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Human brains are preconfigured with instructions for understanding the world

https://news.ucsc.edu/2025/11/sharf-preconfigured-brain/
35•XzetaU8•1h ago

Comments

MeteorMarc•1h ago
Seems reasonable our grey mass needs a bootloader.
balamatom•16m ago
IMO TFA doesn't map too cleanly onto the concept of "bootloader" (nor "microcode" for that matter). But I guess the question is, as always, can you unlock it.
Animats•42m ago
Some animals are ready to go as soon as they are born. These are called precocial animals. They are born knowing how to walk.

It's interesting seeing what comes built-in. You can see this if you watch a horse being born. Within the first hour, the foal will stand, and despite long legs, this usually works the first time. Lying down, however, is not preprogrammed. I've watched a foal circle trying to figure out how to get down from standing, and finally collapsing to the ground in a heap. Standing up quickly is essential to survival, but smoothly lying down is not. Within a day, a newborn foal can run with the herd.

Of the mammals, most of the equines and some of the rodents (beavers) are precocial. Pigs are, monkeys are not. It's not closely tied to evolutionary ancestry.

somenameforme•8m ago
One of the most curious things I learned about babies is that they are born with a walking instinct, long before they actually can walk. If you hold them up, they will move their legs in a perfectly correct walking fashion. But they lack the strength and agility to keep their body up. At around 3 months this walking instinct disappears, and then at around a year we 'relearn' to walk when we have the strength and agility to hold ourselves up.

But if we were on a planet with significantly lower gravity, humans would likely be walking very near immediately.

dotancohen•1m ago
If we were on a planet with significantly lower gravity, walking would be much more difficult. Notably, on flat ground we absolutely must have an upward component to our application of force with the surface - this is clearly seen in videos taken on the lunar surface during the Apollo missions. This baby on a hypothetical lower gravity world would find standing easier, yes, but not mobility. At least not once he's taken his first few trail steps.
thegrey_one•24m ago
Makes sense, life was brute-forced.
uwagar•16m ago
"preconfigured" and "with instructions". i have a problem with these.

who is doing it? why the observed instructions are chosen?

spullara•3m ago
just a lot of pretraining through evolution
efilife•1m ago
[delayed]
_m_p•4m ago
Kant said it first! https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-reason/

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Build Your Own Router with URLPattern()

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Did I just break ChatGPT?

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27•todsacerdoti•1h ago•8 comments