models in others is extremely arrogant.

[uxhacker]

Yes, everyone has a world model even a toddler has a casual model (“cry → mum comes”).

[andy99]

This is the opposite of a world model and is very much how machine learning works. It's purely correlative without some underlying theory (the world model). The article's (absurd) example of a person not being a mushroom gives a simple example of a "violation" that having a world model about the kinds of organisms that exist would catch. It's not at all pattern matching, nor is it science in any sense about understanding things from first principles, it's about having an understanding of how you imagine things work that you can sanity check against.

[mathiaspoint]

Maybe the question is about how much of the world model they're conscious of.

[krona]

Cows don't walk in to lampposts either, but that's not telling us much.

Roughly 4% of the population are said to have aphantasia (lacking a "mind's eye"). Around 10% (numbers vary) don't have an internal monologue.

Unfortunately there's almost no research on the consequences of things which many would consider prerequisites for evaluating truth-claims about the world around them, but obviously it's not quite so stark, they are capable of abstract reasoning.

So, if someone with aphantasia reads a truth claim 'X is true' and they can't visualise the evidence in their mind, what then? Perhaps they bias their beliefs on social signals in such circumstances. Personally, this makes sense to me as a way to explain why highly socially conformist people perceive the world; they struggle to imagine anything which would get them in to trouble.

[saberience]

You're making so many wild assumptions in this comment without any scientific basis at all.

When does having aphantasia mean someone doesn't have a world model? Ditto for an internal monologue? Also the data on subjective experiences is notoriously flaky. I.e. it's highly likely that many people don't even know what an internal monologue actually means when they do in fact have something approximating that description.

Similarly for aphantasia. In fact, you can see a list of notable people with Aphantasia where you can see it includes professional sportspeople, writers, tech founders etc. I.e. you can have no "minds eye" and still reach the highest heights in our society, again, meaning that the mind is still constructing some model of the world and in fact our own understanding of how our brain works is just incredibly limited and basic.

In my opinion, everyone person has a model of the world (kind of obviously) but our brains are more idiosyncratic when we suppose and we represent things very differently to each other, and there is no "right brain" or "wrong brain".

[_Algernon_]

>Roughly 4% of the population are said to have aphantasia (lacking a "mind's eye"). Around 10% (numbers vary) don't have an internal monologue.

You don't need either of those to have a world model. A world model is a representation of reality that you can use and manipulate to simulate or predict the outcome of your actions. If you are able to discriminate that one of the actions of accepting a $ 1000000 unconditional gift is better than moving in front of a moving train you have a world model.

You can question the sophistication of world models in people — that's essentially what intelligence represents — but not their existence.

[krona]

Yup, an ant also has a model of the world. You're arguing a strawman.

[_Algernon_]

I'm not. As a reminder we are discussing within the context of this original claim:

>First, much like LLMs, lots of people don’t really have world models.

[testdelacc1]

Hi, I have aphantasia. When I close my eyes I don’t see anything, just darkness.

I’d be interested in seeing a study of similar people but in this sample size (n=1), visualising evidence isn’t needed to evaluate it. I’m perfectly comfortable thinking about things without needing an image of it in my head or in front of me.

For example: should we allow big game hunting as a way to fund wildlife conservation? Whoa, not sure. Let me google an image of an elephant so I can remind myself what they look like.

[suddenlybananas]

>they struggle to imagine anything which would get them in to trouble

God you are so convinced of your own brilliance aren't you?

>aphantasia reads a truth claim 'X is true' and they can't visualise the evidence in their mind

That's not what aphantasia is. It's just visual imagery, it says nothing about one's capacity to reason through hypotheticals or counterfactuals.

[Tarq0n]

If someone doesn't use one modality of thought, it's probably wise to assume they rely more heavily on other modalities, rather than that they think less.

Compare for instance to a blind person using sound, touch, memorization, signals from a guide dog to navigate.

[tuyiown]

You forgot the most important part, one's own model is not only probabilistic, it's also (more or less) forever challenged by reasoning to stabilize to some kind of self consistency. This refinement is critical and its mechanics still eludes everyone AFAIK.

[AstralStorm]

Most people do not challenge theirs by reasoning, only by social approval - and that's easy to game.

That's why they turn 180 or radicalize badly when exposed to sufficiently strong social or usual media.

[andy99]

> I have noticed how the majority of programmers I worked with do not have a mental model of the code or what it describes

Possibly the same idea: lots of people at work don't appear to think about what they are trying to achieve and just execute tasks very mechanically. The most likely explanation is they are just lazy or bored, and so intentionally or not just haven't thought about the implications of what they do and just do a task someone gave them. Some people appear to be like that in other aspects of life too, they just don't think so don't form any mental model about whatever subject, basically out of laziness or disinterest.

There's lots of subjects I don't care about, say celebrities, that I would not question anything someone told me about them or their lives, even if e.g Taylor swift did something contradictory to the model a fan had of her behavior, I wouldn't question it.

I do wonder about how someone could be simultaneously passionate about something and also not have a model of it. But I think for e.g. some wacky conspiracy, one might be interested in the people involved, but completely disinterested in physics or history or whatever so have views that are consistent with how they think Hillary Clinton or whoever would behave but inconsistent with some other common sense world model in an area they never think about.

[idiomat9000]

Its also the pre requisite for creativity, to let go of preconceptions, embrace & filter random connections.

[uxhacker]

Yes, to loosen the Model, but not to have no model. The new idea needs to be reintegrate back into the existing world models.

An example would be improvised jazz, the musicians need to bend the rules, but they still need some sense of key and rhythm to make it coherent.

[idiomat9000]

But that world model must have a allowance for doubt inheritance, so that new better world models can branch off and surplant the old. Nothing about this world might be permanent in the long run, not even physics.

[plastic-enjoyer]

It's fucking bonkers that people really claim that "lots of people" don't have World models. Can't say I'm surprised to hear this from rationalists like Alexander Scott who are too high on their own farts