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Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - 4:53pmSanction this postReply
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Here's an experiment with possible Rwndiwn-epidemiology implications: comparing certain decision-making done by chimps with similar decision-making done by humans. Read it with the concept "second-hander" in mind ...

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Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - 7:34pmSanction this postReply
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Right.  This is from 2005.  As I recall, Ed Thompson had an interpretation to reconcile fact and theory.  I may be wrong here but as I recall, Ed's explanation was that humans can integrate a much deeper volume of experience and so they gather it in their early years.  Chimps mature earlier because, well, after all, chimps mature earlier.


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Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - 9:31pmSanction this postReply
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Thanks; I wasn't here in 2005.

If the findings result from chimpanzees' earlier maturation and/or from their having fewer data to integrate, then we'd expect to see very young chimps go through a "follow-the-teacher-in-even-pointless-ways" stage (earlier and more briefly than do human children)— just as chimps and most other mammals go through many other developmental stages far earlier but far more briefly than do human children.
However, from what I have read (of the research looking for such a stage in chimp development), the researchers have not yet found any evidence of such a stage — even early and briefly — in even the youngest chimpanzees.

Now I wonder whether anyone knows what would happen to a physically healthy human child if it somehow entirely lacked, from birth, just this _one_ mental faculty — the ability and disposition to follow a teacher evn if the teacher's actions appear entirely pointless — but if the child had in all other ways a normal human brain (perhaps even a brain equipped for genius): in all ways but this. What would such a child (and eventually adult) be like? What might be the life-long experience of a potential-genius child (eventually adult) who lacked whichever "mental organ" permits learning what seems irrelevant, while all other learning remained possible and unimpaired?

(Doubtless, such a person would learn very little of all that humankind has discovered. Agriculture, for instance, could never have been established if all possible students had simply ignored the discoverer's "irrelevant" act of burying tasty seeds rather than eating them.) But what would s/he end up like? ... starting off with a normal, even a superior, brain, and then having no way for that brain to learn anything it supposes not to matter?

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Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - 1:30amSanction this postReply
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Kate, thanks for developing your suggestion.  It is interesting and as you imply, learning as we understand it would be ironiclly "retarded."  Also, in the original post, you alluded to the second-hander.  Yet, as the research suggests, copying is important to our nature and our sucess as individuals and as a species. 

I think that this is explained clearly in Howard Roark's chat with Gail Wynand.  You inherit the past as a gift and you earn what was bestowed by adding to it with your own invention.  Keating admits that he has not added even a new doorknob to architecture.

(I suppose that we could grant a hierarchy of equally moral though unequally consequential modes: the inventor, the innovation, the initiator.  I am no Edison, but I get up every day and apply what limited ability I have as fully as I can and I enjoy the opportunity to work productively by adding at least my fullest focus to the process given to me... as opposed to doing the least you have to to get by, or worse wasting the efforts of others because you don't care to do it right.  Manufacturers pay bonuses for ideas, even those that are merely job aids.)

Be that as it may it is clear that humans do copy seemingly pointless behaviors.  But if the actions were truly useless, we would make no progress at all.  The key is that the copying of advantageous actions has survival benefit, even for the actor who does not understand them.  And you may have experienced this yourself in a highly abstract way if you asked a cogent question of a teacher who replied that they would explain that later. 

Just to clarify a minor point, Kate, the article itself was from 2005.  It has been discussed here before now and since then. I just tried to find it and could not, and if you did the same, then maybe someone else can find it.  Then (and now), I accepted the research prima facie.  I was only guessing at the explanation offered then by others.  It did not mean it as my own.

The study also again calls into question the claim that we are born tabula rasa.  Clearly, we inherit quite a treasury.  Nonetheless, we are defined by what we choose to add to that. 


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Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - 8:23amSanction this postReply
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I don't remember this particular story.

Ironically, I have an explanation regardless.

:-)

The intended moral of this story is that chimps have a leg-up on humans -- because chimps become aware of someone's motive when watching them do a task, and humans merely become aware of someone's specific behavior when watching them do a task. In other words, chimps learn a task by personal trial and error (after having become aware of the goal of the task, they try to perform it in their own way), and humans learn a task by rote-memorization.

A reason why this is sustainable by evolution is that humans can know the best way to do a task -- making future rote-memorization very fruitful -- whereas chimpanzees, due to being relatively dumb, cannot get themselves into the epistemological position of ever knowing the best way to do something.

For a chimp who lacks understanding of the concepts of good, better, or best -- it is evolutionarily fruitful for them to just do everything by trial and error (and merely remembering when things work out).

For a human who does understand good, better, and best -- it is evolutionarily fruitful to just merely copy the behavior of other humans who have become experts at something.

There are no experts. in the literal sense of the term, in the world of chimpanzees.

Ed


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Thursday, November 24, 2011 - 10:49pmSanction this postReply
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Ed we have different interpretations here, clearly.  I do not see that the article said that chimpanzees were better.  I agree that the interesting slant was the implication.  Humans copy monkey-see-monkey-do; chimpanzees do not. 

Humans copy motions they do not understand.

For them (us) to recognize "experts" supposes a great deal of judgment.  Are you claiming that this is inherent in the brain?  Clearly, the modal behavior may be in the brain.  On the other hand, by the time infants are old enough to do these things, they have learned very much, perhaps the value in copying behaviors they do not understand.

Also, as the experiments showed, the chimpanzees did, indeed know the better way.  When they could not see the goal, they mimicked the actions.  When they could see the goal, they did what was needed, not what they learned.  Humans continued to engage the rote motions despite seeing the goal.

At least, these humans from the UK did and those chimpanzees did not.  It is interesting, but I am not sure what else.

Also, what about Kate's major point, that being second-handers seems deeply engrained in humans, whereas our cousins seem more independent of mind?


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Friday, November 25, 2011 - 10:55amSanction this postReply
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Mike,
Ed we have different interpretations here, clearly.  I do not see that the article said that chimpanzees were better.  I agree that the interesting slant was the implication.
To be clear, I only said that chimps "supposedly" have a leg-up on humans with regard to task completions, not that they are supposedly better than humans in any kind of a general sense of being better than humans.


For them (us) to recognize "experts" supposes a great deal of judgment.  Are you claiming that this is inherent in the brain?
No, I'm claiming it's learned.


A toddler might watch Mommy cook rice by putting dry rice in a pan and then adding water and letting it sit for a while (on the stove burner). While Mommy is napping, the toddler may try to make rice by putting dry rice in the dog's water bowl, and then waiting for the rice to "cook." The toddler does not understand the mechanism of cooking -- i.e., does not understand that, to make rice, you need heat -- but it mimics Mommy's behavior because everything that Mommy intends to do .... always happens to turn out right.

And it often tastes good, too.

So the toddler is willing to mimic Mommy at whatever task, having learned that when Mommy does things, good things will come as a result. In this example, Mommy is a bona fide expert (in relation to the toddler). Even if the toddler felt that the actions were magical -- rather than resulting from expertise -- it would still mimic the actions because that is what you do when that is all that you have to go on. You said as much when you said:

"On the other hand, by the time infants are old enough to do these things, they have learned very much, perhaps the value in copying behaviors they do not understand."

Also, as the experiments showed, the chimpanzees did, indeed know the better way.  When they could not see the goal, they mimicked the actions.  When they could see the goal, they did what was needed, not what they learned.  Humans continued to engage the rote motions despite seeing the goal.
The chimps didn't actually know the better way, but the researchers knew that the way they "chose" was the better way to go about task completion in this limited, artificial context. There is a subtle difference there. The 3- and 4-year old kids had had -- in their short time on Earth -- had had time to see that when adults do things, there are usually good reasons for the things that they do. They don't always understand why it is that such tasty, hot food comes out as a result of the specific actions that their parents had taken (in preparing a meal, for example) -- but they can trust in the process because they've seen how adults are such relative experts (when compared to the toddlers themselves).


Importantly, this is behavior in an early stage of development for humans. In later stages, it'd be more appropriate not to mimic others. There is a sweet-spot in human development -- probably around age 3 -- wherein it is good for kids to learn some tasks before understanding why it is important. This age-related difference on how learning should proceed seems entirely overlooked by the researchers.

Also, what about Kate's major point, that being second-handers seems deeply engrained in humans, whereas our cousins seem more independent of mind?
It may be that there is no transient stage in the development of a chimpanzee (in their natural habitat) wherein mimicry would be better than goal/intention-grasping, followed by personal trial-and-error. If this is true, if it is only good for developing humans to mimic behavior, but never good for chimpanzees -- then Kate's major point becomes a non sequitur. As an extension then, being a second-hander is only deeply engrained in very young kids (when it is appropriate), though psycho-spiritual development disorders or a simple lack of psychological maturity make keep some folks in the arrested-development stage of second-hand mimicry throughout their lives. 

Also of implication is that chimpanzees don't really have an independence of mind, but the lack of a (conceptual) mind. Not having a mind, it wouldn't be good to mimic their behavior. It is rarely fruitful to mimic the behavior of a mindless being. It would be better -- in the absence of conceptual powers of awareness -- to stick with personal trial-and-error and utilize the memory aspect of your powers of perception. Remembering what has worked for us in the past, and only for us, and only in the past.

Ed

p.s.
Perceptual (nonconceptual) powers include:
a) sense-perception
b) memory
c) imagination
d) crude (a "non-understanding") association

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 11/25, 11:13am)


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Saturday, November 26, 2011 - 10:22amSanction this postReply
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You offer a lot surmise and supposition.  One thing is obvious: you are not a parent.  Ayn Rand was not a parent, either.  The weakest writing in ITOE consists of her suggestions about how children learn concepts. 

I assure you from what I have seen, it does not work like that.  Just for openers, I have a snapshot of my daughter at 18 months scrambing eggs at the stove.  I was there, of course, and I helped.  But she knew what to do.  She was not going to put them in the cat dishes.   Just to say...  before you theorize about children, you should raise one.

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 11/26, 10:26am)


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Saturday, November 26, 2011 - 12:19pmSanction this postReply
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Mike,

You do not have to be a parent in order to understand children. What you have to be -- actually, what you have to have been -- is a child, and I was once a child. Being a child once, I understand the kinds of things kids do and the kinds of things kids think about when they do what they do.

It's an amazingly simple thing to accidentally overlook, as you and so many pretentious, "ivory tower" pseudo-intellectuals have done. You speak as if I have never been a child, and so I simply could not be in a position to know how children go about conceptualizing things, or how they go about completing complex tasks, or how they go about learning. Not having ever been a child myself, I must exclusively defer to "authorities" such as yourself on the topic of children and epistemology.

That's both condescending and wrong.

Ed



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Saturday, November 26, 2011 - 4:18pmSanction this postReply
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So, you put rice in the doggy dish to mimic Mom?


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Saturday, November 26, 2011 - 6:06pmSanction this postReply
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No, Mike, but I tried to do other things based on an incomplete knowledge of the physical principles behind them. I can't think of one right now but I have an example of an adult doing something similar in kind, if not in degree. This subject is really just something that extends throughout life -- but becomes harder and harder to detect. In studying kids, these things are easier to detect (because we all know what it is that kids should be doing, in order to do something correctly).

My example involves a friend. He was driving and I was in the car. It was winter in Minnesota and the roads were icy. He was taking a corner. His front wheels lost all traction and we started to go straight off of the road on a corner. What he chose to do to correct the situation is the wrong thing, and it stems from an incomplete understanding of the physical principles involved in driving in general, or on ice in particular:

He turned the wheel even more, to try to get the wheels to catch.

As you probably know by being from Michigan, if you are driving on ice and your front wheels lose all traction -- and you want to get the wheels to catch -- you ease off of your sharp turn (rather than make it sharper), i.e., you straighten the wheels out somewhat, until your car starts to turn again (rather than sliding straight forward on the ice with sharply turned wheels).

What my friend did was to make a crude association with regard to the specific steps required for completing a task. In the past, he had always experienced more turning when he turned his steering wheel more. He carried over his knowledge into a situation where it was no longer relevant (due to the different road conditions).

This is not dissimilar from the kids in the study performing unnecessary steps in order to complete a task.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 11/26, 6:07pm)


Post 11

Saturday, November 26, 2011 - 6:31pmSanction this postReply
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Ed, these experiments reveal empirical facts, but they do not suggest theories.

People who have raised six kids scoff at my experiences with one.

You were a child, as were we all. I find that introspection like that takes a lot of patience because it is too easy to imagine as adults what we "must have" thought back then. You know Ayn Rand's explanation in ITOE about how a child learns to build the abstraction "furniture." Only a few months ago, I remembered what that was like for me, perhaps at age 2 1/2 or 3 because of my wanting to sit on the kitchen table and then climb up to sit on the radio table (no TV yet). My Mom tried... but I just did not get the essential distinguishing characteristics of things you can sit on. Finally, we broke it down to basic rules. I could not sit on the tables. I could sit on the bed, etc., etc.

When I read ITOE 20 years ago, this did not come to me.

Even if I had total recall, it would only be about me, not you or billions of others.

I believe that the commonality of internal processes is shown by large, complex engineering projects. Trade and commerce would be hard enough. Building a temple or a castle would be impossible. I marveled at the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center until I toured Hoover Dam. Then, I understood what made the VAB possible.

We come to consensus through language. Language is extremely complicated and we have a hard time imagining what it was like only seven or eight thousand years ago when people literally could not tell up from down but used the same word to mean "away from me." Literacy accelerated language.
The Tower of Babel scared God... as well it should have.

I have been reading Popper and before that Wittgenstein and they argued about the validity of "natural language" versus formal logic, but by "natural language" they never got passed their native German. They never argued by offering examples from Chinese, Bantu or Algonquin.

What went on in your head as a youngster may or may not be generalizable. It may be common to many or few, to those from your culture or to a smattering of individuals across many (some or all or a few) cultures.

But from now on, when you write "children" I will read "Ed Thompson."



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Sunday, November 27, 2011 - 2:03pmSanction this postReply
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The idea that human kids profit from a tendency to imitate behaviors that are currently irrelevant to them makes perfect sense to me.  Chimps have no use for such a faculty because they don't plan ahead.  In general terms, they figure out how to get what they need once they realize that they need it.  If a previous experience informs their technique for acquiring what they need, so much the better. 

Humans, on the other hand, are planners.  We spend a great deal of our childhood learning stuff that is completely useless to us at the moment, listening to pointless lectures from parents who "just don't get it" and then someday grow up and put most of that formerly useless information to good use.


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Sunday, November 27, 2011 - 3:55pmSanction this postReply
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Good post, P M H.

Planning is a crucial disinction between humans and animals.

Ed


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Tuesday, November 29, 2011 - 11:17amSanction this postReply
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Thanks! This clarified matters greatly!

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Tuesday, November 29, 2011 - 12:03pmSanction this postReply
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Since I'm very interested in how children learn concepts, I would like your comments on this essay by one well-known achiever of today which discusses (among other things) her own memories of how she learned concepts.
(Edited by Kate Gladstone on 11/29, 12:03pm)


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Tuesday, November 29, 2011 - 12:10pmSanction this postReply
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Re:

> ... seven or eight thousand years ago ... people literally could not tell up >from down but used the same word to mean "away from me."

Where is the evidence that any languages, or all languages (or all languages of illiterates?)!eight thousand years ago lacked a distinction between "up" and "down"

"Up" and "down" have distinct words on all of the (admittedly only 5 or 10) vocabulary lists that I have seen published for languages spoken only by illiterates in places such as Papua New Guinea and Polynesia
For that matter, many languages of illiterates in those parts of the world, at least, make useful conceptual distinctions that English evades: for instance, they require different pronouns for "we-including-the-listener" and. "we-excluding-the-listener" (so that the statement "We are going hunting" mes instantlylear whether or not you're invited). Similarly, some languages of Northwest Coast Native Americans have a series of pronouns translatable into English as "the party of the first part," "the party of the second part," and "the party of the third part" — making precise, and concise, the expression of what English typically leaves vague (in such statements as "He said that he would find out what he has to revise before he rewrites the report")
Conversely — if I recall correctly from courses in a college linguistics major — the languages spoken by large numbers of literates are most often the ones that end up eroding numerous distinctions useful and otherwise (e.g., English has lost its distinction between singular and plural in the second-person pronouns). Current theory (of linguist John McWhorter among others) is that languages erode towards simplicity as they are learned by greater and greater numbers of adults (a language learned only/mostly by children — e.g., the language of some tribe in Papua Znew Guinea, whose language few outsiders would have any reason to bother to learn — sheds few complexities or conceptual distinctions over time, becausethyme ost all the people acquiring the language are children: in other words, they are people who can very easily learn any language, no matter what its complexities useful or otherwise, without much conscious effort.





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Tuesday, November 29, 2011 - 7:02pmSanction this postReply
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Kate: I agree that English was greatly simplified as adult learners came together.  I agree that so-called "primitive" languages display many complicated and subtle constructions.  Slavic languages have singular-dual-plural, which English lost. 

As you note, English only recently gave up "thou" with "you" for both singular and plural.  That came from politeness.  You (plural) was the polite form of singular address and "thou" the familiar.  (Originally, the polite form was the third person: "Will he be having breakfast?" meaning "Do you want breakfast" another archaism still heard in regional talk.

I also point out that we have few good measures of how non-literate languages change over time, so what we find today in New Guinea may or may not reflect a static language, but one that changed perhaps slowly in ways we do not know now.  (This also happens when Europeans ascribe "ancestral" lands to people who may have moved in a few hundred years ago, but who say they "always" were there, which for them was close enough.)  As for children, in particular, "baby talk" has been posited as an example of one mechanism by which languages change.  Choo-choo for train: binky for pacifier. Every family has a bunch of them. 

As for the distinctions between opposites:
hyper - hypo
super - supra
inter - intra
black - blank; blanch
(In Hungarian: fekete (black) - feher (white))
Deus - Devil
cell (hull) - caelo (heaven)
friend - fiend
(In German freund (friend)- feind (enemy))
host - guest (see also ghost)
In Greek xenos=stranger; xenos=welcome


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Tuesday, November 29, 2011 - 8:24pmSanction this postReply
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In canada the standard salutation is " how's it goin eh? "
When we are upset with someone we articulate said displeasure with "TAKE OFF EH!!!"
A coyote is a kai yoht not a kai yoh tee and a Z Is a zed not a zee!

:)


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Post 19

Tuesday, November 29, 2011 - 9:42pmSanction this postReply
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Michael — I don't see how the existence of similar but distinguishable words (e.g., "Deus" in Latin vs. "Devil" in English from Greek "diabolos") means that "up" and "down" must have used the same word until none invented reading and writing. The differences between "hyper/hypo" or their equivalents, after all, appear in languages that sundered from a common stock while all of their speakers were still illiterate.

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