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Comment by ajuc | Hacker News Reader

They 'bomb' the street with walnuts where i live to open them. That's smart but not that impressive. What's impressive is - they don't do it on the parking lots where cars rarely drive, nor on the main road where cars drive constantly. They target pedestrian crossing near the main road, wait for cars to crack the walnut, then eat it.

They understand where the perfect number of cars is gonna be.

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And crosswalks are great, as when the light changes, they have the chance to eat it without getting run over.

These particular ones have no lights. But people are still more careful around them so still good idea I guess.

In my experience "without getting run over" is very context oriented with the context being "what city are you in".

In Davis, CA they would perch on power lines holding a walnut in one claw, positioned over on of the wheel paths, and wait until a car was approaching in the appropriate position, and then drop the walnut just before the car arrived. They had a pretty good success rate.

Others just dropped them from high altitudes. I suspect the ones on the power lines were just showing off; as much fun as need.

Could also just be trial and error.

Which also sums up most of human history.

Normally I try not to contribute useless comments, but I found this to be a particularly hilarious, laughing-out-loud at my desk observation.

"... and has widely been considered a bad idea." Thanks, Douglas Adams :)

Exploration vs exploitation in action.

Is there any other form of learning?

humans are able to take concepts and and predict with 100% accuracy what will happen next without trial and error. We also have arithmetic which also is not trial and error.

> We also have arithmetic which also is not trial and error.

How did you learn arithmetic?

We're getting into Hume/Kant territory

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