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Why birds do not fall while sleeping

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31–40 of 191 posts

Re: Why birds do not fall while sleeping

#31
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Baby crawling adults walking and old man with cane?

Okay but that's a pretty long day, isn't it? I'm not sure that's a proper 'riddle', per se.

Like it or not it's been a definitive example of a classic riddle since before it appeared in Oedipus Rex, an Athenian tragedy by Sophocles that was first performed c. 429 BC.

~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oedipus_Rex

( spoiler: he loved his mother )

Re: Why birds do not fall while sleeping

#32
post #4
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kangaroos engage in quadrupedal (actually pentapedal—using their tail as well) locomotion at slow speeds.

Humans also engage in quadrupedal locomotion, often at any speed and sometimes up stairs too. Also, I see both of my dogs standing on 2 legs every day, often walking short distances like that. According to wikipedia this only happens when they are trained to do it (?!) but we never trained them and they've been doing it since a few months old. Maybe I should update https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipedalism to indicate…

> Maybe I should update https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipedalism to indicate training may not be required for temporary bipedal behavior in some dogs.

That is against wikipedia's rules and thus will get reverted. You have to have a secondary source, not a primary source, and you're currently a primary source.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research

Re: Why birds do not fall while sleeping

#33
post #5
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kangaroos engage in quadrupedal (actually pentapedal—using their tail as well) locomotion at slow speeds.

So do humans, babies and the elderly especially. What has 4 legs in the morning, 2 in the afternoon, and 3 in the evening? The key here is how relaxed is the interpretation of "permanent".

> So do humans, babies and the elderly especially.

Only the healthy adult form is taken into account generally, you wouldn't say that dragonflies are mainly swimming animals for example, even if they do spend most of their life underwater as larvae.

The point here is that kangaroos that are capable of bipedal motion will always choose quadrupedal motion at low speeds. While humans who can walk will always choose to walk when possible.

Re: Why birds do not fall while sleeping

#34

When I was younger, I was fascinated by evolution, especially the intricacies of how things just work. This fascination also explains why many people believe in the intelligent design theory. However, witnessing the rapid evolution of AI with just a few hundred GPUs, enough data, and power, I no longer wonder what a billion years of feedback loops and randomness can achieve.

[deleted]

Re: Why birds do not fall while sleeping

#35

You know how when your hand is relaxed, your fingers are curled? When birds relax, their feet curl in a similar way, and this provides enough grip that if they're on a perch, they will automatically hold on as easily as if they're awake. There's a bit more to it, as the way the tendons in their feet and legs are attached, the foot will automatically grasp when the ankle is bent, so it's a much stronger grip than our…

If a bird gets overweight and/or doesn't have enough different surfaces to grip, it will develop pressure sores on its feet just to add some nuance.

Re: Why birds do not fall while sleeping

#36
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Random, that's what we think, bacteria living in gut can also think the whole digestive process to be part of some random universal law

Using your analogy, it's absolutely unknowable to bacteria, and therefore absolutely unknowable to us. Random is perhaps the most intellectually honest way of describing it, since it is widely accepted that randomness is a feature of relatively uncomplicated systems.

What is called as 'Random', I will term it as 'free will'. In case of a human training an AI, free will be of the human and in case of creation of universe free will be that of the 'intelligent designer'

Re: Why birds do not fall while sleeping

#37
post #32
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans also engage in quadrupedal locomotion, often at any speed and sometimes up stairs too. Also, I see both of my dogs standing on 2 legs every day, often walking short distances like that. According to wikipedia this only happens when they are trained to do it (?!) but we never trained them and they've been doing it since a few months old. Maybe I should update https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipedalism to indicate…

> Maybe I should update https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipedalism to indicate training may not be required for temporary bipedal behavior in some dogs. That is against wikipedia's rules and thus will get reverted. You have to have a secondary source, not a primary source, and you're currently a primary source. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research

In practice, most trivia on the site follows the "no source at all" policy, including the claim the GP suggested they might revise.

Whether it gets reverted essentially depends on whether someone would bother before it gets lost in the depths of the change history and how the GP chooses to respond if someone did.

Re: Why birds do not fall while sleeping

#38

When I was younger, I was fascinated by evolution, especially the intricacies of how things just work. This fascination also explains why many people believe in the intelligent design theory. However, witnessing the rapid evolution of AI with just a few hundred GPUs, enough data, and power, I no longer wonder what a billion years of feedback loops and randomness can achieve.

AI isn’t being trained on random though. It’s the corpus of a large portion of all of humanity’s written communication. I don’t think it’s a good analogy to evolution.

A single training session will iterate more than the number of generations of all birds.

Re: Why birds do not fall while sleeping

#39

When I was younger, I was fascinated by evolution, especially the intricacies of how things just work. This fascination also explains why many people believe in the intelligent design theory. However, witnessing the rapid evolution of AI with just a few hundred GPUs, enough data, and power, I no longer wonder what a billion years of feedback loops and randomness can achieve.

Where's randomness? AI is an intelligently designed algorithm trained to mimic words of highly intelligent species, and all that runs on GPUs that didn't evolve from a pile of mud, but were intelligently created according to a plan.

Re: Why birds do not fall while sleeping

#40

You know how when your hand is relaxed, your fingers are curled? When birds relax, their feet curl in a similar way, and this provides enough grip that if they're on a perch, they will automatically hold on as easily as if they're awake. There's a bit more to it, as the way the tendons in their feet and legs are attached, the foot will automatically grasp when the ankle is bent, so it's a much stronger grip than our…

If a bird gets overweight and/or doesn't have enough different surfaces to grip, it will develop pressure sores on its feet just to add some nuance.

Our parrot came with a crooked toe (probably dislocated when he was a baby) and he has a permanent pressure sore in his foot, to add even more nuance. It’s the foot he preferences when standing or sleeping so I don’t think it’s a big problem.
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