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Original post by Anonymous Poster
That has an easy explanation, people are used to see cars and drive them, but people aren''t used to deal with snakes or spiders. That''s definately not ''hardcoded'' in our brains.

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People grow up seeing cars every day. People also grow up seeing spiders almost every day (unless you''re living in some oxygen tent there is probably a spider within a metre of you right now). Arachnophobia is several orders of magnitude bigger than a phobia of cars. You do the math.

Ok - let''s take another example. Place a hungry newborn baby on the mother and it will automatically crawl to the breasts. Now how did it know that there was gonna be food there ??

This are mere examples and not explanations, but If you still disagree, I suggest that you read some books on the topic. I''m not referring to a specific book, anyone will do

Ulf

No one can create Intelligence, that''s why we have Artificial Intelligence.

.lick

Pipo DeClown: You haven''t really got the hang of reasoned arguments have you

Mike

P.S. The same could occasionally be said of many here including myself

ulflivoff : the smell of milk my friend. I suggest you smell a few titties, and you''ll see the truth in that answer
The smell triggers reactions in the baby, like opening the mouth, grasping, etc. Note how a baby, when offered anything that vaguely has the shape of a nipple, will suck without ever questioning what it is that it is sucking.

Who said the whole suckling mechanism was a proof of intelligence ? If you wanted to show it was a hardcoded behaviour, good news, it is. Otherwise I am not sure where you are getting at.

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Sancte Isidore ora pro nobis !

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Otherwise I am not sure where you are getting at

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If you read the previous posts then it''s pretty obvious what we''re discussing.

It''s funny how some programmers with no experience in psychology are 100% confident in their own homemade psychological theories.

At least I''ve read a few books on the topic and it''s their theories am referring to here...

Reminds me of Bertrand Russels wise words:

The problem with humans is, that stupid people are always 100% confident in what thei''re doing is right, where as intelligent people area always doubtful.

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Original post by UlfLivoff
Ok - let''s take another example. Place a hungry newborn baby on the mother and it will automatically crawl to the breasts. Now how did it know that there was gonna be food there ??

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Newborn babies don''t crawl...

There are several hard-coded stimulus-response behaviours that babies have that enable them to take a nipple and an autonomic suckling action as well. We''ve evolved with these... but put a baby out of reach of a lactating breast and it won''t know where to go or how to get there... it might smell the milk and get excited... but that''s a different story all together!

Timkin

"Newborn babies don''t crawl..."

My thoughts exactly, Timkin.

Ups, My bad

he he

[edited by - UlfLivoff on July 13, 2003 4:29:16 AM]

Newborn babies of _our_ species don''t crawl.

But apparently the word baby can mean other species as well (I looked it up to be sure).

Take the Kangaroo and other marsupials for example. The baby Kangaroo, looking like a foetus and being absolutely tiny in proportion to a Joey, (which is a young Kangaroo in case you didn''t know) crawls up the mother''s fur on birth and finds it''s way into the pouch for the last several months of development into a young Kangaroo, attaching itself to the mother''s teat inside the pouch. I can''t say it''s performing lactotaxis but it performs a set of hard-coded behaviours involving crawling towards milk the second it''s born. These Kangaroo babies are approximately 2.5 centimetres (1 inch) in length.
Some argue that the reason human''s are so unable to care for themselves at birth is because the high level of plasticity and potential for adaptation that we have necessitates a lack of hard coding at birth (we still have hard coding but a lot less than (perhaps almost) all other species).
The detachment from hard wiring in the brain might allow our bodies and brains to evolve more swiftly (you evolve the body but can''t evolve it away from the hard coding, so you can''t evolve it very far before letting the hardcoding catch up). This brings into question whether evolvability itself is an evolutionary advantage giving an individual increased fitness on an evolutionary scale. It probably is.

Mike