rationalskepticism.org

Mr.Samsa wrote:I don't even know what the discussion is about.

Nor do I!

Mr.Samsa wrote:

And you claim that the simpler behaviours are compiled together in exactly the same manner to give rise to complex behaviours of insects and higher cognitive functions in other 'higher' organisms? Sounds totally counter-intuitive to me.

What's the alternative, a sky hook?

I should have been more clear. I meant that the complexity is much higher in the latter case. And you can't simply equate the association between blue colour and food via the octopamine reward system in a bee with the way a human relates his food to different colour perceptions. The basic principle might be the same, but the human brain, by the virtue of being more complex, has more opportunities to modify the simple action-reward circuit than the bee-brain.

I wasn't being rigorous in my use of the term "physiological" there, as obviously all psychological responses are physiological in nature too. I was simply trying to contrast the basic difference between the two; that is, a reflex is just a cause-effect "behavior", so if you bang the tendon in your knee, your leg jerks etc. whereas a FAP is a more complex set of behaviors that is elicited by a stimulus. Arguably, a FAP is just a complex set of reflexes that doesn't require any physical contact to be initiated.

Sound wooish to me! Pupillary reflexes require photons to be initiated. And since you can't transmit information without a physical medium, your so-called difference between reflexes and FAPs crumble.

Yeah definitely it is, I wasn't arguing against that. We don't even need to look at extreme examples such as that to make that point though, you could equally point to the fact that mammals respond to sugar whereas other animals respond to tree bark. We have different "starting points" that determines the path that future learning takes. The condor shadow is simply a preset aversion stimulus, in the same way cockroaches find light aversive and we find pain aversive. We don't need to learn those things, and they are universal across all members of the species. Clearly they are innate evolutionary traits.

So far so good.

However, they can be altered, to some degree at least. You can train a hatchling to love the shadow of a condor and you can train a child to enjoy the taste of tree bark. Some things are more difficult to change, and there are still basic biological needs that have to be met, but even with things like pain (which is generally considered to be an aversive stimulus), we could train people or animals to enjoy it - e.g. BDSM.

Again your bias is showing! When you are making someone enjoy an adverse stimulus, you're merely hijacking another deep-rooted evolutionary trait to achieve this feat. The ones you can modify, are left that way by evolution.

Fear of excess light?..

Why not? An absence of light on your retina can cause your adrenaline levels to go up and symapthetic activation (fear of dark). Similarly excess light on our retina causes your iris to contract and your hands and orbicularis muscles to protect the eye. What's the difference?

What do you mean by "natural"? Innately? Do you remember the first time you tried to catch a ball? I bet you failed horribly and that would have been with years of pretraining beforehand.

Seriously?

Quite a few, enough to make me question the universality of the 'catching' response. But you've been very sneaky in how you've phrased this: "How many catches do you think a child misses when he/she first goes out to play?" - even if we were to accept that every single child in the entire world made only perfect catches the very first time they go out to play catch, this would not prove your point. Can you see why?

Since you mentioned age 5 below, I assume that this "first time" takes place around then. Now, are you suggesting that up until that age the child has completely ignored all other objects in the world and has never had any experience with anything moving toward him? Of course this is impossible. From the time we're born we have things thrust at us - breasts, pacifiers, food, kisses, etc. All the time we are learning to judge velocities, movements, starting points, and so on.

Oh sure! I know what you mean. But I'm willing to bet that a motion sensing and computing device is inherited in all terrestrial animals. A little bit of tweaking is allowed but not much.

Seriously, try throwing something to a baby. It just hits them in the nose. Admittedly, this is a difficult topic to study as the impaired motor functions of babies would make catching impossible as it is, so we're stuck again sitting on the nature-nurture fence where it's impossible to accurately tease them apart.

Yes.

Just above I have answered your question: yes, definitely. The physical capabilities to be able to make calculations in the first place obviously has a large genetic component

We're getting there.

but the initial co-ordinates, estimated velocity, acceleration and final position judgements are all largely learnt.

Locating the position of an object in a 3D space has a a lot of genetic components (fixed projections of different optical neurons blah blah) and they are different from the calculating circuit. Combine the two and you get the device for calculating velocity and acceleration.

'Learning' is minor junior-artist in this film.

Stick a kid in a room with weird gravity, or some other quirks of physics, which makes flying balls behave in completely fucked up ways, and they will learn to play catch at the same rate a kid in a normal environment will.

Although I doubt that an organism spending 3 billion years on a planet with g=9.8 m/s^2 will suddenly be able to adapt to a zero gravity environment, my point still holds. All it means is that our inherited calculator is pretty good!

If your claim is that we have a genetic predisposition toward being able to learn how to do all those calculations, then obviously I agree, but I think that's the point I was trying to make?

If you're suggesting that we calculate all those things using innate rules then I can't see how you could possibly think that was true..

These positions are not always mutually exclusive. But I don't have the evidence to back it up right now. I'll come back with some non-human examples.

How so? All animals can show self control when placed in a situation where it is possible. I'm not aware of any studies that show a significant difference between humans and animals when all variables are controlled for.

After Hauser-gate, you guys have less credibility but I think I've addressed this before.

I can't see how you can think modifiable actions are negligible. The only sensible position in science is that behaviors are a complex mix of genetic and learned factors. To swing heavily one way or the other is just wrong and such a position cannot accuse mine of being crazy, or mad.. Madness, you say?

You are the one swinging too heavily, you fat bastard!

Pick any you like. This isn't my opinion, it's an accepted fact in science. So unless you're using a completely different definition of "instinctual", or can why the scientists studying this are wrong, then you might want to reconsider your position

I have studied a little bit of the language development and visual system development. You can pick an example from those. The 'catching response' might be a good one as well.

Obviously, this isn't to say that you can't prove them wrong, and it's entirely possible that they are, but generally if something I think goes against what a whole lot of smart people think, I tend to double and triple check all my assumptions.

I don't. I perform like shit at the Iowa gambling task. Must be an orbitofrontal cortex damage and not the way I was brought up, you nurturist!