This Changed How I Think About Love with Ezra Klein & Alison Gopnik
Notes
Kids are exploring and adults are exploiting, a true tradeoff.
Experiment with a box. Kids think it contains candy, but it actually contains pencils. 3 year olds day they thought pencils were in the box the entire time. 4 year olds realize that they thought it was candy then, but now they know it’s pencils.
Bayesian thinking... weighting the direction of old evidence against the thrust of the new
Early philosophers didn’t really study kids at all! :: Philosophy
Current generation might be stuck at a local minimum and we need generational change / new connections to get us out. If you try to shape your children too much, you’re going against the evolutionary purpose of childhood! :: Parenting
Love is the way of solving the parasite / host problem of child and mother... a relationship in which the mother does not get the better end of a strictly contractual agreement.
Love is grown and nurtured through the act of care and tending and worry. We don’t care because we love, we love because we care.
Not wanting to be a burden takes away the opportunity to care for you and love you.
Nuclear child raising leaves experienced 50-70 year old caregivers on the sidelines and siloed off from children they’re primed to love. Reminds me of The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake by David Brooks.
One of the reasons for rising teenage anxiety might be because they’ve had less of a chance to take risks early, psychological equivalent to the hygiene hypothesis.
Simple experiment with mice... one path is electrified and the other isn’t. Older mice would never go down the path again once they got shocked. Younger mice didn’t show the same avoidance and especially so if their mother was present. Resilient to environment changes. Information more important than utility. How to set up a secure, exploratory environment for myself?