Quick poorly-researched post, probably only of interest to neuroscientists.

The experiment

Justin Wood at University of Indiana has, over many years with great effort, developed a system for raising baby chicks such that all the light hitting their retina is experimentally controlled right from when they’re an embryo—the chicks are incubated and hatched in darkness, then moved to a room with video screens, head-tracking and so on. For a much better description of how this works and how he got into this line of work, check out his recent appearance on the Brain Inspired podcast.

He and collaborators posted a new paper last week: “Object permanence in newborn chicks is robust against opposing evidence” by Wood, Ullman, Wood, Spelke, and Wood. I just read it today. It's really cool!

The official whisky of Wood, Ullman, Wood, Spelke, and Wood

In their paper, they are using the system above to study [...]

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Outline:

(00:11) The experiment

(03:53) How do we make sense of these results?

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First published:
March 7th, 2024

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/v9qj2LHLh2ALDGKyA/woods-new-preprint-on-object-permanence

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Woods’ new preprint on object permanence” by Steven Byrnes

LessWrong (30+ Karma)