There was an example case of a blind man with cataracts getting it fixed at around 50 years old. People were curious if he would be able to know if a sphere was round just by looking at it without touching it.
IIRC - not only could he not do that, but he couldn't visually interpret shadows (saw them as black splotches - didn't recognize depth), and was confused why objects got smaller as they were moving away.
I think the human visual system trains on a lot of visual input data, but it typically happens at the baby stage where you can't really interact.
But I doubt it's 100% "no pre-wiring". What about gravity and musculature? Surely brains must know or train on these in some way before birth.
And what about fight or flight reflexes and presupposing monsters in the shadows? My understanding is that these had a primitive evolutionary basis and that we came hardwired to respond to certain stimuli.
The cataracts thing was an article I saw on HN a few years ago, but don’t remember the title.
Found this:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17687533
which leads to:
https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/people-cured-blindne...
which leads to:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1993/05/10/to-see-and-not...
> TO SEE AND NOT SEE By Oliver Sacks May 2, 1993
> A NEUROLOGIST'S NOTEBOOK about Virgil (pseud.), who lost his eyesight as a child, and regained it at age 50. Tells how he could not adjust to the sighted world, and eventually had to be hospitalized.
Unfortunately, it needs a New Yorker account to view.
I don't think there's much opportunity to experience gravity before birth in order to train it, and I can't think of anything the brain would need to know about gravity beyond how we experience it with our senses.
> And what about fight or flight reflexes and presupposing monsters in the shadows? My understanding is that these had a primitive evolutionary basis and that we came hardwired to respond to certain stimuli.
Maybe pre-wired behaviors can depend on non-pre-wired stimuli, like a function that's conditioned on an undefined function and evaluates to false on exception.