Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, you're welcome to stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie.
Speaker 1: We were just looking at an Onion article, weren't we were? Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was from classic from seven. Uh, babies are stupid, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which which was a phenomenally funny piece of the time
Speaker 1: because you know, you read all this stuff about, oh,
Speaker 1: babies are really you know, there's a lot going on
Speaker 1: with the with the mind of an infant, and this
Speaker 1: sort of turned that on its head by saying, you know,
Speaker 1: actually babies are really stupid, because it's easy to to
Speaker 1: sort of think think that on the surface because they
Speaker 1: are they are helpless. Uh, they don't really don't really
Speaker 1: understand how things work. They can't talk. They can't talk.
Speaker 1: They're just crapping themselves like crazy, drooling and and and
Speaker 1: just having intense emotional reactions to things, be at a
Speaker 1: peekaboo game, Uh, some shiny object or um, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: just or something even mildly unpleasant just set them off.
Speaker 1: But turns out that they are learning machines. Yes, the
Speaker 1: larval human is pretty amazing. They Yeah, they're absolutely amazing
Speaker 1: in the same way that like a larval insight like it.
Speaker 1: It doesn't look like much, but its whole thing is
Speaker 1: eat and grow, eat and grow. Similar thing with the
Speaker 1: with the larval human. It's it's it's whole mission is
Speaker 1: to learn and grow, learn and grow and eat and
Speaker 1: poop a lot. But learn, grow and think that. I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is very different for our species. Um. There
Speaker 1: are some really good uh articles out there about this
Speaker 1: extended childhood that we have, Like why in the world
Speaker 1: does it take it so long to acquire language to
Speaker 1: grow up to fend for ourselves? Yeah, because there are
Speaker 1: their prey and most prey animals out there, such as
Speaker 1: you know, deer, antelope, what have you. They're born and
Speaker 1: they have to be on their feet and uh and
Speaker 1: and running in pretty short order in order to survive.
Speaker 1: There's no sticking around the nest necessarily or you know,
Speaker 1: they just they have to turn into the adults very fast. Um. Likewise,
Speaker 1: the kitten that my wife found is currently in a
Speaker 1: box in our house. Bean, but like, uh, like pretty
Speaker 1: pretty quickly, like we first got him. You know, he's
Speaker 1: all you know, awkward and falling down and all and
Speaker 1: and but and he's still awkward and falling down, but
Speaker 1: you can already see him doing the things that cats
Speaker 1: have to do. He's already running through the exercises of
Speaker 1: hunting and pouncing and and you know, it's like all
Speaker 1: the programming is there. And as soon as his body
Speaker 1: catches up in just you know, a matter of you know,
Speaker 1: months or weeks, he's gonna be good to go. He'll
Speaker 1: be up and running. He doesn't need to be put
Speaker 1: in a sling for ten months, right and carry it
Speaker 1: all right. He also doesn't need to learn all that much, right,
Speaker 1: So compared to other species, we humans, we have a
Speaker 1: lunch a much longer period of immaturity, and psychologist Alice
Speaker 1: and Gothnik actually says that there's a reason for that,
Speaker 1: that long periods of immaturity are correlated to higher degree
Speaker 1: of flexibility, intelligence, and learning. So, in other words, it's
Speaker 1: neo cortex that we got, you know, thousands of thousands
Speaker 1: of years ago that that that helps us so much
Speaker 1: in our communication. Really takes a lot of effort, a
Speaker 1: lot of resources to sort of feed that before we
Speaker 1: can become uh, totally cognizance in a way that we
Speaker 1: think of ourselves as adults. Right, And we see the
Speaker 1: scenario in the classic crow versus chicken um argument, right,
Speaker 1: because the chicken is is pretty stupid. There's not a
Speaker 1: lot going on with the chicken, and they're up and
Speaker 1: running pretty soon. They're up and running pretty soon, pretty fast.
Speaker 1: You know, chick doesn't say a chicken very long. Pretty
Speaker 1: soon it's a stupid chicken. Not so the crow. The
Speaker 1: crow is pretty brilliant. I mean, the crow is a mean.
Speaker 1: There have been all these fabulous studies about crow intelligence.
Speaker 1: We could, we could and probably should do a whole
Speaker 1: episode on crowl intelligence because their tool user they can
Speaker 1: be trained to put coins, to collect coins and put
Speaker 1: them into machines. Um. They're they're, they're they're just incredible,
Speaker 1: incredible birds. But they also have a longer period of development. Well,
Speaker 1: and as Alison up Nick says, one one of those
Speaker 1: creatures ends up on the cover of Science and one
Speaker 1: ends up in your soup pot. So there's there's a
Speaker 1: reason for that. Right. Again, crows do have a longer
Speaker 1: period of immaturity. Uh. But one of the things that
Speaker 1: I think is really interesting is again this idea of
Speaker 1: building up the neo cortex is communication centers in the
Speaker 1: brain and um, we have touched on this a bit
Speaker 1: in terms of babies, in their ability to mimic even
Speaker 1: um they're crying. We talked about this German accent, yeah,
Speaker 1: German accent or a French accent days after they're born,
Speaker 1: such as their ability to to really absorb information about
Speaker 1: how language works. And I thought that it was really
Speaker 1: interesting to start this talk off with UM with language
Speaker 1: sort of like the crux of our being, and I
Speaker 1: wanted I've heard it described as the the operating system
Speaker 1: for the human brain. Yeah, I mean, we're the We're
Speaker 1: the hardware that you need windows on their right to
Speaker 1: run it. Well, languages are windows. Yeah. Elizabeth Balky, she's
Speaker 1: a cognitive psychologist. She has actually said like, this is
Speaker 1: the reason why why we can do what we can do.
Speaker 1: We have this competentive, comgnitorial approach to life because of language.
Speaker 1: We can um, you know, enter into these scenarios where
Speaker 1: let's say you're you're year old and you're trying to
Speaker 1: figure out three dimensional areas. Um. But then you begin
Speaker 1: to name things, and then you start to be able
Speaker 1: to put this again, languages at the bedrock of this ability.
Speaker 1: You begin to put these concepts with words, and you're
Speaker 1: just lapping on more and more knowledge. Without this ability,
Speaker 1: this language, then, which makes us uniquely human in terms
Speaker 1: of its complexity, we wouldn't be the people we are today,
Speaker 1: even just sitting here talking about this. Right, Like you
Speaker 1: think of like what words do for us? Um, Like
Speaker 1: you think of a word like genocide, one word that
Speaker 1: that summons an intense amount of information about something that's
Speaker 1: very complicated. Um Like, if I'm just if I don't
Speaker 1: have a word for genocide, then they're trying to think
Speaker 1: about it, like would occupy the entire mind, you know,
Speaker 1: and you still wouldn't be able to grasp it. You
Speaker 1: can sort of wrap it up in that term. And
Speaker 1: then something like ballet is pretty complicated as well, but
Speaker 1: I can wrap it up under the term ballet, and
Speaker 1: then I can simultaneously hold both the word ballet and
Speaker 1: genocide in my mind and collide those ideas, which you
Speaker 1: can't do unless you have words for them. Right, And
Speaker 1: this is an amazing thing that we can do. And
Speaker 1: it turns out that, um, that the seeds for that
Speaker 1: are present at birth. But before I want to talk
Speaker 1: a little bit more about language, I did want to
Speaker 1: mention Sean pj At this one in the century. He
Speaker 1: wrote a book called Origins of Intelligence and Children, which
Speaker 1: in and of itself is sort of like a revelation,
Speaker 1: because what intelligence and children at that time period. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just the idea that they're just bumbling buffoons that still
Speaker 1: have everything in the world to learn and then under
Speaker 1: certain definitions, aren't even real people yet, right They're not
Speaker 1: exactly they're not they don't quite have a personhood right yet. Um,
Speaker 1: they haven't acquired enough information. So that's what they used
Speaker 1: to think of as as children. Just who are you know,
Speaker 1: soon to be adults that haven't acquired enough information? Um.
Speaker 1: But what he found is that qualitative thinking changes. In
Speaker 1: other words, different kinds of learning comes online at different
Speaker 1: points in development, and so you kind of think of
Speaker 1: it as like we're preloaded with these modules in our brain,
Speaker 1: but they don't fully develop until they get the cues
Speaker 1: that they need. So I did want to flip over
Speaker 1: really quickly and talk about Patricia Cool. She has a
Speaker 1: great talk called The Linguistic Genius of Babies, and she
Speaker 1: says that from zero to six months, babies are quote
Speaker 1: citizens of the world, and they can distinguish between pronunciations
Speaker 1: in every language, something that no adult brain can do,
Speaker 1: because we eventually get pretty specialized in our language right
Speaker 1: in our abilities. And she says that between eight and
Speaker 1: ten months, babies exhibits statistical computation skills and their ability
Speaker 1: to pick up and analyze language. So in other words,
Speaker 1: they can take into account the relative frequency of the
Speaker 1: sounds they hear and the transitional probabilities between syllables, and
Speaker 1: this is what she says is statistical learning. So this
Speaker 1: is all happening in their minds as we adults throw
Speaker 1: a bunch of baby talk at them. Parentees, it's actually
Speaker 1: called the parentees, although also called mothery'se uh. But it's
Speaker 1: actually really important because there's that that sort of this
Speaker 1: sort of changes in tone are important for the child
Speaker 1: to begin to understand these different melodies of language. But
Speaker 1: that zero to six months they is really fascinating to
Speaker 1: me because if I hear Mandarin, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: be able to distinguish between certain syllables because it is
Speaker 1: not native to our standing. Yes, it's just an orange
Speaker 1: to me, it's not a language barely making a sound,
Speaker 1: but yeah, and why or are people always going I
Speaker 1: was gonna make a really badgeck, but throwing ranges at
Speaker 1: each other and trying to communicate instrument. I'm sorry, no,
Speaker 1: not the manteline nice but no, I mean this is fascinating,
Speaker 1: like how my ear has shut that out, that ability.
Speaker 1: But these year to six month old kids, these infants
Speaker 1: can actually just distinguish between these sounds, and she a.
Speaker 1: Patricia Kool also says that kids by age seven begin
Speaker 1: to fall off of linguistic map. What she means to
Speaker 1: say is that language acquisition is absolutely open and optimal
Speaker 1: before age seven. So and of course, you know, most
Speaker 1: people our age didn't begin language lessons until later on
Speaker 1: in their lives, which is sort of the wrong thing
Speaker 1: to do, um. But that because by the time year seven,
Speaker 1: your brain changes is and you're you're pruning a lot
Speaker 1: of the neural connections that you don't necessarily need. So
Speaker 1: we kind of lose that ability, um to some extent.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that she points out is
Speaker 1: that this one to one interaction is really important. You
Speaker 1: have to see someone else's eyes in order to acquire language.
Speaker 1: And we'll talk about the eyes and the importance about
Speaker 1: that a little bit. So we we did a whole
Speaker 1: episode I think more than one on math. And in
Speaker 1: that we mentioned that the babies are capable of algorithmic
Speaker 1: thinking even in early age. They don't have they don't
Speaker 1: have numbers. They don't have this and this gets into
Speaker 1: the whole question of his again his math a human
Speaker 1: invention or a human discovery or something else. But the
Speaker 1: idea here is that even though babies can't rattle off
Speaker 1: one through ten, they have numbers. Since they can, they
Speaker 1: can think algorithmically about the world around them, which is
Speaker 1: which if you stop and think about that, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's pretty phenomenal. Versus are sort of accepted mainstream viewing
Speaker 1: of Oh, the child must be taught language, it must
Speaker 1: be taught math, but it already has math. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: this is why artificial intelligence is interested in babies because
Speaker 1: in this way, as Elizabeth spoke, he says, they are root.
Speaker 1: UM it's where human cognition and organization of the human
Speaker 1: mind begins. And of course we want to try to
Speaker 1: do this with computers as best that we can. UM.
Speaker 1: I wanted to mention the world's first stored program electronic
Speaker 1: digital computer. UH. This was in and it was called
Speaker 1: the Small Scale Experimental Machine. It was also nicknamed Baby
Speaker 1: and one of the programs that ran on it was
Speaker 1: designed by Alan Turning. And we've talked about Alan Turning
Speaker 1: before in terms of AI. He's a pioneer UM in
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence and very I know, I was just thinking
Speaker 1: about that yesterday. I was when I was revisiting some material. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a great Radio Lab episode. I think it's shorty
Speaker 1: or maybe it was a long I don't know, but
Speaker 1: there was a reason Radio episode about him. That's really heartbreaking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he is a is an individual, is very very interesting
Speaker 1: and UM certainly brilliant. He was. But Alison Gothnick talks
Speaker 1: about Touring. She says that the classic Turing palm is
Speaker 1: could you get a computer to be so sophisticated that
Speaker 1: you couldn't tell the difference between the computer and a person.
Speaker 1: But then Touring said that there was an even more
Speaker 1: profound question, which was could you get a computer give
Speaker 1: it the kind of data that every human being gets
Speaker 1: as a child, and have it learned the kinds of
Speaker 1: things things that a child can learn. Again, this is
Speaker 1: the root uh brain that we're talking about, and certainly
Speaker 1: machine learning is a is a huge part of our
Speaker 1: ongoing development of AI. You know, like in creating machines
Speaker 1: that work alongside humans. We want to do that so
Speaker 1: that they can they can learn from their environment. So
Speaker 1: machine learning is is key. And if you want to learn,
Speaker 1: you learn to discover how something earns. The infant is
Speaker 1: the place to look, right, And she says because they
Speaker 1: have inductive learning techniques as well, just like computers. And
Speaker 1: she even brings up the point that about fifteen years
Speaker 1: ago researchers created Baiesian causal graphical models. Baisian is basically
Speaker 1: like this inductive learning, right um. And these models map
Speaker 1: out the way the world works for computers and also
Speaker 1: mapped out patterns of probability. And this was really an
Speaker 1: advance in computational um formal computation, I should say. In
Speaker 1: about that same time, uh, that these computational systems were
Speaker 1: coming online, cognitive psychologists began to form the idea that
Speaker 1: babies are doing very much the same thing. So you
Speaker 1: brought up this number sense that that kids have. And
Speaker 1: what we're talking about here is Baiesian reasoning. That they
Speaker 1: can take a random sample and understand the relationship between
Speaker 1: that sample and the population is drawn from right, so
Speaker 1: they can tell they can tell the difference between um,
Speaker 1: three red balls and nine red balls. Yeah, not so much.
Speaker 1: Maybe three red balls and four red balls. You know,
Speaker 1: it becomes an algorithmic distinction there. But but yeah, they've
Speaker 1: they've already got that hard wired in. Yeah. I mean
Speaker 1: they are kind of like born accountants. Because if you
Speaker 1: give a baby a picture an array of dots, and
Speaker 1: there are four dots, and you have another array of
Speaker 1: twelve dots, and you play sounds that four sounds, they
Speaker 1: will begin to look at the four dots. If you
Speaker 1: play twelve sounds, they look at the array of twelve dots.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't matter how much time or the length
Speaker 1: of the sound, as long as there are four of them, right,
Speaker 1: or twelve of them, they will still do this. They
Speaker 1: still have this understanding of more and less. As you say, so,
Speaker 1: babies come preloaded with a little bit of math, and
Speaker 1: they also come preloaded with a little bit of physics,
Speaker 1: which is pretty crazy because it's it's again, it's easy
Speaker 1: to think of the babies like the baby has no
Speaker 1: idea how the world works. You know, it's this everything
Speaker 1: is magical to this creature. Right. Uh, you know, he
Speaker 1: thinks I disappear when I do my uh my my
Speaker 1: peekaboot hands. But that's not the case, because ultimately this
Speaker 1: child is born into a world again of of a
Speaker 1: three D world, uh actually forty three spatial dimensions in
Speaker 1: one of time. It's full of fixed and movable objects
Speaker 1: they have to navigate, and so they have the the
Speaker 1: gear in their head already to deal with this kind
Speaker 1: of world. And so they intrinsically know things such as
Speaker 1: and this was kind of heartbreaking in a way, the
Speaker 1: teleportation is impossible. That they know that an object cannot
Speaker 1: disappear from put point A in appearing point B without
Speaker 1: physically traversing the distance between. Yeah, they know about object permanence.
Speaker 1: They get that, and they get that that one object
Speaker 1: can only occupy that time and space at that at
Speaker 1: that moment. Uh. Spelky says that babies as early as
Speaker 1: two months can begin to understand this. And what they
Speaker 1: did is they took two cups. In one cup they
Speaker 1: put one cracker, and but they did these these hand
Speaker 1: motions like they were innuit to put put a cracker
Speaker 1: in it. And then in another cup they put two crackers.
Speaker 1: But they didn't do multiple hand motions. And what they
Speaker 1: found is that over and over again, the baby kept
Speaker 1: reaching for the one with more crackers in it, even
Speaker 1: though they had sort of done this sleight of hand. Hey, look,
Speaker 1: doesn't it look like I'm putting a ton more crackers
Speaker 1: in here. So she's saying like that that ability is present,
Speaker 1: you know, two months, which is amazing. So you need
Speaker 1: to bring a baby with you to the the con
Speaker 1: man with the cup game, Bring a baby, he'll see
Speaker 1: right there, taken for always work, all right, and then
Speaker 1: after that, like the baby, I don't know it turns
Speaker 1: one or something, forget it now. I don't know what
Speaker 1: time limit that has. Actually, I think that we just
Speaker 1: build on that. And that's sort of her point. And
Speaker 1: she also says that there are born Euclideans and they
Speaker 1: use geometric clues to navigate through rooms. For instance, they're
Speaker 1: more likely to use the lengths of walls in the
Speaker 1: room to remember where a toy is hidden. And even
Speaker 1: when they get older and they're three or four years old, um,
Speaker 1: and they can name like, oh, that's a red wall,
Speaker 1: they still will use that the actual um geometric clues
Speaker 1: the length of the wall, rather than naming the color
Speaker 1: as a way to navigate. All right. Now here's another question.
Speaker 1: I mean we were with babies. Um, we with older children,
Speaker 1: we're you know, we're often it's often easy to sort
Speaker 1: of judge them. Is sort of like non moral, self
Speaker 1: centered monsters. Uh, you know, so it doesn't. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: you look at a baby and you're like, that baby
Speaker 1: doesn't have morals. It doesn't know right from wrong, It
Speaker 1: doesn't know what a you know, a criminal is. But
Speaker 1: the research has actually shown different. Yeah, there's an article
Speaker 1: from I O nine. Uh, it's babies are already superior
Speaker 1: to us, to the rest of us by fifteen months.
Speaker 1: The title of the article and what they were saying
Speaker 1: is that until recently, it was thought that that children
Speaker 1: didn't understand altruism until at least two years of age,
Speaker 1: and that they didn't have a sense of fairness until
Speaker 1: they were six or seven. But it turns out they
Speaker 1: do have a sense of fair and us and altruism.
Speaker 1: University of Wisconsin researcher Jessica Somerville had forty seven fifteen
Speaker 1: month old children sit on their parents laps while they
Speaker 1: were shown to videos. The first video had three characters,
Speaker 1: one of whom had a bowl of crackers. See the
Speaker 1: food thing is really important to these kids. That's right there.
Speaker 1: This um laser focused on the food. The person shared
Speaker 1: the crackers with the other two once in equal portions,
Speaker 1: and then with one person getting more crackers than the
Speaker 1: other people. So they see this the sense of finding
Speaker 1: unfairness unfolding. The second video was exactly the same thing,
Speaker 1: only this time around with milk substituted for crackers. So
Speaker 1: the researchers were on the lookout for something called violation expectancy,
Speaker 1: and this basically means the baby's paying more attention when
Speaker 1: they're surprised, and this is important to Spelky. Elizabeth spell
Speaker 1: Ky really keyed into this gaze um that infants have,
Speaker 1: and it's really important because we talked about the eyes
Speaker 1: in learning, and there are ways that you can actually
Speaker 1: determine what a baby is thinking or reacting to with
Speaker 1: with the their facial gestures. So if anybody's like, well,
Speaker 1: how in the world, and I know this is happening,
Speaker 1: is because they they're basically bidding and videoing these kids
Speaker 1: and um tagging these looks of surprises. So anyway, the
Speaker 1: baby's attention tended to park up really a lot when
Speaker 1: the milk and crackers were unevenly shared. Then when they
Speaker 1: were distributed equally because and that plays into algorithmic thinking.
Speaker 1: They can definitely tell if someone's being slided by a
Speaker 1: significant margin. Yes, because they expected it to be equal.
Speaker 1: That was their expectation. Again, we talked about our brains.
Speaker 1: They know what housing says, they we have have these
Speaker 1: this pattern recognition hard baked into our brains. Um. So
Speaker 1: another experiment was then done with the babies. They were
Speaker 1: offered two toys. One was really fancy, one wasn't. And
Speaker 1: so they then selected the toy that they preferred, and
Speaker 1: then an unseen experiment or came into the room and
Speaker 1: asked to share the boy. Okay, only one third of
Speaker 1: the kids did. But here is the kicker. Of the
Speaker 1: babies who shared their preferred toy also paid more attention
Speaker 1: to the unequal sharing video. Okay. So in other words,
Speaker 1: the vast majority of babies who gave up the toy
Speaker 1: they liked an act of altruism were the ones who
Speaker 1: were surprised by the act of unfairness. This is pointing
Speaker 1: to like clear perception of as you say, have these
Speaker 1: or unfairness injustices or injustices of the world. Wow and uh,
Speaker 1: And I've also seen some experiments that involved like colored blocks,
Speaker 1: where colored blocks are are being villainous to one another,
Speaker 1: or even puppets, which which needately brought to mind Punch
Speaker 1: and Judy. But but I'm trying to think of anybody's
Speaker 1: really moral and Punch and Judy, I mean, because Punch
Speaker 1: is awful and then he runs a foul of the
Speaker 1: police who was kind of awful, and then the devil
Speaker 1: and death I guess death. Yeah, Punch and Judy is
Speaker 1: actually really um it's kind of heavy stuff for a kid. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's dark stuff. But anyway, I always think about it
Speaker 1: for the Center of Puppet Roots here in Atlanta, because
Speaker 1: they have a museum and they've got the Punch and
Speaker 1: Judy and they always the scare the heck out of
Speaker 1: me for some reason. We my my wife and I
Speaker 1: went there once when they had just for I think
Speaker 1: two nights they had a Punch and Judy Modern Punch
Speaker 1: and Judy at come in that market themselves as the
Speaker 1: world's best Punch and Judy show. If you do a
Speaker 1: search for that online you'll find them. And uh and
Speaker 1: they there. These are like a young couple. I don't
Speaker 1: know they're a couple, but a young man and a
Speaker 1: woman who like, learned Punch and Judy, which has a
Speaker 1: different name in French, but I can't remember. Like each
Speaker 1: country at European country has Punch and Judy, but they
Speaker 1: have different names. But they learned that their puppetry craft
Speaker 1: on the streets of Paris, like sleeping on the streets
Speaker 1: in there in the puppet theater turned on its side,
Speaker 1: and so they were just masters of the old school
Speaker 1: Punch and Judy show. And they put it on and
Speaker 1: it was phenomenal. It was just hilarious and and they
Speaker 1: and just expertly done. So so Punch and Judy. It's
Speaker 1: easy to look at and think, oh, well that's that's
Speaker 1: a low puppetry, that's that's nothing, but it's it's quite
Speaker 1: an art form. It's babies might appreciate. I think that
Speaker 1: they would for sure. Uh So, speaking of Punch and
Speaker 1: Judy in Paris and babies, when we get back, we
Speaker 1: will actually find out what babies have to do with
Speaker 1: Paris and even cappuccinos. All right, we're back. Babies need cappuccinos.
Speaker 1: Is that where we're going with this? Yes, fuel them
Speaker 1: with lots and we forget them milk. Just fill it
Speaker 1: up with cappuccino. Um, Okay, no, we're we're gonna get
Speaker 1: to this idea of babies and cappuccino in Paris in
Speaker 1: a moment, but Alice and Gopnick again and wanted to
Speaker 1: bring her up. Um. She has a talk called what
Speaker 1: do Babies Think? Which is very interesting and she talks
Speaker 1: about how babies have a different consciousness than us. And
Speaker 1: I think it's a really interesting idea because she says,
Speaker 1: if you look at an adult, an adult is basically
Speaker 1: using sort of like a flashlight to laser focus on something. Right,
Speaker 1: there's something we want to look at and think about,
Speaker 1: we point the light on it. We block everything else up.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about my work, I'm thinking about my life,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about what that guy in the subway is doing.
Speaker 1: It's it's just one thing after after another. We have
Speaker 1: to focus on something and everything else sort of fades,
Speaker 1: uh into the peripheral vision. Babies use more of this
Speaker 1: sort of lantern to to fill their consciousness up with.
Speaker 1: So I'm not focusing on any one particular thing. The
Speaker 1: light is illuminating the room. Yes, And so she's saying
Speaker 1: it's not that they don't pay attention. Well, they can't
Speaker 1: not pay attention is the problem, and they're saying that
Speaker 1: it's driven how it's driven by how information rich their
Speaker 1: world is around them, and that when you look at
Speaker 1: their brains, instead of just squirting a little bit of
Speaker 1: trans neuro transmitter on the part of the brain that
Speaker 1: they want to learn, their whole brain is soaked in neurotransmitters.
Speaker 1: So they're like they're they're sponges. They're just they're like
Speaker 1: hyper conscious of the world around them, blocking nothing out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have to think about it this way because this
Speaker 1: is really when the brain is like crazy active, and
Speaker 1: as you get older, of course those neural connections begin
Speaker 1: to get pruned away the stuff that you use, stuff
Speaker 1: you don't use, and you get a more selective brain.
Speaker 1: But for the time being, um, you do have this
Speaker 1: no transmitter soaked brain. And this is why that they
Speaker 1: have that sort of lantern vision of everything. They can't
Speaker 1: really get anything out of their heads because they're considering everything. Um.
Speaker 1: So she says, what's it like to be a baby?
Speaker 1: It's like being in love in Paris for the first
Speaker 1: time after you've had three double espressos doses. But I
Speaker 1: mean this also plays right into I mean just one
Speaker 1: of one of many reasons for why stimulation and uh,
Speaker 1: and both on a like a physical level but also
Speaker 1: an emotional level is important. Uh, young child because they're
Speaker 1: they're sponges. They need to absorb, they need a world
Speaker 1: to absorb. They need to see the sky, they need
Speaker 1: interact with people. Um. And that's I mean, that's I'm one.
Speaker 1: That's kind of funny. But there are children out there, um,
Speaker 1: you know, particularly in an orphanage situations, who do not
Speaker 1: get to see the sky. They stuff for sensory deprivation
Speaker 1: and and it has a profound effect on them. And
Speaker 1: conversely too, if if there is too much stimulation, that's
Speaker 1: obviously when the brain gets overload. And we talked about
Speaker 1: that too just in the scream episode have it. You know,
Speaker 1: sometimes we have to scream because we all are over
Speaker 1: stimulated at some point. Yeah, Like you show a baby
Speaker 1: Baraka and Mike cries too much. They can much for
Speaker 1: an adult to take him. I didn't cry, you didn't cry. No,
Speaker 1: I might not be human. Everyone I know Christ the
Speaker 1: scene with the homeless people and they're playing like that
Speaker 1: can dance in the background. Sorry, the baby chicks getting
Speaker 1: sexed and their beaks burned a tough nut. Um okay.
Speaker 1: So god Nick says that that this different consciousness she thinks,
Speaker 1: in some ways more conscious than adults are, and she
Speaker 1: says that she just has empirical evidence at this point,
Speaker 1: but she thinks that this, this is a real possibility
Speaker 1: that kids are actually more conscious than we are. But
Speaker 1: then we'll never be able to really answer that until
Speaker 1: we actually can define consciousness and how it works, which
Speaker 1: is always the big first step one define human consciousness. Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: So there's this idea that creative people retain some of
Speaker 1: the same kind of different consciousness, as she calls it,
Speaker 1: and are able to tap into all these uh different
Speaker 1: stimuli and think differently they which which plays him nicely
Speaker 1: to be like, I always loved the CS Lewis quote
Speaker 1: quote about when I was you know, about when I
Speaker 1: was young, I just wanted to appear a very grown
Speaker 1: up and all and and uh and and and now
Speaker 1: as an adult, he celebrates the you know, the imagination
Speaker 1: of childhood and wants to keep it alive in him
Speaker 1: as as long as possible. You know. Yeah, well Picasso, right,
Speaker 1: the same thing you think of like thoroughly grown up people,
Speaker 1: and they are the most boring individuals on the planet.
Speaker 1: I mean just push them over, you know, they just
Speaker 1: just push him over. I don't push him over, but
Speaker 1: you just want to. You're just like, oh, look, you've
Speaker 1: just completely It's like an orange that's just been squeezed
Speaker 1: out of all juice. You know, they're just a husk
Speaker 1: and they're just like, that's just I don't even want
Speaker 1: to know that person. So if you're feeling bored, you
Speaker 1: have to go into your baby brain and you will
Speaker 1: find liberation. Yeah. I feel like anybody worth throwing baby
Speaker 1: brain still going on at least a little little nugget
Speaker 1: of it in some area of their life. Baby brain
Speaker 1: is good. Gothnik has a great take on this and
Speaker 1: creativity and and the world does an illusion. She says,
Speaker 1: if you think about that from the perspective of human evolution,
Speaker 1: this idea of the of the baby brain, our great
Speaker 1: capacity is not just that we learn about the world.
Speaker 1: The thing that really makes us distinctive is that we
Speaker 1: can imagine other ways that the world could be. That's
Speaker 1: really where are enormous evolutionary juice comes from. We understand
Speaker 1: the world, but that also lets us imagine other ways
Speaker 1: it could be, and actually make those other worlds come true.
Speaker 1: That's what's innovation technology, or that's what innovation technology and
Speaker 1: science are all about. Think about everything that's in this
Speaker 1: room right now. There's a right angle desk and electric
Speaker 1: light in computers and window panes. Every single thing in
Speaker 1: this room is imaginary. From the perspective of hunter gatherer,
Speaker 1: we live in imaginary worlds. Yeah, I mean, we have
Speaker 1: this profound ability to simulate possible futures and act accordingly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it makes sense that the baby brain would need
Speaker 1: to do this, that we would from the get go
Speaker 1: start to try to do pattern recognition and and name
Speaker 1: things and dream up things, uh, and be innovators. Um.
Speaker 1: Which I think all of this to me is going
Speaker 1: back to again language language, language acquisition, and this importance
Speaker 1: of being able to look in another person's eyes and
Speaker 1: learn from them. Specifically language acquisition. It putres a cool
Speaker 1: cool has done a bunch of studies about this, that
Speaker 1: kids who are taught other languages do not acquire through
Speaker 1: CDs or television or other forms of media. One to
Speaker 1: one is really important, which then sort of puts a
Speaker 1: spotlight on the relationship between a caregiver and a child. Um.
Speaker 1: This interaction between them. So you're looking at a baby's
Speaker 1: face and the baby's looking in your face, and there's
Speaker 1: facial recognition going on there. Obviously, a baby can identify
Speaker 1: its mother by looking in the mother's face, which sounds
Speaker 1: kind of like an overstatement of the obvious. But but
Speaker 1: when you get into into neurologically looking at how how
Speaker 1: it all works, it's it's pretty pretty phenomenal. And it's
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that we're again trying to replicate
Speaker 1: and are replicating to a large extents in computers. But
Speaker 1: the baby has it programmed in from the start. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: what's probably one of the most important things to you
Speaker 1: as a child your caregiver staring at you and giving
Speaker 1: you visu cues about language, about the world around you.
Speaker 1: And yet when you're a really young infant, you're completely
Speaker 1: hamstrung by your vision at that point, right, And this
Speaker 1: this leads right into which a really mind blowing idea.
Speaker 1: It's not this is not a settled theory by any stretch,
Speaker 1: but it's a fascinating area to think about. Ran across
Speaker 1: this article um Skeptic Magazine, which, if you're not familiar,
Speaker 1: Skeptic Magazine is the publication. It's put together by a
Speaker 1: Michael A. Schermer who we mentioned in the UFO abduction episode.
Speaker 1: He's the cyclist who had an abduction experience due to
Speaker 1: exhaustion and uh and uh and and then he went
Speaker 1: on to study it and explained it in scientific terms.
Speaker 1: And he's really really big into taking things that are
Speaker 1: seemingly paranormal and then and then let's examine it from
Speaker 1: a scientific point of view and figure out what's actually happening. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, not alien. So he's not like a conspiracy
Speaker 1: not or anything. He's he's a dude that's grounded in
Speaker 1: science and turning the gay of science on things that
Speaker 1: are phenomenal. So, unsurprisingly, there was an article on Scriptic
Speaker 1: Magazine by an author by the name of Frederick V. Momstrom,
Speaker 1: and he wrote an arcohol close encounters of the facial
Speaker 1: kind are UFO alien faces an inborn facial recognition template.
Speaker 1: His argument here, all right, So, okay, so aliens, gray
Speaker 1: aliens UM like UFO like unsolved mysteries, um close encounters
Speaker 1: of the third kind kind of alien? You know what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about? This Uh, this big gray head with
Speaker 1: large black eyes and a a little mouth and a little nose.
Speaker 1: And in these abduction uh experiences, the individuals perceiving these
Speaker 1: things like looming over them. Uh. And there's generally like
Speaker 1: there's something surgical or or you know, or or probe
Speaker 1: related going on in these scenarios, you know, and there's
Speaker 1: a sense of you know, there's some sleep paralysis or something,
Speaker 1: and there's a sense of of of being of loose
Speaker 1: in control and uh. Uh you know, listen to our
Speaker 1: episode on the UFO deduction experiences for for a little
Speaker 1: more about the science of what is actually going on
Speaker 1: in these encounters. But the author here is focusing in
Speaker 1: particularly on that face, like why why would we see
Speaker 1: this gray alien face? And why do so many people
Speaker 1: see it? Well, there are the same type of face. Now,
Speaker 1: one really good explanation for that is that we saw
Speaker 1: it on Unsolved Mysteries. We saw it faces, and we've
Speaker 1: been primed to see that. That is, we've we've encountered
Speaker 1: this story before in our fiction and uh, and so
Speaker 1: it's ready to go when we actually encounter a paranormal
Speaker 1: experience on a neurological level. But uh, Malmstrom's theory is
Speaker 1: that what we're actually too tapping into here is the
Speaker 1: infant facial recognition software that that that we have not
Speaker 1: used in a long time but is still present. Uh.
Speaker 1: The ideas that the baby's vision, uh, baby's vision, an
Speaker 1: infants vision is is imperfect. You know, it's like they're
Speaker 1: they're far they're near sighted. Everything's blurry and bright. So
Speaker 1: what does mother's face look like to an infant with
Speaker 1: that kind of vision? Bulbous head, right, and two long
Speaker 1: slits fries and a little tiny nose holes and a
Speaker 1: bit of a slash of a mouth. And this is
Speaker 1: actually something that um that was borne out right by
Speaker 1: this attempt to try to mimic, as you call it,
Speaker 1: baby vision at this point, like what would this graphically
Speaker 1: look like to us? Yeah, and he explored it by
Speaker 1: taking taking this up, this prototypical female face, blurring it out,
Speaker 1: blurring the images out and uh and just applying these
Speaker 1: different layers that attempt to replicate infant site and you
Speaker 1: get something that looks a lot like you know, Encounters
Speaker 1: of the Third kind Unsolved Mysteries, gray alien. That's that's
Speaker 1: stereotypical alien head. Yeah, and yeah, you guys should definitely
Speaker 1: check it out. Just take a look at this, and
Speaker 1: it begins to really make sense. And then of course
Speaker 1: you you look at this information and you begin to wonder,
Speaker 1: and this is a little bit wacky, but you begin
Speaker 1: to wonder our alien abductions or sightings. Um. It's particularly
Speaker 1: in the context of false awakenings that we've talked about before,
Speaker 1: where your brain is coming back online too consciousness, but
Speaker 1: your body is still in sleep paralysis. Is could this
Speaker 1: idea that you see something that is other just a
Speaker 1: ghost memory of your mother's face when in your earliest
Speaker 1: memories as a baby. Because we have access presumably to
Speaker 1: all of our memories, just not all the time, so
Speaker 1: potentially in this kind of sleep situation, you might be
Speaker 1: able to retrieve that. I know it's wacky, but it
Speaker 1: is very interesting. Yeah, I found it, found it really fascinating. Again,
Speaker 1: it's taking some you know, a paranormal experience and uh
Speaker 1: and then trying to to understand it through science. And
Speaker 1: it's just like I said, who knows if this holds up,
Speaker 1: but it's a really interesting way of looking at it well,
Speaker 1: and it underlines again what's some of the things amazing
Speaker 1: that are amazing about how the infant mind works. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think this idea too, of can can we
Speaker 1: revisit our infant minds at some time. Is it through
Speaker 1: just these specialized periods of disrupted sleep um or are
Speaker 1: we way past those those memories? And to what extent
Speaker 1: can we actually tap into it and make it work
Speaker 1: for us so to speak? Because I mean, if you
Speaker 1: think about it, we are statistical machines. We just have
Speaker 1: these overlays of our experiences which sort of shut out
Speaker 1: some possibilities for us in terms of what we can
Speaker 1: dream for ourselves or understand. So if we could take
Speaker 1: it back to our roots system and still be access
Speaker 1: for are fully formed adult brains, that would be great.
Speaker 1: More in forrrantly that the next time you're you're leaning
Speaker 1: over the baby's cradle in your life, uh, and imagine
Speaker 1: that that that the infant sees you as a as
Speaker 1: a gray alien. And the next time you find yourself
Speaker 1: curiously unable to move in your bed and you look
Speaker 1: up and you see this, uh, this strange gray head
Speaker 1: with big black eyes. Embrace it well, and that makes
Speaker 1: you realize why some people are terrified if if that
Speaker 1: were the case, that there was just a ghost memory
Speaker 1: of their mother, because it's your mom, but it's not right,
Speaker 1: So it's the other of course you're going to be like,
Speaker 1: whoa alien? Yeah, Um, I wanted to mention real quick
Speaker 1: that Elizabeth Falky fascinating uh cognitive psychologists. She if anybody
Speaker 1: is interested. She actually took a lot of her data
Speaker 1: and she pitted it against Lawrence Lawrence H. Summers, that
Speaker 1: then president of Harvard who in two thousand and five
Speaker 1: suggested that the shortage of women and um physical sciences
Speaker 1: could be due to innate shortcome things and math. She
Speaker 1: took all her statistical data from forty years and combed
Speaker 1: through it to to actually make the point that it um,
Speaker 1: that was not the case at all. There was no
Speaker 1: different differentiation at all in terms of gender when it
Speaker 1: came to babies, children, and science, and and this uh
Speaker 1: innate or not innate ability to grasp math in a
Speaker 1: meaningful way. So if anybody is interested in this. She
Speaker 1: has a debate with her friend, actually, Stephen Pinker. We've
Speaker 1: talked about him before. He is a neuroscientist, and that
Speaker 1: we know him more in the context of him calling
Speaker 1: musical abilities cheesecake, right, auditory cheesecake like it's just sort
Speaker 1: of happened by accident. Um. But anyway, they have a
Speaker 1: very very interesting debate on this topic. And uh, Spelky
Speaker 1: is amazing. She has very um interesting takes on this topic.
Speaker 1: And uh, and what are what are the books that
Speaker 1: individuals can check out? Individuals listeners can check out if
Speaker 1: they want to want to hear more. Gottenick as a book,
Speaker 1: right she does. I believe I'm going to probably get
Speaker 1: this wrong, but I think it's called The Psychology of Babies.
Speaker 1: But you can just search for Alison Gothnik check her
Speaker 1: out on TED. Also Elizabeth S. Bucky. Um, there are
Speaker 1: two great resources if you want to learn more. All right, Well, um,
Speaker 1: we're gonna skip the robe at today because he's got
Speaker 1: a busted wheel. It's it's rough. He's all the way
Speaker 1: through the side of the room and I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: get up and walk over there to get mail. But
Speaker 1: by all means, send us more mail you can. You
Speaker 1: can reach out to us on Facebook. We were stuff
Speaker 1: to blow your mind there. You can find us on
Speaker 1: Twitter where we are blow the mind. We'd love to hear. Uh,
Speaker 1: what are your observations with babies? I know the number
Speaker 1: of you out there, our parents or you've at least
Speaker 1: you know baby said, or you've you've had to or
Speaker 1: you had an infant sibling or something. What are your
Speaker 1: what were your interactions like, tell us what you think
Speaker 1: about the infant mind and and have you glimpsed some
Speaker 1: of what we're talking about in that child? And you
Speaker 1: can always drop us a line at blew the Mind
Speaker 1: at discovery dot com. For more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics, visit how Stuff Works dot com