Everything backtracks to our own feelings, only source of objective learning and sanity
Implies significant abstraction barriers to learning from others, produces significant practical limits on this model of learning
We need a native addition to reinforcement learning, not an abstraction
Mirroring refers to the idea that sometimes we learn from others by watching how they react to events, and feel and act how they do in order to learn from that
empathy is a type of mirroring
Mirroring does not refer to mirror neurons.
Mirroring all the time is clearly bad, introduces extra pain to unknown gain
Mirroring has a tuning parameter which can control how much it occurs
Allows a nice solution to the abstraction problem of reinforcement learning
Stress reached irrational levels when mirrored between people before finals An example of the recurrence property of mirroring getting out of control because of incorrect tuning. My guess from observation is that since no one knew much about the qual, people assumed other people knew more of the dangers of qual than themselves, which is a good heuristic in most cases, but in this case was always false.
In a world where people assume everyone has a mirror, there is a way to exploit this assumption when one has the ability to turn off their mirror
I took the same 3 problems, and gave their opposite side.
These are useful examples of mirroring, but also to support my belief that society has found good and bad places for every major human characteristic.
This is the reason why I wrote this
Cannot create meaningful relationships without curiosity
Curiosity is suppressed when mirroring is high, you only look for reactions to other people, not look for new reactions
On the other hand, you cannot know enough about people to create deep relationships without mirroring.
Smart man vs Wise man Perhaps this adage can be thought to mean that the smart man cannot learn from others
We need to actually understand what they are feeling to mirror them. This is difficult even for humans
The reinforcement learning idea of exploring most promising unknown paths does not work. We learn what we see, and no more
Creates basic limits on the depth of learning that can happen
Mirroring helps us with the highest level of learning. Allows us to learn things that cannot be learned in a single lifetime by most people
Helps propagate cultural and social norms
Is an essential thing for us to have, but has significant danger, and should be watched carefully, and recognized as something we can and should control