This may be grossly off topic but Stuart started the 'instinct' discussion (and he originated the thread), and its highly interesting .. so take a look at this ..
Study examines how brain corrects perceptual errors
An interesting article about how the brain recalibrates itself in milliseconds, in order to predict based on instinctive memory.
But the very last paragraphs are fascinating …
Quote:
"Surprisingly, we found the perceptual task is not performed uniformly across subjects. Different people use different strategies to perform this task," Shams said. "Secondly, the vast majority of people, at least 75 percent, use a strategy that is considered seriously sub-optimal."
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"If they infer there is a 70 percent chance that the sound and flash are coming from the same object, for the majority of observers, 70 percent of the time they go with that estimate and 30 percent of the time they go with the unlikely estimate," Shams said. "Under conventional measures of optimality, which implicitly assume static environments, this strategy is highly suboptimal.
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and here is the punchline …
Quote:
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"However, the conventional way of thinking about these problems may not be correct after all. In a dynamic world, things may change constantly. The optimal strategy is to learn, and to learn you need to take some risks. Even if that's not the best choice at that time, in the long run, it may well be the best choice, because by exploring different possibilities, you may learn more. So paradoxically, a strategy that appears sub-optimal may actually be near-optimal. Perhaps the way we think about brain function should be revised."
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Pretty basic research .. and they're still finding out paradoxes coming from a very primitive part of our brains.
Learning ability seems to override just about all of our higher and lower brain functions.
We are all learnin' machines !! 'Go with the flow .. bro ..!!.. '
Amazing stuff.
Cheers