
Babies are pre-wired to perceive the world - hardmaru
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/born-ready-babies-are-prewired-to-perceive-the-world/
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dntbnmpls
It's pretty self-evident. You don't teach a baby to see, make sound or hear.
Babies will perceive and respond. Of course the powers of perception will
continue to develop but we know babies aren't born into this world tabula
rasa.

Not only that we know that fetuses can perceive the world. We know fetuses
recognize its mother's voice in the womb.

[https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=97635](https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=97635)

And premature babies benefit from hearing their mother's voice.

[https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/shouldstorm/201909...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/shouldstorm/201909/the-
power-mothers-voice)

The only mystery is the neurological mechanism of how the brain is and gets
wired.

~~~
scotty79
> It's pretty self-evident. You don't teach a baby to see, make sound or hear.

It teaches itself and if you keep a baby in the darkness for enough time after
birth and only later introduce it to the light and images it will not be able
to see.

We might be prewired but a lot of building, configuring and pruning is going
on with our neural networks in response to stimuli. Without stimuli we fail to
develop many functions.

~~~
drewbug
> if you keep a baby in the darkness for enough time after birth and only
> later introduce it to the light and images it will not be able to see

Is that true?

~~~
simiones
It has not been tested on human children most likely (and hopefully!) but it
has been tested and is true on other mammals.

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jugg1es
I think that this 'pre-wire' concept is one that humans abhor on some level
because it reduces the feeling of autonomy (or free will). But we are biased
against it to our peril. When we look around the animal kingdom, we are
bombarded with examples of how other animals are born knowing how to walk, or
even weave spider webs.

Why would humans be any different? We are most likely pre-wired with pathways
that facilitate learning in specific ways that enable our brains to develop
specific skills, such as speech. Although, it would be pretty great if we
could pre-wire ourselves to know how to use a toilet.

~~~
_sbrk
I don't think that it is at all difficult to suppose that we humans have a
sort of "Boot ROM" to get us started in the world. This basic brain wiring
pattern is then patched, if you will, over many decades to make us the person
which we will eventually become.

~~~
tsumnia
Right, but I believe OP's argument is more align to the idea that some things
are "nature" and others "nurture". Further, which perceptions of the world are
prewired will always be a hotly debated topic.

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yqx
> "It all boils down to this philosophical question: Are humans special? Do
> they have parts of their brain predestined to become these special things?"
> Livingstone says. "Or can we explain it using low-level principles we’ve
> inherited from lower animals?"

I found this remark by Margaret Livingstone, quoted in the article, very
surprising. What if anything does innate functional specialization have to do
with whether "humans are special"? How does the presence of such
specialization distinguish us from "lower animals"?

Perhaps the reasoning goes that what might make humans special is the presence
of human-specific innate specialized brain mechanisms. But while not everyone
might agree, I tend to think the difference may be more related to subtle
neuro-anatomical differences (such as number of neurons) rather than the
presence of specialized "brain modules". We know brains are highly context
sensitive and plastic, and judging by Livingstone's earlier quote, she agrees.
So why is the charged question of human exceptionalism (which she already
seems to accept given the reference "lower animals") suddenly linked so
strongly to the presence of innate specialization?

~~~
haberman
That remark surprised me too. I remember reading about a study about dogs vs.
wolves, and that dogs were more inclined to look to a human when they needed
help solving a problem. They seem to have an innate predisposition towards
human faces also, which seems plausible given their hundreds of years of
breeding for human companionship.

~~~
psalminen
Actually, canine domestication started thousands of years ago[0]

[0] [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-wolves-
rea...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-wolves-really-
became-dogs-180970014/)

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OliverJones
Maybe this is a old parenting legend ... but I've seen it myself.

Try grinning at a newborn baby. She'll grin back. It seems to be a reflex, and
it seems to fade away after a few days' life.

~~~
xyzzyz
Most newborn babies hardly smile at all. First smile is something you
typically wait weeks for, and even then it’s more like a face twitch,
unprompted by anything smile-worthy happening around.

~~~
saiya-jin
Mine smiled for the first time after about a week. It wasn't a long one, but
was a typical joker-like full face smile that I can't even do myself.

They do display emotions in their face at ferocious pace, no filter like
adults - and so far they correspond to overall situation pretty well.

As for smile-worthy - one of his personal gods just came to him to see up
close (aka papa checking how is he). If that isn't a happy moment, I don't
know what is.

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fctorial
Isn't that obvious.

~~~
ailideex
Yeah ... this seems like a bit of a truism. Humans evolved in "the world".
That implies that we are at least somewhat adapted to said world. What would
be surprising is if we were not somewhat adapted to perceive the world. Saying
that we have some adaptations to perceive the world is about as novel as
claiming water is wet.

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ngcc_hk
Structure or pre-wiring. You have an eye and some Neurons. They can’t be
totally random. There would be some structure. But is this pre-wiring. Can it
be changed later?

~~~
posterboy
Randomly initialized weights do work for neural nets. I'm not much into AI
tho.

Think of it like this: You can make a rather arbitrary nonsense claim and
still hope for a response that corrects it, or has something interesting to
say at least.

Alas, I am not the response one would hope for the most-- not offering a map
to the kingdom either, while a connectome alone isn't worth much anyway.

