Hvad sker der i dette barns sind? Hvis du spurgte folk for 30 år siden, ville de fleste, også psykologer, have sagt, at dette barn var irrationelt, ulogisk, egocentrisk -- at han ikke kunne forstå andres perspektiv eller forstå årsag og virkning. Indenfor de sidste 20 år har udviklingspsykologien fuldstændig omstødt det billede. Så på sin vis synes vi, at dette barns tankemåde er som den mest strålende forskers.
What is going on in this baby's mind? If you'd asked people this 30 years ago, most people, including psychologists, would have said that this baby was irrational, illogical, egocentric -- that he couldn't take the perspective of another person or understand cause and effect. In the last 20 years, developmental science has completely overturned that picture. So in some ways, we think that this baby's thinking is like the thinking of the most brilliant scientists.
Lad mig give et enkelt eksempel. En ting, som dette barn kunne tænke på, som måske sker i hans hoved, er at prøve at regne ud, hvad der sker i hovedet på det andet barn. Det er jo noget af det sværeste for os alle at regne ud, hvad andre tænker og føler. Og måske er det sværeste at regne ud, at hvad andre tænker og føler faktisk ikke er det samme, som vi tænker og føler. Enhver, som har fulgt med i politik, kan vidne om hvor svært det er for nogen at forstå. Vi ville vide, om spædbørn og småbørn kunne forstå denne gennemgribende ting om andre mennesker. Spørgsmålet er: Hvordan kunne vi spørge dem? Spædbørn kan jo ikke tale, og hvis du beder en treårig om at fortælle dig, hvad han tænker, så får du en smuk bevidsthedsstrøm om ponyer og fødselsdage og den slags. Så hvordan stiller vi dem reelt spørgsmålet?
Let me give you just one example of this. One thing that this baby could be thinking about, that could be going on in his mind, is trying to figure out what's going on in the mind of that other baby. After all, one of the things that's hardest for all of us to do is to figure out what other people are thinking and feeling. And maybe the hardest thing of all is to figure out that what other people think and feel isn't actually exactly like what we think and feel. Anyone who's followed politics can testify to how hard that is for some people to get. We wanted to know if babies and young children could understand this really profound thing about other people. Now the question is: How could we ask them? Babies, after all, can't talk, and if you ask a three year-old to tell you what he thinks, what you'll get is a beautiful stream of consciousness monologue about ponies and birthdays and things like that. So how do we actually ask them the question?
Det viste sig, at hemmeligheden var broccoli. Det, vi gjorde -- Betty Rapacholi, som var en af mine elever, og jeg -- var faktisk at give børnene to skåle mad: En skål med rå broccoli og en skål med lækre guldfiskekiks. Alle børnene, selv dem i Berkeley, kan lide kiksene og kan ikke lide rå broccoli. (Latter) Men hvad Betty så gjorde, var at tage en lille bid fra hver skål. Og hun ville lade som om, hun kunne lide det eller ej. Så hver anden gang lod hun som om, hun kunne lide kiksene og ikke broccolien -- ligesom barnet og enhver fornuftig person. Men hver anden gang gjorde hun det, at hun tog en smule broccoli og sagde: "Mmm, broccoli. Jeg smagte broccolien. Mmm." Og så tog hun lidt af kiksene og sagde: "Adr badr, kiks. Jeg smagte kiksene. Adr badr." Så hun lod som om, hun ville have det modsatte af, hvad børnene ville have. Vi gjorde dette med spædbørn på 15 og 18 måneder. Og så stak hun bare hånden frem og sagde: "Kan du give mig noget?"
Well it turns out that the secret was broccoli. What we did -- Betty Rapacholi, who was one of my students, and I -- was actually to give the babies two bowls of food: one bowl of raw broccoli and one bowl of delicious goldfish crackers. Now all of the babies, even in Berkley, like the crackers and don't like the raw broccoli. (Laughter) But then what Betty did was to take a little taste of food from each bowl. And she would act as if she liked it or she didn't. So half the time, she acted as if she liked the crackers and didn't like the broccoli -- just like a baby and any other sane person. But half the time, what she would do is take a little bit of the broccoli and go, "Mmmmm, broccoli. I tasted the broccoli. Mmmmm." And then she would take a little bit of the crackers, and she'd go, "Eww, yuck, crackers. I tasted the crackers. Eww, yuck." So she'd act as if what she wanted was just the opposite of what the babies wanted. We did this with 15 and 18 month-old babies. And then she would simply put her hand out and say, "Can you give me some?"
Så spørgsmålet er: Hvad ville barnet give hende, det, de kunne lide eller det, hun kunne lide? Og det bemærkelsesværdige er, at børn på 18 måneder, som kun lige havde lært at gå og tale, ville give hende kiks, hvis hun kunne lide kiks, men de ville give hende broccoli, hvis hun kunne lide broccoli. Derimod ville børn på 15 måneder stirre længe på hende, hvis hun lod som om, hun kunne lide broccoli, som om de ikke kunne regne den ud. Men når de så havde stirret et stykke tid, ville de bare give hende kiksene, som de tænke, at alle kunne lide. Så der er to bemærkelsesværdige ting her. Den første er, at disse børn på 18 måneder allerede har opdaget den gennemgribende kendsgerning om menneskets natur, at vi ikke altid vil det samme. Og derudover følte de, at de faktisk skulle gøre noget for at hjælpe andre med at få, hvad de ville have.
So the question is: What would the baby give her, what they liked or what she liked? And the remarkable thing was that 18 month-old babies, just barely walking and talking, would give her the crackers if she liked the crackers, but they would give her the broccoli if she liked the broccoli. On the other hand, 15 month-olds would stare at her for a long time if she acted as if she liked the broccoli, like they couldn't figure this out. But then after they stared for a long time, they would just give her the crackers, what they thought everybody must like. So there are two really remarkable things about this. The first one is that these little 18 month-old babies have already discovered this really profound fact about human nature, that we don't always want the same thing. And what's more, they felt that they should actually do things to help other people get what they wanted.
Endnu mere bemærkelsesværdigt: Det, at børn på 15 måneder ikke gjorde dette, tyder på, at de 18 måneder gamle børn havde lært denne dybe kendsgerning om menneskets natur på tre måneder, siden de var 15 måneder gamle. Så børn både ved og lærer mere, end vi nogensinde ville have troet. Og dette er bare en af hundredvis af undersøgelser gennem de sidste 20 år, som har demonstreret det.
Even more remarkably though, the fact that 15 month-olds didn't do this suggests that these 18 month-olds had learned this deep, profound fact about human nature in the three months from when they were 15 months old. So children both know more and learn more than we ever would have thought. And this is just one of hundreds and hundreds of studies over the last 20 years that's actually demonstrated it.
Det, man måske spørger om, er: Hvorfor lærer børn så meget? Og hvordan kan de lære så meget på så kort tid? Jeg mener, hvis du ser overfladisk på spædbørn, virker de ret ubrugelige. Og på mange måder er de faktisk værre end ubrugelige, fordi vi er nødt til at ofre så megen tid og energi bare for at holde dem i live. Men hvis vi vender os mod evolutionen for at få svar på, hvorfor vi bruger så megen tid på at tage os af ubrugelige spædbørn, viser det sig, at der faktisk er et svar. Hvis vi ser på mange forskellige dyrearter, ikke kun os primater, men også andre pattedyr, fugle, selv pungdyr som kænguruer og vombatter, viser det sig, at der er en sammenhæng mellem, hvor lang barndom en art har, og hvor store deres hjerner er i forhold til deres kroppe, og hvor kloge og smidige, de er.
The question you might ask though is: Why do children learn so much? And how is it possible for them to learn so much in such a short time? I mean, after all, if you look at babies superficially, they seem pretty useless. And actually in many ways, they're worse than useless, because we have to put so much time and energy into just keeping them alive. But if we turn to evolution for an answer to this puzzle of why we spend so much time taking care of useless babies, it turns out that there's actually an answer. If we look across many, many different species of animals, not just us primates, but also including other mammals, birds, even marsupials like kangaroos and wombats, it turns out that there's a relationship between how long a childhood a species has and how big their brains are compared to their bodies and how smart and flexible they are.
Og en slags frontfigur for denne tanke er fuglene deroppe. På den ene side er en ny-kaledonisk krage. Og krager og andre corvidae, ravne, råger osv., er utroligt kloge fugle. De er på sin vis så kloge som chimpanser. Og dette er en fugl på forsiden af Science, som har lært at bruge et redskab til at få mad. På den anden hånd har vi vores ven tamhønen. Og høns og ænder og gæs og kalkuner er stort set så dumme som døre. De er utroligt gode til at finde korn, og de er ikke ret gode til andet. Nå, men det viser sig, at ungerne, de ny-kaledoniske krageunger, er skrællinger. De er afhængige af, at deres mødre stopper orme i deres små, åbne munde i op til to år, hvilket er en virkelig stor del af en fugls levetid. Hvorimod kyllingerne faktisk bliver modne på et par måneder. Så barndom er årsagen til, at kragerne ender på forsiden af Science, og hønsene ender i suppegryden.
And sort of the posterbirds for this idea are the birds up there. On one side is a New Caledonian crow. And crows and other corvidae, ravens, rooks and so forth, are incredibly smart birds. They're as smart as chimpanzees in some respects. And this is a bird on the cover of science who's learned how to use a tool to get food. On the other hand, we have our friend the domestic chicken. And chickens and ducks and geese and turkeys are basically as dumb as dumps. So they're very, very good at pecking for grain, and they're not much good at doing anything else. Well it turns out that the babies, the New Caledonian crow babies, are fledglings. They depend on their moms to drop worms in their little open mouths for as long as two years, which is a really long time in the life of a bird. Whereas the chickens are actually mature within a couple of months. So childhood is the reason why the crows end up on the cover of Science and the chickens end up in the soup pot.
Der er noget med den lange barndom, som synes at være forbundet med viden og læring. Hvilken forklaring kan vi have på dette? Jo, nogle dyr, som hønen, virker fantastisk velegnede til at gøre én ting utroligt godt. Så de virker fantastisk velegnede til at finde korn i ét miljø. Andre skabninger, som kragerne, er ikke utroligt gode til noget særligt, men de er yderst gode til at lære forskrifterne i forskellige miljøer.
There's something about that long childhood that seems to be connected to knowledge and learning. Well what kind of explanation could we have for this? Well some animals, like the chicken, seem to be beautifully suited to doing just one thing very well. So they seem to be beautifully suited to pecking grain in one environment. Other creatures, like the crows, aren't very good at doing anything in particular, but they're extremely good at learning about laws of different environments.
Og vi mennesker er selvfølgelig langt ude mod enden af skalaen som kragerne. Vi har langt større hjerner i forhold til vores kroppe end noget andet dyr. Vi er klogere, vi er smidigere, vi kan lære mere, vi overlever i flere forskellige miljøer, vi migrerer og dækker verden, og vi tager endda til det ydre rum. Og vores spædbørn og børn er afhængige af os i meget længere tid, end nogen anden arts børn. Min søn er 23. (Latter) Og i hvert fald til de er 23, stopper vi stadig orme i de små, åbne munde.
And of course, we human beings are way out on the end of the distribution like the crows. We have bigger brains relative to our bodies by far than any other animal. We're smarter, we're more flexible, we can learn more, we survive in more different environments, we migrated to cover the world and even go to outer space. And our babies and children are dependent on us for much longer than the babies of any other species. My son is 23. (Laughter) And at least until they're 23, we're still popping those worms into those little open mouths.
Hvorfor skulle vi se den sammenhæng? Jo, tanken er, at den strategi, den læringsstrategi, er en særdeles kraftfuld strategi for at klare sig i verden, men den har én stor ulempe. Og den store ulempe er, at indtil du faktisk har gennemgået al den indlæring, er du hjælpeløs. Så du har jo ikke lyst til, at mastodonten stormer mod dig, og du siger til dig selv: "En slangebøsse eller måske et spyd kunne virke. Hvilket ville være bedst?" Du vil hellere vide alt det, før mastodonterne faktisk dukker op. Og evolutionen lader til at have løst problemet gennem en slags arbejdsdeling. Så tanken er, at vi har en tidlig periode, hvor vi er fuldstændigt beskyttet. Vi behøver ikke at gøre noget. Alt, vi skal gøre, er at lære. Og når vi så er voksne, kan vi tage alle de ting, vi lærte som spædbørn og børn og anvende dem til at gøre ting ude i verden.
All right, why would we see this correlation? Well an idea is that that strategy, that learning strategy, is an extremely powerful, great strategy for getting on in the world, but it has one big disadvantage. And that one big disadvantage is that, until you actually do all that learning, you're going to be helpless. So you don't want to have the mastodon charging at you and be saying to yourself, "A slingshot or maybe a spear might work. Which would actually be better?" You want to know all that before the mastodons actually show up. And the way the evolutions seems to have solved that problem is with a kind of division of labor. So the idea is that we have this early period when we're completely protected. We don't have to do anything. All we have to do is learn. And then as adults, we can take all those things that we learned when we were babies and children and actually put them to work to do things out there in the world.
Så én måde at se det på er, at spædbørn og småbørn er som menneskehedens forsknings- og udviklingsafdeling. Så de er de beskyttede fantaster, som bare skal ud at lære og få gode idéer, og vi er produktion og markedsføring. Vi skal tage alle de idéer, som vi lærte, da vi var børn, og faktisk anvende dem. En anden måde at se det på er i stedet for at tænke på spædbørn og børn som ufuldstændige voksne, burde vi tænke på dem som om de er på et andet udviklingsstadie indenfor samme art -- lidt ligesom larver og sommerfugle -- bortset fra, at de er de strålende sommerfugle, som flagrer rundt i haven på udforskning, og vi er larverne, som kryber hen ad vores snævre, voksne sti.
So one way of thinking about it is that babies and young children are like the research and development division of the human species. So they're the protected blue sky guys who just have to go out and learn and have good ideas, and we're production and marketing. We have to take all those ideas that we learned when we were children and actually put them to use. Another way of thinking about it is instead of thinking of babies and children as being like defective grownups, we should think about them as being a different developmental stage of the same species -- kind of like caterpillars and butterflies -- except that they're actually the brilliant butterflies who are flitting around the garden and exploring, and we're the caterpillars who are inching along our narrow, grownup, adult path.
Hvis det er sandt, hvis disse børn er skabt til at lære -- og udviklingshistorien synes at sige, at børn er til for at lære, det er, hvad de er til for -- så kan vi antage, at de burde have meget kraftfulde læringsmekanismer. Og faktisk ser det ud til, at spædbarnets hjerne er den mest kraftfulde indlæringscomputer på planeten. Men rigtige computere bliver faktisk bedre og bedre. Og der har være en revolution indenfor vores forståelse af maskinlæring for nylig. Og det afhænger alt sammen af denne mands idéer, pastor Thomas Bayes, som var statistiker og matematiker i det 18. århundrede. Hovedsageligt gjorde Bayes det, at han leverede en matematisk metode ved hjælp af sandsynlighedsregning som kunne karakterisere, beskrive, hvordan forskere undersøger verden. Så forskere har en hypotese, som de mener kunne være et sandsynligt udgangspunkt. Det tester de så mod beviserne. Beviserne får dem til at ændre hypotesen. Så tester de den nye hypotese, og så videre. Og Bayes fremsatte en matematisk metode til at gøre det. Og den matematik er central for de bedste maskinlæringsprogrammer, vi har nu. Og for omtrent 10 år siden foreslog jeg, at spædbørn måske gør det samme.
If this is true, if these babies are designed to learn -- and this evolutionary story would say children are for learning, that's what they're for -- we might expect that they would have really powerful learning mechanisms. And in fact, the baby's brain seems to be the most powerful learning computer on the planet. But real computers are actually getting to be a lot better. And there's been a revolution in our understanding of machine learning recently. And it all depends on the ideas of this guy, the Reverend Thomas Bayes, who was a statistician and mathematician in the 18th century. And essentially what Bayes did was to provide a mathematical way using probability theory to characterize, describe, the way that scientists find out about the world. So what scientists do is they have a hypothesis that they think might be likely to start with. They go out and test it against the evidence. The evidence makes them change that hypothesis. Then they test that new hypothesis and so on and so forth. And what Bayes showed was a mathematical way that you could do that. And that mathematics is at the core of the best machine learning programs that we have now. And some 10 years ago, I suggested that babies might be doing the same thing.
Så hvis du vil vide, hvad der sker bag de smukke, brune øjne, tror jeg faktisk, det ser nogenlunde sådan ud. Dette er pastor Bayes' notesbog. Så jeg tror, de børn faktisk laver komplicerede udregninger med betingede sandsynligheder, som de reviderer for at finde ud af, hvordan verden hænger sammen. Det virker nok som en endnu sværere ting at påvise. For hvis du spørger selv voksne om statistikker, ser de temmelig dumme ud. Hvordan skulle det være muligt, at børn beregner statistikker?
So if you want to know what's going on underneath those beautiful brown eyes, I think it actually looks something like this. This is Reverend Bayes's notebook. So I think those babies are actually making complicated calculations with conditional probabilities that they're revising to figure out how the world works. All right, now that might seem like an even taller order to actually demonstrate. Because after all, if you ask even grownups about statistics, they look extremely stupid. How could it be that children are doing statistics?
Så for at teste dette, brugte vi en maskine, som vi har, som hedder Blicket-detektoren. Det er en kasse, som lyser og spiller musik, når du putter visse ting på den, og ikke andre. Og med denne meget simple maskine, har mit laboratorium og andre udført snesevis af forsøg, som viser, præcis hvor gode børn er til at lære om verden. Lad mig nævne bare et, som vi foretog med Tumar Kushner, min elev. Hvis jeg viste dig denne detektor, ville du som udgangspunkt sandsynligvis tænke, at man får detektoren til at virke ved at sætte en klods ovenpå den. Men faktisk virker denne detektor på en lidt mærkelig måde. For hvis du vifter med en klods ovenover detektoren, noget, du slet ikke ville finde på til at begynde med, bliver detektoren faktisk aktiveret to ud af tre gange. Hvorimod hvis du gør det sandsynlige, sætter klodsen på detektoren, aktiveres den kun to ud af seks gange. Så den usandsynlige hypotese har faktisk stærkere beviser. Det ser ud til, at det at vifte er en mere effektiv strategi, end den anden strategi. Så vi gjorde simpelthen således: Vi gav fireårige dette bevismønster, og bad dem få den til at virke. Og ganske rigtigt brugte de fireårige beviset til at vifte med objektet ovenover detektoren.
So to test this we used a machine that we have called the Blicket Detector. This is a box that lights up and plays music when you put some things on it and not others. And using this very simple machine, my lab and others have done dozens of studies showing just how good babies are at learning about the world. Let me mention just one that we did with Tumar Kushner, my student. If I showed you this detector, you would be likely to think to begin with that the way to make the detector go would be to put a block on top of the detector. But actually, this detector works in a bit of a strange way. Because if you wave a block over the top of the detector, something you wouldn't ever think of to begin with, the detector will actually activate two out of three times. Whereas, if you do the likely thing, put the block on the detector, it will only activate two out of six times. So the unlikely hypothesis actually has stronger evidence. It looks as if the waving is a more effective strategy than the other strategy. So we did just this; we gave four year-olds this pattern of evidence, and we just asked them to make it go. And sure enough, the four year-olds used the evidence to wave the object on top of the detector.
Der er to ting ved dette, som er meget interessante. Den første er -- igen, husk på, at dette er fireårige. De har lige lært at tælle. Men underbevidst udfører de disse ganske komplicerede udregninger, som vil give dem en betinget sandsynligheds-målestok. Og den anden interessante ting er, at de bruger dette bevis til at få en idé, få en hypotese om verden, som virker meget usandsynlig til at begynde med. Og i lignende forsøg, som vi lige har udført i mit laboratorium, har vi påvist, at fireårige faktisk er bedre til at nå frem til en usandsynlig hypotese, end voksne, når vi giver dem præcis samme opgave. Så under disse omstændigheder, bruger børn statistikker til at undersøge verden. Men forskere eksperimenterer jo også, og vi ville se, om børn også eksperimenterer. Når børn eksperimenterer, kalder vi det "at blive opslugt" eller "at lege".
Now there are two things that are really interesting about this. The first one is, again, remember, these are four year-olds. They're just learning how to count. But unconsciously, they're doing these quite complicated calculations that will give them a conditional probability measure. And the other interesting thing is that they're using that evidence to get to an idea, get to a hypothesis about the world, that seems very unlikely to begin with. And in studies we've just been doing in my lab, similar studies, we've show that four year-olds are actually better at finding out an unlikely hypothesis than adults are when we give them exactly the same task. So in these circumstances, the children are using statistics to find out about the world, but after all, scientists also do experiments, and we wanted to see if children are doing experiments. When children do experiments we call it "getting into everything" or else "playing."
Og der er dukket en masse interessante undersøgelser op for nylig, som har påvist, at denne "leg" faktisk er en slags eksperimentel forskning. Her er en fra Cristine Legares laboratorium. Cristine brugte vores Blicket-detektorer. Og hun viste børnene, at de gule fik den til at virke, og ikke de røde, og så viste hun dem en afvigelse. Og det, vi ser, er, at denne lille dreng gennemgår fem hypoteser på to minutter.
And there's been a bunch of interesting studies recently that have shown this playing around is really a kind of experimental research program. Here's one from Cristine Legare's lab. What Cristine did was use our Blicket Detectors. And what she did was show children that yellow ones made it go and red ones didn't, and then she showed them an anomaly. And what you'll see is that this little boy will go through five hypotheses in the space of two minutes.
(Video): Dreng: Hvad med sådan? Det samme som den anden side.
(Video) Boy: How about this? Same as the other side.
Alison Gopnik: Okay, så hans første hypotese er lige blevet afkræftet.
Alison Gopnik: Okay, so his first hypothesis has just been falsified.
Dreng: Ingenting! (Latter)
(Laughter)
Den her lyste, og den her ingenting.
Boy: This one lighted up, and this one nothing.
AG: Okay, han har sin notesbog fremme.
AG: Okay, he's got his experimental notebook out.
Dreng: Hvad får den her til at lyse? (Latter) Jeg ved det ikke.
Boy: What's making this light up. (Laughter) I don't know.
AG: Enhver forsker vil genkende det fortvivlede udtryk.
AG: Every scientist will recognize that expression of despair.
(Latter)
(Laughter)
Dreng: Åh, det er fordi, denne her skal være sådan her, og denne her skal være sådan her.
Boy: Oh, it's because this needs to be like this, and this needs to be like this.
AG: Okay, anden hypotese.
AG: Okay, hypothesis two.
Dreng: Det er derfor. Åh.
Boy: That's why. Oh.
(Latter)
(Laughter)
AG: Dette er hans næste idé. Han bad forsøgslederen gøre dette, at prøve at sætte den på den anden plads. Det virker heller ikke.
AG: Now this is his next idea. He told the experimenter to do this, to try putting it out onto the other location. Not working either.
Dreng: Åh, fordi lyset virker kun her, ikke her. Åh, bunden af den her kasse har elektricitet herinde, men den her har ikke elektricitet.
Boy: Oh, because the light goes only to here, not here. Oh, the bottom of this box has electricity in here, but this doesn't have electricity.
AG: Okay, det er en fjerde hypotese.
AG: Okay, that's a fourth hypothesis.
Dreng: Den lyser! Så når du putter fire -- Så du putter fire på den her for at den lyser og to på den her for at den lyser.
Boy: It's lighting up. So when you put four. So you put four on this one to make it light up and two on this one to make it light up.
AG: Okay, der er hans femte hypotese.
AG: Okay,there's his fifth hypothesis.
Det er en særligt -- det er en særligt bedårende og veltalende lille dreng, men Cristine opdagede, at det faktisk er temmelig typisk. Hvis du ser på, hvordan børn leger, når du beder dem forklare noget, foretager de i virkeligheden en række eksperimenter. Det er faktisk meget typisk for fireårige.
Now that is a particularly -- that is a particularly adorable and articulate little boy, but what Cristine discovered is this is actually quite typical. If you look at the way children play, when you ask them to explain something, what they really do is do a series of experiments. This is actually pretty typical of four year-olds.
Men hvordan er det så at være sådan et væsen? Hvordan er det at være en af de strålende sommerfugle, som kan afprøve fem hypoteser på to minutter? Jo, hvis man vender tilbage til psykologerne og filosofferne, så har mange af dem sagt, at spædbørn og småbørn knapt var bevidste, hvis de overhovedet var bevidste. Jeg tror, det stik modsatte er sandt. Jeg tror, at spædbørn og børn faktisk er mere bevidste, end vi er som voksne. Her er, hvad vi ved om, hvordan voksnes bevidsthed fungerer. Og voksnes opmærksomhed og bevidsthed ligner lidt et spotlys. Det, der sker for voksne, er, at vi beslutter, at noget er relevant eller vigtigt, at vi bør være opmærksomme på det. Vores bevidsthed omkring den ting, som vi er opmærksomme på, bliver særdeles klar og levende, og alt andet bliver på en måde mørkt. Og vi ved endda noget om, hvordan hjernen gør dette.
Well, what's it like to be this kind of creature? What's it like to be one of these brilliant butterflies who can test five hypotheses in two minutes? Well, if you go back to those psychologists and philosophers, a lot of them have said that babies and young children were barely conscious if they were conscious at all. And I think just the opposite is true. I think babies and children are actually more conscious than we are as adults. Now here's what we know about how adult consciousness works. And adults' attention and consciousness look kind of like a spotlight. So what happens for adults is we decide that something's relevant or important, we should pay attention to it. Our consciousness of that thing that we're attending to becomes extremely bright and vivid, and everything else sort of goes dark. And we even know something about the way the brain does this.
Det, der sker, når vi er opmærksomme, er, at den præfrontale cortex, den administrerende del af hjernen, sender et signal, som gør en lille smule af hjernen meget mere fleksibel, mere plastisk, bedre til indlæring, og lukker for aktivitet i hele resten af hjernen. Så vi har en meget fokuseret, formålsdreven form for opmærksomhed. Hvis vi ser på spædbørn og småbørn, ser vi noget ganske andet. Jeg tror, at spædbørn og småbørn nærmere har en bevidstheds-lanterne frem for et bevidstheds-spotlys. Spædbørn og småbørn er meget dårlige til at indsnævre sig til en enkelt ting. Men de er meget gode til at modtage megen information fra mange forskellige kilder på en gang. Og hvis du faktisk ser på deres hjerner, vil du se, at de er overstrømmet af signalstoffer, som er meget gode til at tilskynde læring og plasticitet, og den hæmmende del er ikke slået til endnu. Så når vi siger, at spædbørn og småbørn er uopmærksomme, mener vi i virkeligheden, at de er dårlige til ikke at være opmærksomme. De er dårlige til at slippe alle de spændende ting, som kunne fortælle dem noget, og fokusere på det, som er vigtigt. Det er den slags opmærksomhed og bevidsthed, som vi kan forvente af de sommerfugle, som er skabt til at lære.
So what happens when we pay attention is that the prefrontal cortex, the sort of executive part of our brains, sends a signal that makes a little part of our brain much more flexible, more plastic, better at learning, and shuts down activity in all the rest of our brains. So we have a very focused, purpose-driven kind of attention. If we look at babies and young children, we see something very different. I think babies and young children seem to have more of a lantern of consciousness than a spotlight of consciousness. So babies and young children are very bad at narrowing down to just one thing. But they're very good at taking in lots of information from lots of different sources at once. And if you actually look in their brains, you see that they're flooded with these neurotransmitters that are really good at inducing learning and plasticity, and the inhibitory parts haven't come on yet. So when we say that babies and young children are bad at paying attention, what we really mean is that they're bad at not paying attention. So they're bad at getting rid of all the interesting things that could tell them something and just looking at the thing that's important. That's the kind of attention, the kind of consciousness, that we might expect from those butterflies who are designed to learn.
Hvis vi kunne tænke os en smagsprøve på den slags spædbarnsbevidsthed som voksne, tror jeg, det er bedst at forestille sig de tilfælde, hvor vi er i en ny situation, som vi aldrig har været i før -- når vi forelsker os i en ny person, eller når vi er i en ny by for første gang. Det, der så sker, er ikke, at vores bevidsthed trækker sig sammen, den udvider sig, så de tre dage i Paris virker mere fulde af bevidsthed og oplevelser, end alle de måneder, hvor man var en gående, talende, fakultetsmøde-deltagende zombie derhjemme. Og for resten, den kaffe, den vidunderlige kaffe, som I har drukket nedenunder, efterligner faktisk effekten af de spædbarns-signalstoffer. Så hvordan er det at være et spædbarn? Det er som at være forelsket i Paris for første gang efter du har drukket tre dobbelte espressoer. (Latter) Det er en fantastisk tilstand, men du får tendens til at vågne grædende klokken tre om morgenen.
Well if we want to think about a way of getting a taste of that kind of baby consciousness as adults, I think the best thing is think about cases where we're put in a new situation that we've never been in before -- when we fall in love with someone new, or when we're in a new city for the first time. And what happens then is not that our consciousness contracts, it expands, so that those three days in Paris seem to be more full of consciousness and experience than all the months of being a walking, talking, faculty meeting-attending zombie back home. And by the way, that coffee, that wonderful coffee you've been drinking downstairs, actually mimics the effect of those baby neurotransmitters. So what's it like to be a baby? It's like being in love in Paris for the first time after you've had three double-espressos. (Laughter) That's a fantastic way to be, but it does tend to leave you waking up crying at three o'clock in the morning.
(Latter)
(Laughter)
Men det er godt at være voksen. Jeg vil ikke sige for meget om, hvor fantastiske spædbørn er. Det er godt at være voksen. Vi kan gøre ting såsom at binde vores snørebånd og gå over gaden alene. Og det giver mening, at vi gør en stor indsats for at få spædbørn til at tænke som voksne. Men hvis vi vil være som de sommerfugle, fordomsfri, åbne for indlæring, med fantasi, kreativitet, innovation, måske i hvert fald noget af tiden, bør vi få de voksne til at tænke mere som børn.
Now it's good to be a grownup. I don't want to say too much about how wonderful babies are. It's good to be a grownup. We can do things like tie our shoelaces and cross the street by ourselves. And it makes sense that we put a lot of effort into making babies think like adults do. But if what we want is to be like those butterflies, to have open-mindedness, open learning, imagination, creativity, innovation, maybe at least some of the time we should be getting the adults to start thinking more like children.
(Bifald)
(Applause)