Is the role of our sensory systems to represent the physical world as accurately as possible? If so, are our preferences and emotions, often deemed irrational, decoupled from these 'ground-truth' sensory experiences? We show why the answer to both questions is 'no'. Brain function is metabolically costly, and the brain loses some fraction of the information that it encodes and transmits. Therefore, if brains maximize objective functions that increase the fitness of their species, they should adapt to the objective-maximizing rules of the environment at the earliest stages of sensory processing. Consequently, observed 'irrationalities', preferences, and emotions stem from the necessity for our early sensory systems to adapt and process information while considering the metabolic costs and internal states of the organism.

中文翻译：

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受生物限制的理性、偏好和情感：一切都始于我们的感官

我们的感觉系统的作用是尽可能准确地表示物理世界吗？如果是这样，我们的偏好和情感（通常被认为是非理性的）是否与这些“真实”的感官体验脱节了？我们将说明为什么这两个问题的答案都是“否”。大脑功能的代谢成本很高，并且大脑会丢失其编码和传输的部分信息。因此，如果大脑最大化目标函数来提高物种的适应性，那么它们应该在感觉处理的最初阶段适应环境的目标最大化规则。因此，观察到的“非理性”、偏好和情绪源于我们早期感觉系统在考虑代谢成本和有机体内部状态的同时适应和处理信息的必要性。