
Are birds smarter than mathematicians?  - rglullis
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20175592
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andrewcooke
That's interesting. Unfortunately the text isn't free. Do they have any guess
as to why?

My guess is that there's some fairly simple heuristic that gives the right
answer, which birds are using but which we, for some reason, are not. Either
we lost / never had the instinctive heuristic or it gets vetoed by confused
conscious thought.

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argv_empty
From the abstract, _Across experiments, the probability of gaining
reinforcement for switching and staying was manipulated, and birds adjusted
their probability of switching and staying to approximate the optimal
strategy._

From that, I'd guess that the birds are making their selection based on
experience about what has and hasn't worked in the recent past.

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lkozma
I didn't read the full article, but I'm curious: how did they explain to the
pigeons that there was a reward behind exactly one door.

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spuz
Reminds me of the experiment Lisa does in the Simpsons: "Is My Brother Dumber
Than A Hamster?" :)

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dbz
Yeah. I believe everything I read even if I see obvious reasons why something
is false.

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anatoly
No.

