My best guess is, the genome can guess where concepts are going to form, because it knows in advance:
Where low-level concepts like "something hot is touching my elbow" are going to form
The relative distances between concepts (The game Codenames is a good demonstration of this)
Loosely speaking, it feels like knowing the relative distances between concepts should determine the locations of all of the concepts "up to rotation," and then knowing the locations of the low-level concepts should determine the "angle of rotation," at which point everything is deter... (read more)
In the second appendix, I explain why this seemingly can't be true. I think the counterpoint I give is decisive.
One person's modus ponens is another's modus tollens; This is opposite of the inference I draw from the reasoning I present in the post. Despite information inaccessibility, despite the apparent constraint that the genome defines reward via shallow sensory proxies, people's values are still bound to predictable kinds of real-world objects like dogs and food and family (although, of course, human values are not bound to inclusive genetic fitness in its abstract form; I think I know why evolution couldn't possibly have pulled that off; more on that in later posts).
My best guess is, the genome can guess where concepts are going to form, because it knows in advance:
Loosely speaking, it feels like knowing the relative distances between concepts should determine the locations of all of the concepts "up to rotation," and then knowing the locations of the low-level concepts should determine the "angle of rotation," at which point everything is deter... (read more)