> we learn these inferences by acting on the world and observing the results, and arguably they are simply not learnable by pure observation alone. Tangentiall

> we learn these inferences by acting on the world and observing the results, and arguably they are simply not learnable by pure observation alone. Tangentially, wouldn't sampling based ML methods like particle filters / kalman filters or other randomized state space exploration algorithms be analogous to the person learning by acting on the world? In this case, the "action" would be bouncing the radar off the object being tracked. Of course these models are far more limited than a child in the way they can act on the world, and in the number of aspects of reality they can model. And furthermore, they have no concept of causality, and represent only the current state of knowledge they are modeling.