Ezra Klein Show — Alison Gopnik

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.
    • 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
    • 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.

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