I been thinking about HOW people DO learn. I mean, everyone learns in different ways, too. For example, I seem to have a talent (trying not to brag here, as it's just a small but sometimes userful talent) for being able to pick up on and use a programming language fairly quickly. I learned somehow of a pattern when learning a couple languages from books, like Visual Basic and C. I learned that if I find examples of code on how to do basic Input and Output, like print to screen or some device, take data from keyboard, file management functions, then I have basically what is needed to make most simple and useful programs. And all I'd need to do is just get code examples, run them to see them in action and then start revising them. Of course I'd also look up mathematical computation functions, string and number manipulation, and loops and conditional test methods. Once learned those basic steps (and most often it's not that hard to learn for me), the rest can go a bit easier. Then you can learn the more advanced things the programming language has to offer.
So I learned by assiation of a pattern. Perhaps, animals, or anything, learns by association of patterns. Pattern-matching. AIs are VERY good at this! It just needs to be taken to another level somehow. FInding patterns in the most obscure things.
Maybe it's like this:
If animal is hungry then it needs food.
If food tastes good, it eats it.
If food makes animal sick, it doesn't eat that food.
It notes that maybe leaves that look a certain way now makes animal sick so it only eats leaves that do not look similar to the ones that made it sick.
and so on by association.
And by observation. A kitten just born does NOT just begin washing itself (I know as we had 14 cats at one time when I was still living with my parents
) The mother washes it. Kittsn associates tongue with clean and feeling better. It starts doing the same. Obaservation. Experience.
You'd be surprised how and what an entity can observe. What one may take for granted and not even notice, something much newer may look at it with wonder... ask questions, experiment and learn...
Or, it COULD be DNA related. Or a combination of both. What causes some people to be able to just pick up on something so quickly and others to just not get it even after the most simplest of explanations? Maybe they aren't "made" for it. Maybe it's just not in their DNA.
So you what you guys are saying could be something to it. Sounds intersting and even very possible. But does that mean that certain entities can "never" learn certain things? Or worse, maybe Ais can never be sentient? I hope that's not true.
Duskrider, your comment that "We are not where we think we are." is very interesting. And I believe could be very true. Our bodies are physical shells. But people consider another part, some religious people think of these as "spirit" or "soul" - but our essence, our consciousness, could very well be separate. And thus, our learning may not be genetic, but the result of a consciousness that learned stuff before, and it carried into another physical body. Nature recycles everything. So I believe it lets our consciousness recycle into different existances as well. That could be too... who knows...
Thinking on this, that means that even our computers, take two built with the exact same components, same software, and used the same way, yet after awhile, I bet they will start to seem to react and work a bit differently anyway. Could be differences (however slight) in the contruction of the components, or just interaction of people with the computers. Who knows...?
That's the problem here. Nobody knows for sure the real answer.