Three presenters try to teach a dog named Mossy to press a button for a sound cue, using petting instead of treats. Dogs learn at wildly different speeds, some instantly and others over months. The demo might fail, but it shows how animal learning works.
Chapters
Do you mind if we use your dog? Can we go ahead and give it a shot? It's so cool. I don't know if it's just a coincidence, but we happen to have a dog here in the audience that looks just like Dogecoin. You set this up? Oh my gosh.
Do you happen to have any treats with you? I don't have treats. You don't have treats or a ball?
So, okay, we can come on over here. Here we go. Mossy, Mossy, Mossy, you want to push that?
Shit, yeah. But we don't have any food.
No, maybe we don't have any food to give.
We can give you pets.
Oh, okay. Hit pet. Some dogs will press the button instantly, and some dogs honestly will take 2 months. So it's like there's a large amount of individual variability.
I'm a stranger to this dog, so I don't know what motivates this dog. This dog doesn't know me. I could be like a scary person or whatever. But right here we are building the association. This dog hears this sound and receives the pets. That is learning.
Okay, well, I don't know if this is going to work. With maybe a few more minutes, we could have seen them pressing— and treats— we could have seen them pressing.
Yeah, for sure.
Although we do have a new friend. That was a good demo. Most demos don't work anyway.
Especially when they involve animals. Yeah. If we had had a dog there, that dog would have been dialed, would have known buttons, like, would have dominated that whole presentation. We would have already won the finals.
