COMPLEXITY

Alison Gopnik on Child Development, Elderhood, Caregiving, and A.I.

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Jan 11, 2023
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ANECDOTE

Choosing Babies Over Philosophers

  • Alison Gopnik chose to study babies over philosophers during her graduate studies.
  • Babies actively seek truth while philosophers can be self-centered, leading her to focus on developmental psychology.
INSIGHT

Childhood Enables Broad Exploration

  • Human childhood is unusually long to balance exploration and exploitation of learning.
  • Child brain traits like scattered attention enhance broad hypothesis search rather than focused task completion.
INSIGHT

Environmental Variability Shapes Childhood

  • Human learning evolved under environmental variability encouraging plasticity and exploration.
  • Nomadic lifestyle and cultural transmission intensified the need for long childhood plasticity.
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