Comments on: Are you smarter than a 6 month old?

By: Miki Saxon

Miki Saxon — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 17:58:05 +0000

Conditioning probably has a lot to do with it along with a monkey see/monkey do mentality, but I still think that the innate ability may be lost in the transition from baby brain to adult brain.

By: Lavida Chavez

Lavida Chavez — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 06:01:08 +0000

What if it is “forced” out of us by the time we grow old enough to make those kinds of decisions? It could be the way society raises its children and makes them more prone to make the wrong decisions. When we are children, we don’t understand fully what our parents and society teach us. We can only observe society and make basic assumptions and judgments. It is like having one lonely person secluded from all of society all their life and only letting them observe humanity. Would this person hold all of society’s faulty social judgments?
Maybe the reason many people are prone to faulty social judgments is because their peers, parents, the media, and whoever they follow and look up to act in such behavior that children grow up to not completely understand how to make basic and correct judgments. It could be a multitude of factors from improper parenting skills such as abuse, to not teach a child about the world and the child being very naive, to too many people in the world, to religion, etc.

By: Miki Saxon

Miki Saxon — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 18:56:42 +0000

Pete, Your theory is certainly plausible and converges with Bridget’s that we just don’t think it through.

But I’m wondering if when we lose our baby brain cells and grow our adult ones that capability is just lost. What do you think?

By: Bridget Wright

Bridget Wright — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 16:16:44 +0000

I think we make poor decisions because we just don’t “think it through”. We always want to get to the end straight from the beginning without considering all of the pieces.

By: Pete

Pete — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 09:46:08 +0000

I agree about children’s judgment. The only time it doesn’t work is when they’re being offered candy. They’d think Hitler was a good guy as long as he was holding out a fistful of candies to them.

I think what happens as we get older is that we become distracted by more things than candy ($, sex, prestige, power, etc) and hence it’s easier to ruin our judgement.

That’s my theory anyhoo.

By: Miki Saxon

Miki Saxon — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 21:27:08 +0000

Mary Emma, I’m not sure if it’s that we don’t want to see faults as much as we see/hear whatever we want to, whether good or bad, and just tune out the rest.

By: Miki Saxon

Miki Saxon — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 21:24:12 +0000

Kelly, Good point! We’ve all been there on every level across our lives.

By: Mary Emma Allen

Mary Emma Allen — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 03:18:17 +0000

I think we don’t want to see faults…we want to see the best in people. Also, like Kelly says, we think they’ll change.

By: Kelly

Kelly — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 20:35:34 +0000

I think that we all secretly think we can fix other people. You know, “this guy would be perfect if only…”