Skip to main content

Babies are smart after all

Gosh! What astonishing studies psychologists do!!!

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/magazine/09babies-t.html?src=me&ref=general

Testing babies to see if they can differentiate between right and wrong!

And lo and behold, babies CAN do that! Six-month-old babies and eight-month-old babies and year-old babies!


Babies can tell the good guy from the bad guy!



So, we start out with some innate sense of what is right and what is wrong. Then, culture and learning reinforces those senses.

Wonderful stuff ...

The next fun stuff to see would be this: test to see if babies are capable of deceiving when they see some benefit for themselves in it and no harm for anyone else ... something akin to corruption perhaps.

Adults normally find it easy to take short cuts and indulge in corruption when they feel that they can gain something from indulging in such corruption while at the same time there is no obvious downside to it ... can or do babies make those sort of decisions ...

Oh, what a crazy idea!

Comments

Post a Comment

Feel free to weigh in with your thoughts ...

Popular posts from this blog

Longforms and 'Best of 2017' Lists and Favorite Books by Ashutosh Joglekar and Scott Aaronson

Ashutosh Joglekar's books list. http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2018/03/30-favorite-books.html Scott Aaronson' list https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3679 https://www.wired.com/story/most-read-wired-magazine-stories-2017/ https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/12/the-best-books-we-read-in-2017/548912/ https://longreads.com/2017/12/21/longreads-best-of-2017-essays/ https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/21/world/asia/how-the-rohingya-escaped.html https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-journalists-covered-rise-mussolini-hitler-180961407/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/artificial-intelligence-future-scenarios-180968403/ https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1997/01/20/citizen-kay https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/where-we-are-hunt-cancer-vaccine-180968391/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/dna-based-attack-against-cancer-may-work-180968407/ https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/12/22/dona...
1 comment
FULL ARTICLE

Articles Collection August

Hope to get around to reading or finishing these articles. Some day. When David Remnick writes about Russia, you gotta read. All of David Remnick's articles in the New Yorker. All of Ken Auletta's articles in the New Yorker. Profile of cricket boss N. Srinivasan in The Caravan. Excerpt from Lena Dunham's book. Yes, I for one think it's wrong to teach children to believe in God. It's child abuse. Plain and simple. Philip Seymour Hoffman's last days . Where do children's earliest memories go? Does humanity's future lie among the stars or is our fate extinction ? Chapter 1 of Sam Harris' Waking Up . Finding the words , an elegy. Eight days, the battle to save the American financial system . Love stories from the New Yorker. Profiles from the New Yorker. 25 articles from the New Yorker chosen by Longreads . The Biden agenda from the New Yorker. Kim Philby by Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker. Miles O'Brien's PBS story about the ...
Post a Comment
FULL ARTICLE

Ayn Rand Was Right

Do we exalt the John Galts and Howard Roarks among us or despise them? Do we admire the ultimate, self-centered and selfish capitalists or the selfless, self-sacrificing altruists? Oh sure there are the Martin Luther King, Jr.s and Mahatma Gandhis and Nelson Mandelas and Aung Sun Suu Kyis we like to point to as icons and worthy role models for our children. But look deeply and we find that we are obsessed with the wealthy. And who are the wealthy? Why do we let the Robert Rubins, Sandy Weills, Jakc Welchs, Jamie Dimons and their Wall St. brethren keep their millions? Because we consider that right and their right. Let alone the hedge fund people whose entire purpose is to become billionaires. How many people explicitly make life choices that will lead to a life of service -> not be a charlatan like Mother Teresa but just helping the underprivileged without trying to 'achieve' greatness by so doing. So Lance Armstrong and Greg Mortensen and the Evangelical Christ...
Post a Comment
FULL ARTICLE