[4gotunameagain]

I was flabbergasted when I learned that herding dogs have the instinct to bite behind the legs, even of humans. It is a pressure tactic to make the herded animal go in a certain direction.

To me this is an (unpopular) argument against the tabula rasa theory of humans.

If such a complex behaviour can be congenital, who knows what behaviours are congenital in humans.

[cm2012]

Tabula rasa theory is not close to plausible with the scientific evidence we have, unfortunately.

[closewith]

Why is that unfortunate?

Edit: Just to clear, my comment was genuine curiosity, especially as true tabula rasa seems to mean we would lose benefits such as the ability to learn spoken language. The racist/xenophobic comments by a poster below is unscientific nonsense and not what I was trying to introduce.

[kylecazar]

They probably think it would be nice if people weren't born with negative behavioral pre-dispositions

[4gotunameagain]

One reason is because it will forever be an argument against equality by some who feel superior. Because some might believe they have the right to take decisions for others based on their perceived superiority, even if differences are incomprehensively multidimensional and humans who usually think of themselves as superior they lack terribly at other dimensions.

[golergka]

What kind of equality? Before the law, opportunity or outcome?

[alistairSH]

No, more basic than that - if there’s no “tabula rasa” (and people have inborn behavioral traits), then hate groups will use those traits (no matter how poorly proven or unlikely to be found across an entire group) to justify their belief system.

[4gotunameagain]

Not even as far as that, the type of equality to not gas the jews or to not eradicate palestineans, or to not lynch black people.

[bryanrasmussen]

bite behind leg doesn't sound so complex.

bite behind leg if multiple animals going towards X but animal A goes towards Y and biting will make A go towards X would be complex.

bite behind leg is simple and crude and by placing dog in right context produces complex and useful results.

[OgsyedIE]

It still requires solving the symbol grounding problem. How does DNA code for the brain's network weights that correspond to things like the definitions [non-prey target], [goal location], [incentive], [coerce] and [back of leg], or some other suitable set of concepts?

[bryanrasmussen]

I would say from reading the description it doesn't have to do all that, because it sounds like the dog is biting indiscriminately at backs of legs of any reasonable large animal, since it is also biting at the backs of human legs. So I think it doesn't really do any non-prey target reasoning, it just does target size X has back of leg, also I don't know based on description that it does incentive - what is the incentive of biting the back of human legs?

[isoprophlex]

Birds building elaborate nests is something I can't wrap my head around. How do you encode that in DNA, and have a (comparatively tiny) brain execute such complex social behavior?!

[Hendrikto]

There are insects with much much smaller brains than birds, that also exhibit quite complex nest building behavior.

[4gotunameagain]

To me it sounds complex enough to bite behind the leg, not leg in general, and not the leg of a chair for example.

I do not think a dog has to solve partial differential equations for me to be impressed and think that complex behaviours can be innate.