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Mammals dream about the world they are about to experience before they are born

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Re: Mammals dream about the world they are about to experience before they are born

#111
post #77
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is commonly attributed to the fact that human babies have immature brains that cannot mature due to birth canal constraints, which is constrained by pelvis size which is constrained by the need to walk upright Interestingly, the EGG hypothesis postulates that the constraining factor is not pelvis size, but rather that neonates consume so much energy that we give birth just before a women's metabolic limits wou…

> Instead, the mother delivers and the neonate’s growth rate slows relative to its fetal growth rate. Worth noting how massive the growth rate is I think: Even after birth, the baby gains weight faster than it ever will again in its life. In absolute terms! In relative terms it's even more insane. A 12-year-old boy going through puberty will go from 90lb to 100lb over a year, an increase of 10lb or ~10%. The average…

Putting on 6kg in a year is not that fast, people do sometimes gain weight faster than that in adulthood.

Re: Mammals dream about the world they are about to experience before they are born

#112

Really fascinating. Does this mean the world "view" is encoded into the DNA somehow and that then gets transformed into neural activity? How could a few billion pairs of acids encode such a world? What's even more fascinating is that emotions, behaviors, imagination and dreams must all be encoded and not learnt with just a billion-odd pairs / bits. Meanwhile, it takes a few megabytes for us humans to encode a decent…

The dreaming doesn't simulate a complex world. As I understand it, it might be something like a simple blob moving around in 2D space.

Re: Mammals dream about the world they are about to experience before they are born

#113
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This person's baby walked at 8 months [1] [1] https://www.scarymommy.com/complete-shock-early-walking-baby...

Hence me giving a range of 6-9 months. My niece was walking not long after 9 months, it's rare but not unheard of. A newborn baby simply wouldn't have the physical strength or rigidity, though.

Earliest I've seen was 9/10 months, that kid looked so strange to me, they could barely hold their head up as they tottered around like a drunk. I wonder if the parents promoted early walking?

Re: Mammals dream about the world they are about to experience before they are born

#114
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are these innate patterns of activity priming mammalian brains in a similar way? A newborn foal can stand within 55 minutes of being born and can walk or run within 90 minutes. That is crazy fast training speed. Is it training initialization or is it a form of transfer learning? Most human babies take 9-18 months to walk, and this is commonly attributed to the fact that human babies have immature brains that cannot…

I guess it's firmware of some kind. Newborns already know how to breathe, how to control the heart rate and tons of other low level things. Legs movement is a small feature in comparison.

Newborns don't even know the legs belong to them.

Re: Mammals dream about the world they are about to experience before they are born

#115
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The researchers call it "dream-like" and it is, in the sense that, like a dream, the neurons are stimulated and activated as though sensory input was occurring despite there being no actual stimuli.

Huh, how weird. How are those stimulis generated? Through the mother's eyes or brain activity?

"Dream-like" implies they are genetated directly in the fetus brain without external stimuli.

Re: Mammals dream about the world they are about to experience before they are born

#116

Really fascinating. Does this mean the world "view" is encoded into the DNA somehow and that then gets transformed into neural activity? How could a few billion pairs of acids encode such a world? What's even more fascinating is that emotions, behaviors, imagination and dreams must all be encoded and not learnt with just a billion-odd pairs / bits. Meanwhile, it takes a few megabytes for us humans to encode a decent…

It's just expanding circular waves of activity on the retina. Don't read too much into the articles clickbait headline :)

Re: Mammals dream about the world they are about to experience before they are born

#117
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are these innate patterns of activity priming mammalian brains in a similar way? A newborn foal can stand within 55 minutes of being born and can walk or run within 90 minutes. That is crazy fast training speed. Is it training initialization or is it a form of transfer learning? Most human babies take 9-18 months to walk, and this is commonly attributed to the fact that human babies have immature brains that cannot…

> this is commonly attributed to the fact that human babies have immature brains that cannot mature due to birth canal constraints, which is constrained by pelvis size which is constrained by the need to walk upright Interestingly, the EGG hypothesis postulates that the constraining factor is not pelvis size, but rather that neonates consume so much energy that we give birth just before a women's metabolic limits wou…

No post body was provided.

Re: Mammals dream about the world they are about to experience before they are born

#118
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead, the mother delivers and the neonate’s growth rate slows relative to its fetal growth rate. Worth noting how massive the growth rate is I think: Even after birth, the baby gains weight faster than it ever will again in its life. In absolute terms! In relative terms it's even more insane. A 12-year-old boy going through puberty will go from 90lb to 100lb over a year, an increase of 10lb or ~10%. The average…

Putting on 6kg in a year is not that fast, people do sometimes gain weight faster than that in adulthood.

That's not growth, just fat accumulation which is a much simpler process.

Re: Mammals dream about the world they are about to experience before they are born

#119
post #12

Something about this reminds me of the 'Winning Ticket Hypothesis' in artifical neural networks: that some 'random' initializations prime a network far better for later faster learning. From https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.03635 - the abstract: Neural network pruning techniques can reduce the parameter counts of trained networks by over 90%, decreasing storage requirements and improving computational performance of infere…

How hard would it be to find random networks that don't need to be trained at all?

Surprisingly, it's quite doable in practice. See e.g. https://arxiv.org/abs/1911.13299.

Re: Mammals dream about the world they are about to experience before they are born

#120
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead, the mother delivers and the neonate’s growth rate slows relative to its fetal growth rate. Worth noting how massive the growth rate is I think: Even after birth, the baby gains weight faster than it ever will again in its life. In absolute terms! In relative terms it's even more insane. A 12-year-old boy going through puberty will go from 90lb to 100lb over a year, an increase of 10lb or ~10%. The average…

Putting on 6kg in a year is not that fast, people do sometimes gain weight faster than that in adulthood.

But putting on 100% or even 200% of weight in a year is not normal or even possible for most adults without crippling their health. All babies do this.
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