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.
- Childhood = explore.
- 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.
- Childhood:
- 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.
- Childhood:
- 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.
- Carpenter:
- 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.
- Western political philosophy:
- 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.
- Childhood = broad attention.
- 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.