Conversely, studies with newborn mammals have shown that if you deprive them of something as simple as horizontal lines, they will grow up unable to distinguish lines that approach ‘horizontalness’. So even separating the most basic evolved behavior from the most basic learned behavior is not intuitive.
The deprivation you’re talking about takes place over the course of days and weeks—it reflects the effects of (lack of) reinforcement learning, so it’s not really germane to a discussion of preset functions that manifest in the first few minutes after birth.
It’s relevant insofar as we shouldn’t make assumptions on what is and is not preset simply based on observations that take place in a “typical” environment.
Ah, a negative example. Fair point. Guess I wasn’t paying enough attention and missed the signal you meant to send by using “conversely” as the first word of your comment.
Conversely, studies with newborn mammals have shown that if you deprive them of something as simple as horizontal lines, they will grow up unable to distinguish lines that approach ‘horizontalness’. So even separating the most basic evolved behavior from the most basic learned behavior is not intuitive.
The deprivation you’re talking about takes place over the course of days and weeks—it reflects the effects of (lack of) reinforcement learning, so it’s not really germane to a discussion of preset functions that manifest in the first few minutes after birth.
It’s relevant insofar as we shouldn’t make assumptions on what is and is not preset simply based on observations that take place in a “typical” environment.
Ah, a negative example. Fair point. Guess I wasn’t paying enough attention and missed the signal you meant to send by using “conversely” as the first word of your comment.
That was lazy of me, in retrospect. I find that often I’m poorer at communicating my intent than I assume I am.
Illusion of transparency strikes again!