www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZJZZEuPFKeEdkrRyf/why-we-should-expect-ruthless-sociopat...

The post asserts that imitative learning is entirely absent (and even impossible) in humans and animals. That is contradicted by extensive behavioral and neuroscientific literature showing that humans (including infants and toddlers) imitate observed actions, and that multiple animal species learn behaviors via imitation/observational learning.

Humans: Developmental psychology documents that infants and toddlers selectively reproduce actions they observe others performing (i.e., imitation). For example, Brugger et al. (2007) report experimental evidence that 14–16-month-old infants imitate observed actions, and that infants’ imitation depends on physical necessity and social cues.

Animals: Many animals show imitative learning, including well-studied cases like vocal learning in songbirds. Tchernichovski et al. (2021) explicitly describe song acquisition as occurring “by imitation,” and analyze tutor–pupil learning dynamics consistent with imitative copying.

Because credible peer-reviewed sources directly describe imitation/imitative learning in both humans and non-human animals, the absolute statement that it is “entirely absent (and impossible)” is not correct as written. (There can be debates about which forms of social learning count as “imitation” under narrower definitions, but that’s different from claiming imitation is entirely absent/impossible.)