Source monitoring error (source confusion)

Biological Parallel

Crows learning from groupmates often can't distinguish whether they discovered a technique or observed it—the valuable information is the technique itself, not its origin. Source memory is metabolically expensive overhead when the pattern is what predicts survival. Source confusion reveals priority: your brain invests encoding resources in 'what works' not 'who said it,' because in ancestral environments, stealing good ideas mattered more than attribution.