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Given the Harvard Law of Animal Behavior I think it's fitting that outputs are generated without a noticeable input/stimulus. If animals really do whatever they want regardless of controlled environments and precise manipulations, then it would make sense for their nervous systems to produce an output, or response, independent of a stimulus. It could be argued that self-stimulation exhibited by some autistic children is an example of the creation of output independent of input. On the other hand, it could be argued that the self-stimulation, or "stimming", is a product of a stressful environment, which would imply that stress is the input and whatever "stimming" behavior is the output.

I appreciate the evolution of our input-output box model, but I think there is still more to consider than just inputs and outputs. At the end of class, we discussed the concept of "architecture". The human brain is different from the brains of other animals because of the unique way the brain structures and lobes grow over each other. On an instinctive level, humans probably do not differ very much from other animals. However, humans have developed higher thought processes, including the ability to self-reflect and examine their own behavior. Is this evolutionary leap in intelligence a result of the structure of our brains? Or are the "boxes" inside the human nervous system different from the "boxes" in the brains of other animals?