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In the inaugural episode of Antisocial Scientists, podcast extraordinaire Dr Justin Edwards and assistant professor of computer science Dr Diego Garaialde dive into the topic of motivation and decision-making by describing the hit video game The Sims.
The discussion opens on a recent preprint that has gone viral and garnered infamy and praise in equal measure, titled “Your Brain on ChatGPT” published by Kosmyna and colleagues from the MIT Media Lab.
Go to the timecode 19:16 to skip to the main discussion, how human motivation and decision-making mirrors the idea of the Player and the Sim, from the hit games The Sims 1-4. This idea of two types of processing is popular in cognitive science and psychology, and is commonly referred to as Dual-process Theories of Cognition. The Player is the part of you that makes future plans by putting in mental effort and attention, and can think over the many possibilities in front of you without ever having to leave your couch (e.g. the Player telling the Sim what to do during the day). The Sim, on the other hand, is the part of you that gets their hands dirty. The Sim learns from past experiences, reacts to their environment and emotions, and tends to prefer actions that lead to positive outcomes. By understanding how our Sim self is affected by our environment and how we can train it to follow our goals, we can overcome motivational issues once and for all.
Learn about important psychological concepts such as temporal discounting, chunking, and the Associative Cybernetic model, and how we can apply these theories to our own lives so that we can keep our Sim selves on track.
Have any questions or want to talk to us about the podcast? Contact us directly at diego.garaialde@ucd.ie