from Hacker News

Free Will Belief as a Consequence of Model-Based Reinforcement Learning

by raindeer2 on 11/17/21, 8:19 AM with 4 comments

• by foldr on 11/17/21, 11:41 AM

  >Put simply, we suggest that by applying the RL framework as a model for human learning it becomes evident that in order for us to learn efficiently and be intelligent we need to view ourselves as if we have free will.

  Granting the authors' assumption that we don't in fact have free will, it seems very difficult to argue that we need a false belief in order to learn efficiently and be intelligent. If it's possible to give a coherent explanation of why the false belief is helpful, then that's sufficient to indicate how we could do without the false belief.