Language Learning

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I have a, we have a new grandchild, six months old. My youngest child's 23. So it's been about 22 and a half years since I saw a six month old. And yet there's going to be a day almost certainly that she will be able to say papa and then an enormous larger number of words. That is just not imaginable. Other than the fact that we know that everyone we talked to once was like that,. It is really extraordinary.

Do psychologists know anything? Psychologist Paul Bloom says yes--but not the things that you might think. Bloom discusses his book Psych with EconTalk's Russ Roberts and what the field of psychology can teach us about human intelligence, consciousness, and unhelpful instincts. They also discuss just how far psychology is from a true understanding of the human mind, and why, according to Bloom, that might not be such a bad thing.