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.
Što se događa u umu ove bebe? Da ste postavili ovo pitanje prije 30 godina, većina ljudi, uključujući psihologe, rekla bi da je ova beba iracionalna, nerazborita, egocentrična -- da ne može gledati iz perspektive druge osobe i shvatiti uzrok i posljedicu. Posljednjih 20 godina razvojna je znanost u potpunosti promijenila tu sliku. Tako na neki način mislimo da je razmišljanje ove bebe poput razmišljanja najbistrijih znanstvenika.
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?
Navest ću samo jedan primjer. Jedna od stvari o kojoj bi ova beba mogla razmišljati, što bi se moglo odvijati u njezinom umu, pokušaj je shvaćanja što se događa u umu druge bebe. Na kraju krajeva, jedna je od najtežih stvari shvatiti o čemu ostali ljudi razmišljaju i što osjećaju. A možda je najteže od svega shvatiti da ono što drugi misle i osjećaju nije isto kao ono što mi mislimo i osjećamo. Svi koji su pratili politiku mogu potvrditi koliko je nekim ljudima teško to shvatiti. Željeli smo saznati mogu li bebe i mala djeca razumjeti nešto tako duboko u vezi drugih ljudi. Pitanje je kako bismo ih mogli to pitati. Bebe, na koncu, ne govore a ako pitate trogodišnjaka da vam kaže o čemu razmišlja dobit ćete prekrasan monolog struje svijesti o ponijima, rođendanima i sličnim stvarima. Kako im zaista možemo postaviti to pitanje?
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?"
Ispada da je tajna bila u brokuli. Ono što smo moja studentica, Betty Rapacholi, i ja učinile -- dale smo bebama dvije zdjelice s hranom: zdjelicu sirove brokule i zdjelicu slasnih krekera u obliku ribica. Sve bebe, čak i u Berkleyju, vole krekere, a ne vole sirovu brokulu. (Smijeh) No Betty je kušala malo hrane iz obje zdjelice. I ponašala se kao da je voli ili ne voli. Polovicu se vremena ponašala kao da voli krekere, a ne voli brokulu -- kao beba i svi ostali zdravog razuma. No ostalo bi vrijeme uzela komadić brokule i rekla: "Mmmmm, brokula. Kušala sam brokulu. Mmmmm." A zatim bi uzela malo krekera i rekla: "Bljak, krekeri. Kušala sam krekere. Bljak." Ponašala se kao da je ono što želi upravo suprotno od onoga što bebe žele. Učinili smo to s bebama od 15 i 18 mjeseci. Zatim bi ispružila ruku i rekla: "Hoćeš li mi dati malo?"
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.
Pitanje je: Što će joj bebe dati, ono što se njima sviđa ili što se njoj sviđa? Zapanjujuće je da bi joj bebe stare 18 mjeseci, koje jedva hodaju i govore, dale krekere ako je pokazala da voli krekere, a brokulu ako je pokazala da voli brokulu. S druge strane, bebe stare 15 mjeseci dugo bi zurile u nju ako se ponašala kao da voli brokulu kao da to ne mogu shvatiti. No nakon dugog zurenja jednostavno bi joj dale krekere misleći da njih svi moraju voljeti. Postoje dvije izvanredne stvari u vezi toga. Prva je da su te male bebe stare 18 mjeseci već otkrile tu duboku činjenicu o ljudskoj prirodi, da ne želimo uvijek iste stvari. Štoviše, osjetile su da trebaju činiti ono što će drugima pomoći da dobiju ono što žele.
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.
Međutim, što je još nevjerojatnije, činjenica da bebe stare 15 mjeseci nisu to učinile daje naslutiti da su bebe stare 18 mjeseci naučile tu duboku, ozbiljnu činjenicu o ljudskoj prirodi unutar tri mjeseca počevši od dobi od 15 mjeseci. Znači, djeca znaju više i uče više nego što bismo ikad pomislili. A to je samo jedna od stotina i stotina istraživanja tijekom posljednjih 20 godina koja su to doista dokazala.
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.
No mogli biste upitati: zašto djeca uče toliko? Kako je moguće da nauče toliko mnogo u tako malo vremena? Na kraju krajeva, ako površno pogledate bebe čine se prilično beskorisnima. Na mnogo načina čak su i više nego beskorisne jer moramo uložiti toliko vremena i energije samo da bismo ih održali na životu. No ako u evoluciji potražimo rješenje zagonetke zašto toliko vremena trošimo na brigu za beskorisne bebe, proizlazi da odgovor zapravo postoji. Ako pogledamo brojne različite vrste životinja, ne samo nas primate, no ako uključimo ostale sisavce, ptice, čak tobolčare, kao što su klokani i vombati, proizlazi da postoji veza između trajanja djetinjstva određene vrste i veličine njihovih mozgova u usporedbi s tijelom te njihove pameti i fleksibilnosti.
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.
Ptice za ilustraciju ove zamisli ove su ptice ovdje. S jedne je strane vrana iz Nove Kaledonije. Vrane i ostale ptice te porodice, gavrani, gačci itd., nevjerojatno su pametne ptice. U nekim su aspektima pametne kao čimpanze. Ovo je ptica na naslovnici časopisa Science koja je naučila koristiti alat da bi došla do hrane. S druge strane, imamo našu prijateljicu, domaću kokoš. A kokoši, patke, guske i pure u biti glupe su kao klada. Veoma su dobre u kljucanju da bi dobile zrno, no osim toga nisu baš dobre ni u čemu. Proizlazi da su mladi vrane zapravo žutokljunci. Oni ovise o svojim majkama i crvima koje im one ispuštaju u otvorena ustašca tijekom cijele dvije godine, što je prilično dugo u životu jedne ptice. Dok kokoši zapravo sazriju za nekoliko mjeseci. Dakle, djetinjstvo je razlog zašto vrane završe na naslovnici Sciencea, a kokoši završe u loncu s juhom.
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.
Postoji nešto u vezi s dugim djetinjstvom što se čini povezanim sa znanjem i učenjem. Kako bismo to mogli objasniti? Neke životinje, kao što su kokoši, savršeno rade samo jednu stvar. Čini se da su savršeno prilagođene za kljucanje zrnja u jednom okruženju. Ostala stvorenja, poput vrana, nisu posebno dobra ni u čemu određenom, no iznimno su dobra u učenju zakona o različitim okolinama.
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.
A mi, ljudska bića, na samome smo kraju te podjele, kao vrane. Imamo puno veće mozgove s obzirom na tijela od bilo koje druge životinje. Pametniji smo, prilagodljiviji, možemo više naučiti, preživljavamo u više različitih okolina, selidbama smo pokrili cijeli svijet, odlazimo čak i u svemir. A naše bebe i djeca ovise o nama mnogo dulje nego mladunčad bilo koje druge vrste. Moj sin ima 23 godine. (Smijeh) Najmanje do 23. godine ubacujemo crviće u njihova otvorena ustašca.
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.
Zašto bismo proučavali tu korelaciju? Naša je ideja da je ta strategija, ta strategija učenja, iznimno snažna i značajna strategija za snalaženje u svijetu, no ima jedan veliki nedostatak. Taj veliki nedostatak je da, dok ne naučite sve potrebno, bit ćete bespomoćni. Ne želite se naći u situaciji da mastodont juri na vas i govoriti si: "Praćka bi mi mogla pomoći, ili možda koplje. Što bi bilo bolje?" Želite znati sve to prije nego što se mastodonti stvarno pojave. Način na koji je evolucija očito riješila taj problem neka je vrsta podjele rada. Ideja je da postoji početno razdoblje u kojem smo zaštićeni. Ne moramo činiti ništa. Moramo samo učiti. Zatim, kao odrasli uzimamo sve ono što smo naučili kao bebe i djeca i upotrijebiti to za razne stvari u stvarnom svijetu.
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.
Jedan od načina na koji možemo razmišljati je da su bebe i mala djeca poput odjela za istraživanja i razvoj ljudske vrste. Oni su zaštićena grupa na vrhu koja samo mora istraživati, učiti i imati dobre ideje, a mi smo proizvodnja i marketing. Mi moramo uzeti sve te ideje koje smo naučili kao djeca i upotrijebiti ih. Drugi način na koji možemo razmišljati je da, umjesto da smatramo bebe i djecu manjkavim odraslim ljudima, trebali bismo ih smatrati drukčijim razvojnim stadijem iste vrste -- poput gusjenica i leptira -- osim što su oni zapravo pametni leptirići koji lepršaju po vrtu i istražuju, a mi smo gusjenice koje gmižu svojom uskom, zrelom, odraslom stazom.
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.
Ako je to istina, ako su bebe stvorene da bi učile -- te bi prema toj evolucijskoj priči djeca bila za učenje, to je njihova svrha -- možemo očekivati da imaju iznimno snažne mehanizme učenja. Čini se da je mozak bebe najsnažnije računalo za učenje na planetu. No prava računala zapravo postaju mnogo bolja. Došlo je do revolucije u našem shvaćanju strojnog učenja u zadnje vrijeme. A sve to ovisi o idejama ovog čovjeka, Velečasnog Thomasa Bayesa, statističara i matematičara iz 18. stoljeća. U biti, ono što je Bayes učinio bilo je pružanje matematičkog načina, tj. korištenje teorije vjerojatnosti, za karakterizaciju, opisivanje načina na koji znanstvenici spoznaju svijet. Ono što znanstvenici čine je da imaju hipotezu s kojom misle da bi mogli započeti. Zatim je ispituju pomoću dokaza. Zbog dokaza moraju izmijeniti tu hipotezu. Zatim ispituju novu hipotezu i tako dalje i tako dalje. Bayes je pokazao matematički način na koji to možete činiti te da je matematika u samoj srži najboljih programa za strojno učenje koje imamo. Prije nekih 10 godina natuknula sam da je moguće da bebe rade istu stvar.
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?
Dakle, ako želite znati što se događa iza tih prekrasnih smeđih očiju, mislim da ćete dobiti nešto poput ovoga. Ovo je bilježnica Velečasnog Bayesa. Mislim da bebe zapravo izvode komplicirane izračune uz moguće vjerojatnosti koje preispituju kako bi otkrili kako svijet funkcionira. Možda vam se čini da će taj poredak biti još teže dokazati jer će čak i odrasli, ispast će glupi. Kako je onda moguće da djeca rade statističke izračune?
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.
Da bismo to ispitali koristili smo napravu po imenu Blicket Detector. Radi se o kutiji koja se upali i počne svirati kada stavite točno određene stvari na nju. Korištenjem ove jednostavne naprave moj je laboratorij proveo na desetke istraživanja koja su pokazala koliko bebe dobro uče o svijetu. Spomenut ću samo jedno koje smo proveli s mojim studentom Tumarom Kushnerom. Kad bih vam pokazala detektor vjerojatno biste pomislili da možete aktivirati detektor tako da stavite blok na vrh. No taj detektor radi na pomalo neobičan način. Ako mahnete blokom iznad detektora na što ne biste ni pomislili, detektor će se aktivirati dva od tri puta. No ako učinite očekivano, tj. stavite blok na detektor, on će se aktivirati samo dva od šest puta. Manje vjerojatna hipoteza zapravo ima snažnije dokaze. Čini se da je mahanje učinkovitije od druge navedene strategije. Upravo smo to učinili; dali smo četverogodišnjacima taj uzorak i pitali smo ih da ga aktiviraju. Naravno, četverogodišnjaci su upotrijebili dokaze i mahali predmetom iznad detektora.
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."
Dvije su stvari u vezi ovoga doista zanimljive. Jedna je, podsjetimo se, radi se o četverogodišnjacima. Oni tek uče brojati. No nesvjesno izvode prilično komplicirane izračune koji će im dati mjeru za vjerojatnost. Druga je zanimljiva stvar da koriste te dokaze da bi stvorili ideju, hipotezu o svijetu, koja se na samome početku ne čini izglednom. Sličnim ispitivanjima koja trenutno provodimo u mojem laboratoriju pokazali smo da su četverogodišnjaci zapravo bolji u otkrivanju manje vjerojatnih hipoteza nego odrasli, kada im damo potpuno isti zadatak. U tim okolnostima djeca koriste statistiku da bi došla do saznanja o svijetu, no na koncu, znanstvenici također izvode pokuse, a mi smo željeli saznate izvode li djeca pokuse. Kada djeca eksperimentiraju, kažemo da "guraju nos svuda" ili se "igraju".
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.
U zadnje je vrijeme provedeno mnoštvo zanimljivih ispitivanja koja pokazuju da je njihovo igranje zapravo vrsta eksperimentalnog programa istraživanja. Navest ću jedno iz laboratorija Cristine Le Gare. Cristine je upotrijebila naš detektor Pokazala je djeci da će ga žuti aktivirati, a crveni neće, a zatim im je pokazala jednu nepravilnost. Vidjet ćete da će ovaj dječačić proći pet hipoteza unutar dvije minute.
(Video) Boy: How about this? Same as the other side.
(Videozapis) Dječak: A ovako? Isto kao i s druge strane.
Alison Gopnik: Okay, so his first hypothesis has just been falsified.
Alison Gopnik: Prva hipoteza upravo se pokazala netočnom.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
Boy: This one lighted up, and this one nothing.
Dječak: Ova se upalila, a ova nije.
AG: Okay, he's got his experimental notebook out.
AG: Pripremio je svoju bilježnicu za eksperimente.
Boy: What's making this light up. (Laughter) I don't know.
Dječak: Kako se ova upali? (Smijeh) Ne znam.
AG: Every scientist will recognize that expression of despair.
AG: Svaki će znanstvenik prepoznati ovaj izraz očaja.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
Boy: Oh, it's because this needs to be like this, and this needs to be like this.
Dječak: O, to je zato što mora biti kao ova, a ova mora biti kao ova.
AG: Okay, hypothesis two.
AG: OK, druga hipoteza.
Boy: That's why. Oh.
Dečko: Eto zašto. Oh.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
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.
AG: A sada sljedeća ideja. Rekao je eksperimentatorici da učini ovo, da ga pokuša staviti na drugi. Ni to nije upalilo.
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.
Dječak: O, zato što svjetlo ide samo do ovdje, a ne do ovdje. Dno ove kutije ima struju unutra, ali ova nema struju.
AG: Okay, that's a fourth hypothesis.
AG: OK, to je četvrta hipoteza.
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.
Dječak: Pali se. Znači kada staviš četiri. Staviš četiri na ovu da se upali i dva na ovu da se upali.
AG: Okay,there's his fifth hypothesis.
AG: OK, eto i pete hipoteze.
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.
To je posebno -- posebno simpatičan i rječit dječačić, no Cristine je otkrila da je to zapravo prilično tipično. Ako pogledate način na koji se djeca igraju, kada ih pitate da nešto objasne, oni zapravo izvode niz eksperimenata. To je zapravo tipično za četverogodišnjake.
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.
No, kako je to biti ovakvo stvorenje? Kako je to biti jedan od ovih bistrih leptirića koji mogu ispitati pet hipoteza u dvije minute? Ako se vratimo onim psiholozima i filozofima, mnogo ih je reklo da su bebe i mala djeca jedva svjesna ako uopće i jesu svjesna. Mislim da je točno upravo suprotno. Mislim da su bebe i djeca zapravo svjesnija nego mi kao odrasli. Evo što znamo o tome kako funkcionira svjesnost odraslih. Pažnja i svijest odraslih izgleda poput snopa svjetlosti. Kod odraslih se događa da odlučuju je li nešto relevantno ili važno i trebaju li na to obratiti pažnju. Naša svijest o toj stvari koju pratimo postaje blještava i jasna a sve ostalo postaje tamno. Čak i znamo nešto o načinu na koji mozak to radi.
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.
Kada na nešto obratimo pozornost prefrontalni korteks, neka vrsta izvršnog dijela mozga, šalje signal koji maleni dio mozga čini znatno fleksibilnijim gipkijim, sposobnijim za učenje, a gasi aktivnost u ostalim dijelovima mozga. Naša je pažnja veoma usredotočena, usmjerena na ostvarenje cilja. Ako pogledamo bebe i malu djecu vidjet ćemo nešto veoma različito. Mislim da bebe i mala djeca prije imaju nešto poput lanterne svjesnosti nego usmjerenog snopa. Bebe i mala djeca nisu dobra u usredotočavanju samo na jednu stvar. No veoma su dobre u primanju mnoštva informacija iz raznih izvora istovremeno. Ako pogledate njihove mozgove, vidjet ćete da su prepuni neurotransmitera koji su dobri u poticanju učenja i prilagodljivosti a inhibitorni se dijelovi nisu još pojavili. Kada kažemo da bebe i mala djeca nisu dobra u obraćanju pozornosti zapravo mislimo da nisu dobra u neobraćanju pozornosti. Nisu dobra u odbacivanju svih zanimljivih stvari koje bi im nešto mogle otkriti i usredotočavanju na jednu stvar koja je bitna. To je vrsta pozornosti, vrsta svjesnosti, koju možemo očekivati od tih leptirića koji su stvoreni da bi učili.
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.
Ako želimo razmisliti o načinu na koji mi kao odrasli možemo dobiti malo dječje svjesnosti, mislim da je najbolje razmisliti o slučajevima kada smo u novoj situaciji u kojoj se nikad prije nismo našli -- kada se zaljubimo u nekoga novoga, ili kada smo prvi put u novom gradu. Tada se naša svjesnost ne skuplja, ona se širi pa se tri dana u Parizu čine punija svjesnosti i iskustava nego svi mjeseci u kojima kao zombi hodamo, govorimo i idemo na sastanke u svome gradu. Usput, ta kava, ta izvrsna kava koju ste popili dolje, zapravo oponaša učinak dječjih neurotransmitera. Kako je to biti beba? Kao da ste zaljubljeni dok ste prvi put u Parizu nakon što ste popili tri dupla espressa. (Smijeh) To je fantastično stanje, no moglo bi se dogoditi da se probudite u suzama u tri sata ujutro.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
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.
Nije loše biti odrasla osoba. Ne želim reći previše o tome kako su bebe divne. Nije loše biti odrastao. Sami možemo vezati vezice na cipelama i prelaziti cestu. Ima smisla to što ulažemo mnogo truda da bismo naučili bebe da misle kao odrasli. No ako želimo biti poput tih leptirića, biti otvoreni za nove ideje, spremni na učenje, maštu, kreativnost, inovacije, barem dio vremena trebali bismo poticati odrasle da počnu razmišljati više kao djeca.
(Applause)
(Pljesak)