On: childhood development, exploit versus explore, attachment

Episode: N/A

Date: June 13, 2019

Background: professor of psychology and philosophy.

Key Subjects:

• Explore versus exploit.
  • Childhood = explore.
    • Get as much new information as you can, explore possibilities.
  • Adulthood = exploit.
    • Pursue specific goals.
• Explore versus exploit: tension / trade-offs.
  • Childhood:
    • Early period of mostly exploring.
    • Find new alternatives, solutions.
  • Adulthood:
    • Iterate explore and exploit.
    • Accomplish goals, maximize utility.
• Explore versus exploit: brain states.
  • Childhood:
    • Low frontal cortex activity (executive control).
    • Plastic brain (lots of new, local connections).
    • Open-minded, creative, adaptive.
    • Similar to adult brain on psychedelics.
      • See also: Michael Pollan – How to Change Your Mind
  • Adulthood:
    • High frontal cortex activity.
    • Lower plasticity: connections that are used often get strengthened, less used get pruned.
    • More fixed beliefs, not good at changing / adapting, use of heuristics.
    • Try to go back and forth between exploiting and exploring.
• Explore versus exploit: Bayesian perspective.
  • Bayes: use experience and new information to adjust your prior beliefs.
  • But, we don’t really change our minds though.
    • Beliefs get more fixed over time.
  • So, we get trapped in “local minima”.
    • Sub-optimal solutions.
    • It is not “efficient” to exploit and find minimally better solutions.
  • Species solution: kids with long childhood.
    • Introduces new groups of people.
    • Less strongly held beliefs, priors.
    • May discover new possible beliefs.
    • Move away from local minima.
  • Evolutionary purpose of a long childhood.
    • Explore new possibilities and allow the species to progress.
• Carpenter vs Gardener.
  • Carpenter:
    • The verb “parenting”.
    • Manipulation, shaping outcomes, pursuing specific goals.
  • Gardener:
    • Providing a space where things can flourish.
  • In order to create a robust, adaptable system, you need noise, unpredictability.
    • Versus a fragile, mono-system.
  • Childhood is a way to introduce the required novelty, unpredictability.
• Parental attachment as human commitment mechanism.
  • Tit-for-tat mechanisms may fall apart under certain conditions (sickness, etc.).
  • Attachment mechanisms (love) are more durable in the long run.
    • Mother-child, pair bonds, kin, community, etc.
• Caring leads to loving.
  • We don’t care for our children because we love them, we love them because we care for them.
  • Flipside: allow people to take care of you, don’t be afraid to be a burden.
• Political philosophies.
  • Western political philosophy:
    • Human interaction is contractual, based on economic trade-offs.
    • Scale that up and you get markets.
      • Transactional, tit-for-tat.
    • Issue: institutionalized solutions to issues such as childcare, nursing homes, disadvantaged communities, shrinking network of support for children, etc.
  • Eastern political philosophy:
    • Human interaction is based on (tribal) attachment ties.
    • Should try to scale that up to community, institutional levels.
• Contemporary isolation.
  • Kids need a strong social support network, strong social bonds to go out and explore.
  • Increasingly isolated communities.
    • Increased anxiety, lower ability to take risk, less robust children.
    • Both ends of the economic spectrum may be disadvantaged.
      • Isolated rich and poor communities.
• Education.
  • Childhood = broad attention.
    • Adapted to exploration and learning.
    • Kids don’t have trouble paying attention, they have trouble not paying attention.
  • Adulthood = focus.
    • More control of attention.
    • [Spotlight attention].
  • Schools require kids to develop and adapt narrower focus.
    • Potential to have better educational models allowing for more exploration.
    • Requires more of an understanding / agreement on educational goals.
    • Apprenticeship-based, other alternatives.
• Unified theory of childhood.
  • How to resolve tension between explore and exploit.
  • Children are best example of how to deal with this tension and learn.
  • AI is dealing with similar tension in learning
    • See also: Ted Chiang — Exhalation
  • Reproduce some of the conditions of childhood.
    • Play, no goals.
    • Meditation, retreat, stories (night time), etc.
• Keep other commitments outside of the transactional space as well.
  • “Carpentry” shows up in many other relationships.