Animal Instincts: Are Creatures Better than Us at Computation?

I am not sure if we stay with door number one because we humans tend to be conservative or just too lazy to apply logic. We are capable of calculating the odds and thus should know that it is better to switch. It seems counter-intuitive to a person not well versed in statistical operations. Birds learn by remembering the history of prior selection to the point that they will select the door where the odds are in their favour. The question remains, why do humans stay with the first chosen door even after repeated observations? I think we humans make some decisions of choice based on "gut instinct" but then prefer not to think too hard about it. It is stressful to make decisions and mull over the one already made. I suspect if we were less stressed at the time of decision and could think about the door issue, we would eventually chose the door based on best logic.

Malcolm Gladwell has presented good explanations of this problem in his book Outliers. He also says that for humans to become very good experts in any field they need to practice a minimum of 10,000 hours. He used the Beatles and Mozart as examples. If you are selecting a brain surgeon, you may want the one with the most hours practiced. We all make better choices with practice and should be ready to calculate an answer when the choice is not obvious.

Areyou sure you want a "practicing" surgeon mucking about inside your skull???

Only if she/he has learned something and is an expert after 10K hours. Probably won't do much damage anyway...as I age I think it shrinks or is that needs a shrink. I forget.

Are Creatures Better than Us at Computation?

If they can find both roots of a square root function, then I would say they're better than most.

It was recently discovered that bees have excellent computational abilities when optimizing flight paths.

My math prof claimed that his bird dog was faster at Calculus than he was since when he shot a duck out on the river the dog calculated instantly the vector to intercept the drifting dead duck - & it would take him 15 minutes to calculate it ! ! !

your prof should tell his dog to put its calculus on paper for human use

After repeated failures to get the dog to hold a pencil, he ashamedly admitted that he realized that he was drifting at the same rate as the duck, so all he had to do was keep his eyes on the bird and ............................................................................................ SWIM LIKE HELL>>>>