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.
O čem premišlja tale malček? Če bi to koga vprašali pred 30 leti, bi jih večina, vključno s psihologi, odgovorila, da je ta malček neracionalen, nelogičen, egocentričen -- da se ne more vživeti v nekoga drugega in da ne razume vzroka in posledice. V zadnjih 20 letih je znanost o razvoju popolnoma preobrnila to sliko. Tako nekako mislimo, da je premišljanje tega malčka takšno kot je premišljanje najsijajnejših znanstvenikov.
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?
Naj podam primer tega. Ena stvar, o kateri bi ta malček lahko premišljal, kar bi se lahko odvijalo v njegovem umu, je, da poskuša ugotoviti, o čem premišlja ta drugi malček. Navsezadnje je ena najtežjih stvari za vse nas ugotavljanje, kaj razmišljajo in čutijo drugi ljudje. In morda je najtežja stvar od vsega ugotoviti, da to, kar mislijo in čutijo drugi ljudje, dejansko ni točno to, kar mislimo in čutimo sami. Kdorkoli je kdaj sledil politiki lahko potrdi, kako težko je nekaterim ljudem to dojeti. Želeli smo izvedeti, če bi malčki in majhni otroci razumeli to resnično poglobljeno stvar o drugih ljudeh. Ampak vprašanje je, kako bi jih o tem lahko vprašali? Malčki navsezadnje ne morejo govoriti, če pa triletnika prosite, naj vam pove, kaj misli, boste dobili prelep tok zavestnega samogovora o konjičkih in rojstnih dnevih in podobnem. Torej kako bi jim dejansko postavili to vprašanje?
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?"
No, izkaže se, da je bila skrivnost v brokoliju. Kar sva naredili skupaj z Betty Rapasholi, eno mojih študentk -- je bilo to, da sva malčkom dali dve skledici hrane: eno skodelico surovega brokolija in eno skodelico slastnih krekerjev v obliki ribice. No, prav vsi otroci, celo v Berkleyu, imajo radi krekerje in ne marajo surovega brokolija. (Smeh) Betty je potem poskusila malo jedi v vsaki izmed skodelic. Ob tem se je vedla kot da ji je jed všeč oziroma ji ni. V polovici primerov se je vedla kot da so ji všeč krekerji, brokoli pa ne -- enako kot malčki in vsaka oseba pri zdravi pameti. V polovici primerov pa je naredila tako, da je vzela malo brokolija in rekla: "Mmmmmm, brokoli. Poskusila sem brokoli. Mmmmm". Nakar je vzela malo krekerjev in rekla: "Ooo, bljak krekerji. Poskusila sem krekerje. Ooo, bljak". Torej pretvarjala se je, da je želela ravno nasprotno od tega, kar so želeli malčki. To smo izvedli z malčki, starimi 15 in 18 mesecev. Potem je preprosto nastavila roko in rekla: "Mi daš 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.
Vprašanje je torej bilo, kaj ji bo dal malček: to, kar ima rad sam ali to, kar ima rada ona? In pomembno je, da so ji 18-mesečni malčki, ki so komaj shodili in spregovorili, dali krekerje, če so ji bili všeč krekerji, vendar ji dali brokoli, če ji je bil všeč brokoli. A po drugi strani so 15-mesečniki dolgo časa strmeli vanjo, če se je pretvarjala, da ji je všeč brokoli, kakor da tega ne morejo razumeti. Ampak potem, ko so dolgo časa strmeli, so ji preprosto izročili krekerje, kot so mislili da je najbrž všeč vsakomur. Dve resnično pomembni stvari glede tega sta. Prva je, da so ti 18-mesečni malčki že odkrili globoko dejstvo o človeški naravi, to je, da nam ni vedno všeč ista stvar. Še več, čutili so, da bi morali ravnati tako, da drugim pomagajo dobiti, kar želijo.
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.
Še bolj pomembno pa je to, da dejstvo, da 15-mesečniki tega niso storili, navaja na misel, da so se 18-mesečniki tega globokega, poglobljenega dejstva o človeški naravi naučili v treh mesecih odkar so bili še 15-mesečniki. Torej otroci znajo več in se naučijo več kot si sploh lahko mislimo. In to je zgolj ena izmed stotin študij skozi zadnjih 20 let, ki so to pokazale.
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.
Vendar bi si lahko zastavili vprašanje: Zakaj se otroci toliko naučijo? In zakaj je mogoče, da se naučijo toliko v tako kratkem času? Ker, navsezadnje, če na malčke pogledamo malo površno, se zdi, da so precej nekoristni. Dejansko so v mnogih pogledih še slabše kot nekoristni, saj zahteva toliko časa in energije že to, da jih obdržimo pri življenju. A če se zatečemo k evoluciji da bi našli odgovor na to uganko, zakaj namenimo toliko časa skrbi za nekoristne malčke, se izkaže, da odgovor pravzaprav obstaja. Če pregledamo veliko, veliko različnih živalskih vrst, ne samo nas, primate, temveč tudi druge sesalce, ptiče, celo vrečarje kot so kenguruji in vombati, se izkaže, da obstaja povezava med tem, kako dolgo otroštvo ima vrsta, in tem, kako veliki so možgani v primerjavi s telesom, ter tem, kako bistri in fleksibilni so osebki.
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.
Kot ilustracija za to idejo so ptiči tamle zgoraj. Na eni strani je novokaledonska vrana. Vrane in drugi iz vrste corvidae, krokarji, kavke in tako naprej, so neverjetno bistri ptiči. V nekaterih pogledih so prav tako bistri kot šimpanzi. In to je ptič na naslovnici revije Science, ki se je naučil, kako uporabiti orodje, da bi prišel do hrane. Na drugi strani imamo našo prijateljico domačo kokoš. Kokoši, race, gosi in purani pa so butasti kot so le lahko. Zelo, zelo so dobri pri kljuvanju za zrnjem, niso pa kaj prida v ničemer drugem. Izkaže se, da so malčki, mladički novokalednonske vrane, nebogljenjčki. Odvisni so od matere, ki jim v odprte kljunčke prinaša črve, in to kar dve leti, kar je v življenju ptiča resnično dolga doba. Medtem ko kokoš dejansko odraste v par mesecih. Torej otroštvo je razlog, zakaj vrane končajo na naslovnici revije Science, kokoši pa končajo v loncu za juho.
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.
Nekaj v tem dolgem otroštvu se zdi kot da je povezano z znanjem in učenjem. Kakšno razlago bi lahko našli za to? No, za nekatere živali, kot na primer za kokoši, se zdi, kot da so lepo prilagojene za dobro opravljanje le ene stvari. Torej so videti lepo prilagojene na kljuvanje zrnja v nekem okolju. Druga bitja, kot na primer vrane, niso posebej dobre pri kakšni določeni stvari, so pa izredno dobre glede učenja zakonitosti različnih okolj.
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.
In seveda smo človeška bitja še bolj čez rob statistične porazdelitve kot vrane. Glede na telo imamo zdaleč večje možgane kot katerakoli druga žival. Smo bolj bistri, fleksibilni, lahko se naučimo več, preživimo v mnogih različnih okoljih, preseljevali smo se in prekrili svet in celo odpotovali v vesolje. Naši dojenčki in otroci pa so od staršev odvisni dlje kot potomci katere koli druge vrste. Moj sin je star 23 let. (Smeh) Vsaj dokler ne dosežejo 23 let, jim še vedno prinašamo črve v odprta usteca.
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.
Zakaj bi torej opazili to korelacijo? Ena zamisel je, da je ta strategija, strategija učenja, zelo prodorna, veličastna strategija za to, da uspevamo v svetu, vendar ima veliko pomanjkljivost. Ta pomanjkljivost je, da dokler ne izvedeš vsega tega učenja, ostajaš nebogljen. Tako raje ne srečaš napadajočega mastodonta, potem pa preudarjaš: "Kopje ali sulica bi morda delovalo. Kaj bi bilo pravzaprav boljše?" Raje vse to že veš, preden se mastodont prikaže. Izgleda, da je evolucija to rešila na tak način, da se nekako deli delo. Ideja je, da obstaja to zgodnje obdobje, ko smo popolnoma varovani. Ni nam treba ničesar. Vse kar moramo je, da se učimo. Kot odrasli potem lahko vse te stvari, ki smo se jih naučili, ko smo bili malčki in otroci, vzamemo in jih udejanjamo v velikem svetu.
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.
Na en način lahko torej smatramo, da so malčki in majhni otroci kot oddelek za raziskave in razvoj človeške vrste. Da so zaščiteni sanjači, ki jim je le treba iti ven in se učiti in imeti dobre zamisli, proizvodnja in marketing pa smo mi. Vse ideje, ki smo se jih naučili kot otroci, moramo vzeti in jih uporabiti. Drug način je, da namesto da smatramo malčke in otroke kot odrasle z napako, nanje raje gledamo kot na drugačno razvojno stopnjo iste vrste -- nekako tako kot na gosenice in metulje -- razen da so oni tisti čudoviti metulji, ki letajo po vrtu in raziskujejo, mi pa smo gosenice, ki lezejo po naši ozki odrasli poti.
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.
Če to drži, če so malčki narejeni za učenje -- in ta evolucijska zgodba bi zatrdila, da so otroci za učenje, da je to tisto, za kar so namenjeni -- bi morda pričakovali, da bodo imeli resnično prodorne mehanizme učenja. Dejansko se zdi, da so možgani malčka najmogočnejši računalnik za učenje na vsem planetu. Pravi računalniki dejansko postajajo mnogo boljši. Nedavno je bila revolucija v našem razumevanju strojnega učenja. Vse na podlagi zamisli nekoga, to je častiti Thomas Bayes, ki je bil statistik in matematik iz 18. stoletja. V osnovi je Bayes ponudil matematični način, ki je z uporabo teorije verjetnosti omogočal označevanje in opisovanje, način, s katerim znanstveniki raziskujejo svet. Znanstvenik ima najprej hipotezo, s katero bo najbrž začel. Potem gre in jo preizkuša glede na dokazna dejstva. Zaradi dokaznih dejstev spreminja to hipotezo. Potem preizkuša tisto novo hipotezo in tako naprej. Bayes je pokazal matematični način, kako bi bilo to izvedljivo. Prav ta matematika je sedaj v osrčju najboljših programov za strojno učenje, kar jih imamo. Pred približno 10 leti sem predlagala idejo, da malčki najbrž delajo isto.
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?
Če vas torej zanima, kaj se odvija za temi lepimi rjavimi očmi, menim, da je videti kot nekaj takega. Tole je beležnica častitega Bayesa. Menim, da malčki dejansko izvajajo komplicirane izračune s pogojnimi verjetnostmi, ki jih nato ponovno pretehtajo, zato da bi ugotovili, kako deluje svet. Prav, to je najbrž še bolj nemogoče dejansko pokazati. Saj že če odrasle sprašujemo o statistiki, začnejo neumno gledati. Kako bi torej otroci mogli izvajati statistiko?
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 bi to preverili, smo uporabili napravo, ki smo jo poimenovali Blicket Detector. To je škatla, ki zasveti in zaigra glasbo, kadar nanjo položiš določene stvari, kadar položiš druge, pa ne. S to preprosto napravo smo pri nas v laboratoriju in tudi drugod opravili številne raziskave, ki kažejo, kako dobri so otroci pri učenju o svetu. Naj omenim le eno, ki sva jo naredila moj študent Tumar Kushner in jaz. Če bi vam pokazala ta detektor, bi najbrž spočetka menili, da se detektor sproži tako, da nanj postavite kocko. Vendar ta detektor deluje na malo nenavaden način. Če s kocko pomahate nad detektorjem, česar se najbrž sploh ne bi spomnili, se bo detektor sprožil v dveh primerih od treh. Če pa kocko položite nanj, kar bi najbrž storili, se bo sprožil le v dveh primerih od šestih. Torej manj verjetna hipoteza je bolj podprta z dokaznimi dejstvi. Videti je, da je mahanje nad detektorjem bolj učinkovita strategija kot tista druga strategija. Napravili smo ravno tako: štiriletnikom smo dali opisan vzorec dokaznih dejstev in jih prosili, naj začnejo. In zagotovo so štiriletniki uporabili dokazna dejstva za to, da so s kocko pomahali nad detektorjem.
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."
Pri tem sta dve resnično zanimivi stvari. Najprej, spomnite se, da gre za štiriletnike. Ravno se učijo šteti. Vendar nezavedno izvajajo te kar zapletene izračune, ki jim bodo povedali mero pogojne verjetnosti. Druga zanimiva stvar pa je, da dokazna dejstva uporabljajo za to, da bi dobili zamisel, hipotezo o svetu, s katero najbrž ne bi začeli. V podobnih študijah, ki jih smo jih ravno delali v našem laboratoriju, smo pokazali, da so štiriletniki pravzaprav boljši pri odkrivanju manj verjetne hipoteze kot pa odrasli, ki jim damo točno isto nalogo. V teh okoliščinah torej otroci uporabljajo statistiko za odkrivanje sveta, vendar znanstveniki delajo tudi poskuse in nas je zanimalo, če tudi otroci delajo poskuse. Kadar otroci delajo poskuse, temu rečemo da "vtaknejo nos povsod" oziroma da "se igrajo".
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.
Pred kratkim je bilo kar nekaj zanimivih študij, ki so pokazale, da je to igračkanje v resnici nekakšen eksperimentalen raziskovalni program. Tukaj je študija iz laboratorija Christine Legare. Christine je uporabila našo napravo Blicket Detector. Otrokom je pokazala, da rumene kocke detektor sprožijo, rdeče pa ne, potem pa jim je pokazala nepravilnost v delovanju. Na posnetku boste videli, kako je mali fantič preizkusil pet različnih hipotez v roku dveh minut.
(Video) Boy: How about this? Same as the other side.
(Video) Fantič: Kaj pa takole? Isto kot na drugi strani.
Alison Gopnik: Okay, so his first hypothesis has just been falsified.
Alison Gopnik: V redu, njegova prva hipoteza je bila ovržena.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
Boy: This one lighted up, and this one nothing.
Fantič: Tale se je prižgala, tale pa nič.
AG: Okay, he's got his experimental notebook out.
AG: V redu, njegova eksperimentalna beležnica je tu.
Boy: What's making this light up. (Laughter) I don't know.
Fantič: Kaj naredi, da se to prižge. (Smeh) Ne vem.
AG: Every scientist will recognize that expression of despair.
AG: Vsak znanstvenik bo prepoznal ta izraz obupa.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
Boy: Oh, it's because this needs to be like this, and this needs to be like this.
Fantič: O, tole mora biti tako kot to, tole pa tako kot to.
AG: Okay, hypothesis two.
AG: V redu, hipoteza dve.
Boy: That's why. Oh.
Fantič: A, zato. O.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
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: Tole je njegova naslednja zamisel. Eksperimentatorja je prosil, naj naredi takole, naj postavi gor na drugo mesto. Tudi ne deluje.
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.
Fantič: Oh, to je zato, ker gre luč samo semle, semle pa ne. O, dno te škatle ima notri elektriko, tale pa nima elektrike.
AG: Okay, that's a fourth hypothesis.
AG: V redu, to je četrta 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.
Fantič: Prižgala se je. Torej če postaviš štiri. Torej na tole postaviš štiri, da se prižge, na tole pa dve, da se prižge.
AG: Okay,there's his fifth hypothesis.
AG: V redu, to je njegova peta hipoteza.
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.
Tole je posebej, še posebej očarljiv in zgovoren fantič, vendar je Christine odkrila, da je to pravzaprav kar tipično. Če opazujete, kako se otroci igrajo, če jih prosite, naj nekaj razložijo, pravzaprav izvedejo vrsto poskusov. To je za štiriletnike precej tipično.
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.
Kako je, če si takšno bitje? Kako je, če si eden od teh sijajnih metuljev, ki lahko v dveh minutah testira pet hipotez? No, če gremo v preteklost k tistim psihologom in filozofom, jih je veliko reklo, da so majhni otroci komaj zavestni, če sploh so zavestni. Jaz pa menim, da je res ravno nasprotno. Menim, da so malčki in otroci bolj zavestni kot smo mi, ki smo odrasli. O tem, kako deluje zavest odraslega, vemo tole. Pozornost in zavest odraslega izgledata kot žaromet. Kar se zgodi pri odraslem je to, da ko se odločimo, da je nekaj relevantno ali pomembno, pozornost usmerimo na to. Naše zavedanje o tem, na kar smo pozorni, postane skrajno svetlo in živo, vse ostalo postane nekako zatemnjeno. Celo nekaj vemo o tem, kako možgani to izvedejo.
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.
Ko smo na nekaj pozorni, se od korteksa, ki je na nek način izvršilni del naših možganov, sproži signal, ki majhen del možganov napravi bolj elastičen, bolj upogibljiv, bolj učeč, in utiša aktivnost v drugih delih možganov. Torej imamo zelo osredotočeno in namensko vrsto pozornosti. Če pogledamo malčke in majhen otroke, opazimo nekaj popolnoma drugega. Menim, da imajo malčki in majhni otroci najbrž bolj svetilko zavesti kot pa žaromet zavesti. Malčki in majhni otroci niso dobri v tem, kako se omejiti na zgolj eno stvar. So pa zelo dobri v tem, kako sprejemati veliko informacij iz mnogih različnih virov naenkrat. In če pogledate v njihove možgane, opazite, da so preplavljeni z nevrotransmiterji, ki so res dobri v tem, da spodbujajo učenje in upogibljivost, tisti del, ki utiša možgane, pa še ni razvit. Ko rečemo, da so malčki in majhni otroci slabi v usmerjanju pozornosti, v resnici pravzaprav mislimo, da so slabi v tem, da ne usmerjajo pozornosti. Slabi so v tem, kako se znebiti vseh zanimivih stvari, ki bi jim lahko kaj povedale in gledati samo stvar, ki je pomembna. To je taka vrsta pozornosti, taka vrsta zavesti, ki bi jo pričakovali od takih metuljev, ki so narejeni za učenje.
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.
Če si hočemo zamisliti način, kako bi okusili tako otroško zavest v naši odrasli dobi, menim, da se je najbolje spomniti primerov, ko smo bili postavljeni v situacijo, v kateri še nismo bili -- ko se zaljubimo v nekoga ali ko smo prvič v nekem novem mestu. Kar se zgodi je, da se naša zavest ne skrči ampak se razširi, tako da se tisti trije dnevi v Parizu zdijo bolj polni zavesti in izkustev kot pa celi meseci, ko ste nazaj doma in zgolj hodeči, govoreči, sestankujoči sodelavec-zombi. In mimogrede, kava, ta čudovita kava, ki ste jo pili prejle spodaj, dejansko posnema učinek tistih otroških nevrotransmiterjev. Torej kako je torej biti malček? Tako, kot da ste zaljubljeni, prvič v Parizu, potem ko ste popili tri dvojne ekspresne kave. (Smeh) Fantastično počutje, vendar pa teži k temu, da se v joku zbujate ob treh zjutraj.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
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.
No, v redu je biti odrasel. Ne bi želela govoriti preveč o tem, kako krasni so malčki. Dobro je biti odrasel. Zmoremo stvari kot je zavezovanje vezalk in samostojno prečkanje ceste. In smiselno je, da vložimo veliko truda v to, da malčke pripravimo k temu, da začnejo misliti kot odrasli. Ampak če bi radi bili bolj kot tisti metulji, da bi imeli odprtega duha, odprtost za učenje, domišljijo, ustvarjalnost, inovativnost, bi morali vsaj občasno odrasle pripraviti do tega, da bi začeli misliti bolj tako kot otroci.
(Applause)
(Aplavz)