Mason  🏃‍♂️ ✂️

To notice strangeness is to intuitively detect bad explanations. Strangeness is a function of surprise, and surprise is a function of ignorance

Yesterday I asked "why don't sharks eat people?" This is the kind of question that an 8-year-old might ask, so it seems cute now. But all the obvious answers are non-answers. "We're not a part of their natural diet." Really? Where do they learn that, shark school?

The first answer to the question is "because humans are rarely found in the sea". The second answer is "actually they do occasionally eat us". After taking these into account there's probably still some discrepancy though.

Answer is animals usually go for specific prey, because that's a better feeding strategy than trying to eat anything at all. Disutility of injury or death >> utility of one meal. This is why even powerful predators are cautious around unexpected stimuli.

But the large species that do encounter humans quite frequently (because they approach shorelines) actually have a pretty diverse diet — ex: white sharks are known to eat fish, turtles, aquatic mammals, even birds

It seems to me that the injury risk explanation would be stronger if it were true that sharks very rarely bit humans, but upon biting continued to feed unless deterred by an attack in response. But it's hard to say unless you know where the selection pressure comes from

It could be that bite is to get taste, shark expects a known taste. But when it tastes something unfamiliar is confused/cautious. Maybe sharks map our taste onto the closest familiar taste, i.e. marine mammals, plus large-ish size => dolphins, not safe to eat?