"It showed that dogs process information from their environment and use it to make predictions"
Exactly that is not what the experiment is about because we all know that dogs will quickly learn the connection between bell and food as dogs are easy to teach new tricks.
If you replace 'dogs' with 'humans', it becomes an empty phrase: "It showed that humans process information from their environment and use it to make predictions" - we all know that.
The groundbreaking part of the experiment was that it showed there are responses which are not part of the conscious mind and which are not willingly controllable by the conscious mind. The dog did not 'decide' to produce saliva.
The experiment was done with a dog because obviously you wont find humans willing to undergo surgery to have the saliva come out of the cheeks instead of into the mouth.
One has to forget about the dog and mentally replace it with a human: now the observation that the human connects the bell with the food is shallow. But the conditioned saliva reflex remains and can't be suppressed - and that is a remarkable insight. It works both with negative and positive stimuli. The latter one being a recipe for a long-lasting happy relationship ;)
alt Hacker News
"It showed that dogs process information from their environment and use it to make predictions"
Exactly that is not what the experiment is about because we all know that dogs will quickly learn the connection between bell and food as dogs are easy to teach new tricks.
If you replace 'dogs' with 'humans', it becomes an empty phrase: "It showed that humans process information from their environment and use it to make predictions" - we all know that.
The groundbreaking part of the experiment was that it showed there are responses which are not part of the conscious mind and which are not willingly controllable by the conscious mind. The dog did not 'decide' to produce saliva.
The experiment was done with a dog because obviously you wont find humans willing to undergo surgery to have the saliva come out of the cheeks instead of into the mouth.
One has to forget about the dog and mentally replace it with a human: now the observation that the human connects the bell with the food is shallow. But the conditioned saliva reflex remains and can't be suppressed - and that is a remarkable insight. It works both with negative and positive stimuli. The latter one being a recipe for a long-lasting happy relationship ;)