[blainm]

Living things that are good at predicting things don't die as much. There's a good reason why our auditory system is always on, even when we sleep. I suspect the reason for something like an 'earworm' is a system that's eager to predict sounds from the environment.

It's probably better to have a slightly overeager prediction system which sometimes gives false positives than one that isn't as active, because false negatives could lead to your death. That includes things like noticing that birds suddenly stopped singing. Maybe it's nothing, but you can see the use of a subconscious background process that has is eagerly making predictions that would then have an error, that could potentially save your life.

Thinking Fast and Slow has a wonderful example of the veteran firefighter who knew to order people out and then later realised that it was his ears feeling unusually warm (that was the clue to the hidden fire under the floor) that made the area unsafe.

If there are alien life forms out there, I would expect them to have evolved similar systems.

[furyofantares]

When I was a parent of a newborn I was shocked at how good my hearing for a fidgeting baby became.

Then I realized I was also getting a number of false positives, and eventually I noticed that I felt a sort of constant tax of, well, the kid was just always on my mind. Just always some sort of background simulation of what might be going on in the other room, not at the forefront but almost always running.

So any little noise would quickly fit some imagined scenario involving the kid, and I'd be on my way to her as soon as she woke up and made the smallest noise - or any time the house creaked.

[chaosbolt]

This makes sense, I never thought about it this way.