Rachit Dubey will present his Pre-FPO "The successes and failures of intrinsic drives" on Wednesday, August 24, 2022 at 12:00 PM on Zoom.
Committee Members: Thomas L. Griffiths (Examiner, advisor), Jonathan D. Cohen (Examiner), Karthik Narasimhan(examiner), Tania Lombrozo (reader), Ryan Adams (reader).
All are welcome to attend.
Title: The successes and failures of intrinsic drives
Abstract:
Even in the absence of external rewards like money or food, we have internal motives that drive and propel us to act. These intrinsic drives have led us to some of our greatest successes – they have motivated us to learn new things, explore new domains, and make some great discoveries. Unfortunately, left unchecked, these drives can be extremely harmful. This thesis aims to provide a deeper understanding of the successes and failures of human intrinsic drives by employing computational modeling and large-scale behavioral experiments.
In the first half of the talk, we examine the drives that inspire us to pursue science, which is a remarkable success case of our drives. We first present a rational model of curiosity that explains a wide range of findings about human curiosity. Based on this model, we then present the results of some behavioral interventions that have the potential to pique people’s curiosity about everyday scientific topics. We then present a computational model of Aha! moments and provide an explanation for why Aha! moments feel so rewarding.
In the second part of the talk, we examine a glaring failure case of our drives -- the problem of overconsumption. We first present a brief overview of the very urgent and pressing issue of overconsumption and put forth the argument that combating this problem requires a deeper understanding of our internal drives and reward functions. We then use the idea of reward design and show that the drives which cause overconsumption might paradoxically play an important role in promoting adaptive behavior.