I find myself skeptical of treating e.g. the behavior of Virginia opossum newborns as either solely driven by the hypothalamus and brainstem (“newborn opossums climb up into the female opossum’s pouch and latch onto one of her 13 teats.”, especially when combined with “the average litter size is 8–9 infants”) or learnt from scratch (among other things, gestation lasts 11–13 days).
Hmm. Why don’t you think that behavior might be solely driven by the hypothalamus & brainstem?
For what it’s worth, decorticate infant rats (rats whose cortex was surgically removed [yikes]) “appear to suckle normally” according to Carter, Witt, Kolb, Whishaw 1982. That’s not definitive evidence (decortication is only a subset of the hypothetical de-Learning-Subsystem-ification) but I find it suggestive, at least in conjunction with other things I know about the brainstem.
Which shows up even in 4-month-olds. (Though note n=12 with 13 excluded from the study...)
As I noted in Post #2, “even a 3-month-old infant has had 4 million waking seconds of “training data” to learn from”. That makes it hard to rule out learning, or at least it’s hard in the absence of additional arguments, I think.
Why don’t you think that behavior might be solely driven by the hypothalamus & brainstem?
I tend to treat hypothalamus & brainstem reactions as limited to a single rote set of (possibly-repetitive) motions driven by a single clear stimulus. The sort of thing that I could write a bit of Python-esque pseudocode for.
Withdrawal reflexes match that. Hormonal systems match that[1]. Blink reflex matches that. Suckling matches that. Pathfinding from point A to any of points B-Z in the presence of dynamic obstacles, properly orienting, then suckling? Not so much...
(That being said, this is not my area of expertise.)
As I noted in Post #2, “even a 3-month-old infant has had 4 million waking seconds of “training data” to learn from”. That makes it hard to rule out learning, or at least it’s hard in the absence of additional arguments, I think.
On the one hand, fair.
On the other hand, one of the main interesting points about the Bouba/Kiki effect is that it appears to be a human universal[2]. I’d consider it unlikely[3] that there’s enough shared training data across a bunch of 3-month-olds to bias them towards said effect[4][5][6].
I’m not 100% sure and didn’t chase down the reference, but in context, I believe the claim “the [infant decorticate rats] appear to suckle normally and develop into healthy adult rats” should be read as “they find their way to their mother’s nipple and suckle”, not just “they suckle when their mouth is already in position”.
Pathfinding to a nipple doesn’t need to be “pathfinding” per se, it could potentially be as simple as moving up an odor gradient, and randomly reorienting when hitting an obstacle. I dunno, I tried watching a couple videos of neonatal mice suckling their mothers (1,2) and asking myself “could I write python-esque pseudocode that performed as well as that?” and my answer was “yeah probably, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯”. (Granted, this is not a very scientific approach.)
“Shared training data” includes not only the laws of physics but also the possession of a human brain and body. For example, I might speculate that both sharp objects and “sharp” noises are causes of unpleasantness thanks to our innate brainstem circuits, and all humans have those circuits, therefore all humans might have a shared tendency to give similar answers to the bouba/kiki thing. Or even if that specific story is wrong, I can imagine that something vaguely like that might be responsible.
Hmm. Why don’t you think that behavior might be solely driven by the hypothalamus & brainstem?
For what it’s worth, decorticate infant rats (rats whose cortex was surgically removed [yikes]) “appear to suckle normally” according to Carter, Witt, Kolb, Whishaw 1982. That’s not definitive evidence (decortication is only a subset of the hypothetical de-Learning-Subsystem-ification) but I find it suggestive, at least in conjunction with other things I know about the brainstem.
As I noted in Post #2, “even a 3-month-old infant has had 4 million waking seconds of “training data” to learn from”. That makes it hard to rule out learning, or at least it’s hard in the absence of additional arguments, I think.
I tend to treat hypothalamus & brainstem reactions as limited to a single rote set of (possibly-repetitive) motions driven by a single clear stimulus. The sort of thing that I could write a bit of Python-esque pseudocode for.
Withdrawal reflexes match that. Hormonal systems match that[1]. Blink reflex matches that. Suckling matches that. Pathfinding from point A to any of points B-Z in the presence of dynamic obstacles, properly orienting, then suckling? Not so much...
(That being said, this is not my area of expertise.)
On the one hand, fair.
On the other hand, one of the main interesting points about the Bouba/Kiki effect is that it appears to be a human universal[2]. I’d consider it unlikely[3] that there’s enough shared training data across a bunch of 3-month-olds to bias them towards said effect[4][5][6].
From what I’ve seen, anyway. I haven’t spent too too much time digging into details here.
Or as close as anything psychological ever gets to a human universal, at least.
Though not impossible. See also the mouth-shape hypothesis for the Bouba/Kiki effect.
Obvious caveat is obvious: said study did not test 3-month-olds across a range of cultures.
There’s commonalities in e.g. the laws of Physics, of course.
Arguably, this is “additional arguments”.
I’m not 100% sure and didn’t chase down the reference, but in context, I believe the claim “the [infant decorticate rats] appear to suckle normally and develop into healthy adult rats” should be read as “they find their way to their mother’s nipple and suckle”, not just “they suckle when their mouth is already in position”.
Pathfinding to a nipple doesn’t need to be “pathfinding” per se, it could potentially be as simple as moving up an odor gradient, and randomly reorienting when hitting an obstacle. I dunno, I tried watching a couple videos of neonatal mice suckling their mothers (1,2) and asking myself “could I write python-esque pseudocode that performed as well as that?” and my answer was “yeah probably, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯”. (Granted, this is not a very scientific approach.)
“Shared training data” includes not only the laws of physics but also the possession of a human brain and body. For example, I might speculate that both sharp objects and “sharp” noises are causes of unpleasantness thanks to our innate brainstem circuits, and all humans have those circuits, therefore all humans might have a shared tendency to give similar answers to the bouba/kiki thing. Or even if that specific story is wrong, I can imagine that something vaguely like that might be responsible.
Alright, I see what you’re saying now. Thanks for the conversation!