AI Practice Knowledge BaseCounterintuitive Facts (6): Why Do You Prefer Fake Things? Because Real Things Aren't Stimulating Enough Anymore
PremiumSupernormal Stimulus: The modern world is a carefully designed mousetrap, and you're the bird lunging at a fake egg
I. Nobel laureate Niko Tinbergen ran an experiment. There's a species of bird that incubates blue eggs with spots. Tinbergen made a giant, brightly colored fake egg. Three times larger than the real egg, denser spots, more vivid colors. So large the bird couldn't even climb on top of it.
II. Result? The bird abandoned its real eggs. Frantically tried to incubate the fake egg. Sliding off again and again, climbing back up again and again. The real eggs beside it gradually grew cold and died. It didn't care at all.
III. This is Supernormal Stimulus. Biological instincts are triggered by "simple features": bigger=better, spots=better, blue=better. In nature, nothing is bigger than the real egg, so this mechanism worked perfectly. But once someone artificially creates something that amplifies
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