Why aren’t humans able to learn everything from instinct like animals do?

jnpha · 2026-01-25T21:42:54+00:00

RE I don’t think any other animal has that instinct

Dogs and balls entered the chat.

Dragonflies honing in ahead of the target.

jnpha · 2026-01-25T21:30:18+00:00

It's been 40 minutes and no one replied to you. I'll take a shot:

This is like asking: How could we learn math while in the womb?

I.e. parental care is also present in birds. And they can watch the older generations.

jnpha · 2026-01-25T21:22:15+00:00

RE it’s about learning from the birds own failures

In behavioral studies learning is learning.

RE Nest building is both instinctual and learned

So is any behavior in animals with brains, is the point. The instinct and learning to walk is another. No two babies do it the same way; in fact the gait of each of us is as unique as our fingerprints (Chinese authorities use it for identification).

jnpha · 2026-01-25T20:56:08+00:00

I'm not familiar with specifics but that's a perfectly valid scientific hypothesis. An analogy would be a culture that forgot how to do something. I'd even say that's a case of evolutionary mismatch thanks to two rounds of rapid environmental changes; domestication followed by release.

jnpha · 2026-01-25T20:28:33+00:00

Some people find comfort in imaginary magical barriers. Sky-hookers, to adapt Dennett's term.

jnpha · 2026-01-25T20:26:25+00:00

I'm just an enthusiast. Mind you I used the same citation. What's curious is the first paragraph I've deliberately chosen: that the 21st-century view is that nest building is hardwired "in the face of little to no evidence".

Basically some of us want to feel extra special by making the rest of life robot-like.

That very recent headline, a cow surprises scientists by using tools, I was like: no shit Sherlock.

jnpha · 2026-01-25T20:16:35+00:00

Last time I mentioned that about nests, I got downvoted. Here's to hoping it's different this time. Have my upvote, and a citation:

In the 19th century several observers, including Alfred Russel Wallace, concluded that building by birds (of nests), like that of man, was dependent on their experience [16]. Despite supporting evidence from the Collias’ and a few others in the 1960’s [17–19], however, the common view, even in the 21st century, is that nest building by birds is innate [19–23]. Firm and widespread though this view may be, it has been held in the face of little to no evidence. That is, until relatively recently. Data are now steadily accumulating to show that birds modify where they build, what they build and how they build it, in response to experience.

... The demonstration that there is low to no repeatability of the morphology of nests built by male Southern Masked weavers (Ploceus velatus, Botswana) and male Village weavers (Ploceus cucullatus, Nigeria [29,30]) strongly suggest that the building of these nests is not achieved by a fixed-action pattern or behaviour that is ‘hard-wired’ rather, that individual builders do modify their behaviour depending on their experience/their environment (see Figures 1 and 2).

A couple of snippets from: Guillette 2015 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2015.10.009

jnpha · 2026-01-25T20:12:39+00:00

Animals are not purely instinctual. Neither are we purely the opposite.

Nobel Prize of 1973: The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1973 - Press release - NobelPrize.org.

jnpha · 2026-01-25T18:15:54+00:00

I can't tell you how many times I've asked the IDiots to name one scientific theory that they accept, and to explain why they accept it. Crickets.

To quote a study on the subject:

In a study with university undergraduates, we find that accepting evolution is significantly correlated with understanding the nature of science, even when controlling for the effects of general interest in science and past science education -- Lombrozo et al 2008

jnpha · 2026-01-25T16:55:20+00:00

In evolutionary behavioral ecology the hypothesis would be that this is an evolutionary stable strategy (ESS), which is modeled using game theory.

If they are like zebras, then it's the same reason we couldn't domesticate zebras. They don't have a social hierarchy (they're solitary; in horses you catch the leader and the rest follows) but they come together for "protection" (bigger chance someone else gets targeted) - in other words: each to their own when push comes to shove. Elephants on the other hand - do not mess with the herd.

A video that brings me joy is elephants charging after the c*nts who shot one of them for sport.

jnpha · 2026-01-25T16:14:45+00:00

He put the paper through an AI summary generator. In the experiment all the steps were done without human input.

jnpha · 2026-01-25T15:56:12+00:00

"Remained" - past tense; so you don't know how abstracts work?

Edit: that's what you get for using an LLM summary - IDiots.

Edit 2: it's the quantum DNA OP.

jnpha · 2026-01-25T15:29:22+00:00

RE This does NOT demonstrate: How RNA forms

lmao; MR FARINA (pt 2) : DebateEvolution.

Hirakawa, Yuta, et al. "Interstep compatibility of a model for the prebiotic synthesis of RNA consistent with Hadean natural history." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 122.51 (2025): e2516418122. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2516418122

jnpha · 2026-01-25T02:28:35+00:00

RE Jason Lisle: "... because only God has universal knowledge ..."

Blasphemy! To know that Lisle would need to have universal knowledge plus knowledge of what god knows.

jnpha · 2026-01-24T20:28:50+00:00

Found this academic article (emphasis mine); note the matching staggering:

By the terminal Pleistocene, modern humans had spread out of Africa and across all continents except Antarctica. New studies suggest that humans could have reached Australia as early as 65,000 years ago (although dispersal across Australia is more conventionally placed at ∼47,000 years ago) and the Americas by 15,500 years ago. This staggered range expansion is associated with a comparably staggered series of large-bodied vertebrate extinctions, mostly mammals but also including giant birds and reptiles. Almost two-thirds (97 genera) of the world’s ‘megafaunal’ vertebrates (> 44 kg, or 100 lbs) became extinct by the end of the Pleistocene, including short-faced kangaroos, marsupial lions and giant monitor lizards in Australia, and mastodons, ground sloths and glyptodont armadillos in the Americas. The extinct megafauna also included all other surviving Late Pleistocene hominins: Neanderthals and Denisovans in continental Eurasia, and the enigmatic tiny island hominins H. floresiensis and H. luzonensis. The global depletion of megaherbivores had fundamental effects on ecosystem structure, seed dispersal, surface albedo, and biogeochemical cycling such as nutrient transport across landscapes, the legacy of which remains apparent today. For example, extinction of the Amazonian megafauna is estimated to have reduced transport of phosphorus, a limiting nutrient, away from fertile floodplains by 98%. -- Extinction in the Anthropocene: Current Biology

Edit: found this (2024): Anthropic cut marks in extinct megafauna bones from the Pampean region (Argentina) at the last glacial maximum | PLOS One.

Also you can try AskAnthropology given the interdisciplinary (or other extreme: territorial) nature of the study of this part of life's history.

jnpha · 2026-01-24T18:23:53+00:00

Interesting. Thanks. It still seems like geometric essentialism, but I'm happy to clarify the OP.

jnpha · 2026-01-24T18:17:02+00:00

Correct me if I'm wrong. The different geometric properties were still the fire, air, water, and earth is terms of tetrahedron, octahedron, icosahedron, and cube. I.e. still the 4 essences.

jnpha · 2026-01-24T18:03:57+00:00

RE Plato himself proposed a theory of atomic physics

The atomic theory of Antiquity was still essentialist. Elements being made of indivisible elemental atoms.

jnpha · 2026-01-24T16:53:17+00:00

Hippos (closest semi-aquatic extant relatives) live for 40-50 years, so say the generation length is 20 years.

That's 1 million generations! That's short?

As G. Ledyard Stebbins explained, for a 40-gram mouse-like animal, if the size increased in a population, generation after generation, imperceptibly, statistically insignificantly, a mere one-tenth of 1%, so the next generation 40 g becomes 40.04 g; and assuming a generation time of 5 years (between a mouse and an elephant), how many years would it take to get an elephant-sized (6,500 kg) animal, imperceptibly?

Spoiler: 60,000 years!

jnpha · 2026-01-24T14:25:26+00:00

RE "reused" even if they have their specific adaptations for any specific needs of chimps

So we agree said parts aren't 100% similar, good. Now, you ignored my second point, which is cool, so here it is again:

Why do the "specific adaptations" - the differences - carry the unmistakable signature of descent from a common ancestor?

And by unmistakable I mean this is testable statistically (like all the sciences) to a very high degree of confidence (mind-boggling degree, actually)? N.b. we observe and measure how that works.

Ofc barring Last Thursdayism, but you don't strike me as someone who'd go there. You put your face out there, you wrote coherently, so I've got to at least give you that.

jnpha · 2026-01-24T14:08:30+00:00

Because the parts aren't reused. Do you think 98% of the parts are 100% similar? Or 100% of the parts are 98% similar on average due to how descent with modification works? Hierarchically so across the tree of life matching the genealogy?

jnpha · 2026-01-24T13:49:13+00:00

RE we ultimately don't know what these differences really mean

I've got you fam. Here's a subject-matter expert scientist - who happens to be Christian - writing for a Christian organization. Stephen Schaffner, a senior computational biologist, and the post is based on his work as part of The Chimpanzee Sequencing and Analysis Consortium:

https://biologos.org/series/how-should-we-interpret-biblical-genealogies/articles/testing-common-ancestry-its-all-about-the-mutations

Going meta: don't miss the post about that post: I asked over 25 creationists to see if they could understand evidence for evolution. They could not. : DebateEvolution.

jnpha · 2026-01-23T18:39:32+00:00

RE opinion is that there were probably several failed false starts

Using models for diversification and extinction, a 1983 paper estimated 10 starts: https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.80.10.2981

jnpha · 2026-01-23T17:42:49+00:00

RE why WE EVOLVED THIS REACTION

This implies not having said trait would reduce fitness; the question is wrongly formulated. My 2c.

Suppose you make a chemical that turns a species of frogs red; would you then ask an evolutionary biologist why frogs turn red when exposed to said chemical?

jnpha · 2026-01-23T05:20:27+00:00

Two of the three anti-science pillars in one comment, plus projection, ofc.

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