What's It Like To Be A Baby?

The science & philosophy of baby life

Hello there,

Kids are one of the greatest sources of wonder in the world.

The great Elon Musk expressed this in his deeply philosophical 3-word quote: “Babies are awesome”.

But why is babyhood the way it is? Why are they dependent on us for so long, to the extent that millions have decided that the trouble isn’t worth it?

The world’s youngest philosophers

How do babies learn, and why do they do all the weird stuff they do (like playing with pet tigers and starting at the carpet and scratching it in different ways)?

Thanks to numerous studies, we have some intriguing answers to these questions. Let’s dive in to see what the latest science has to tell us:

1. R&D Department: Babies are the R&D dept of humanity: the folks who can dream up and imagine a million ideas, while adults are the execution guys who focus more on getting shit done to pay the goddamn bills. This neat division of labor makes sense from the POV of evolution because if humans need to use their imagination to thrive in the world, they need ample time to develop that capacity- which is exactly what childhood is. And hence the world of playing with fairies and monsters and talking to dragons and mermaids.
   
   
   

2. Counterfactual thinking: But do kids think these imaginary creatures exist? Early theorists like Freud thought so, suggesting that they can’t differentiate between reality & fiction. But that’s not true- kids know the imaginary dragon they talk to isn’t real. So why do they engage in this ‘pretend play’? Because it’s a great way for them to imagine various scenarios and explore how another mind would behave- trying to learn more about human psychology. Talking to and playing with the dragon allows them to develop a better understanding of the link between desires, feelings, emotions, and behaviors. This happens between ages 2-6, which is also the time they develop a theory of mind- a keen knowledge of how other minds think and act. So this isn’t just stupid, irrational play- it’s an important source of learning.
   
   
   

3. Causal learning machines: Speaking of learning, kids are amazing causal learning machines. They are constantly observing the world, making causal connections (if the door bangs, the mom gets angry or if this button is pressed, the room gets bright). They run enough experiments to put any scientist to shame, which helps them develop a world model based on statistical learning- seeing that pressing a button brightens the room over and over again leads to them learning about this causal relationship. Similarly, they’re making many such discoveries all the time.
   
   
   

4. Attention: Because they have to (statistically) learn so much about the world, the nature of babies’ attention is exogenous- driven more by external objects, and they can’t voluntarily focus their attention on something. Think of their attentional ability as a lantern (diffuse and widely spread) so they can acquire as much new info as possible, instead of a spotlight- the way we adults can narrowly zoom in on a piece of text and learn about it (as you’re doing right now).
   
   
   

5. Consciousness: Thinkers felt that babies are like crying vegetables that don’t have an experience of the world like adults do, but that may be wrong. Scientists believe they may have an even more vivid experience of reality than us. It’s harder to knock babies out with anesthesia (probably due to the presence of certain neurotransmitters that regulate attention & arousal). If consciousness is the thing that goes offline with anesthetics, then one can argue that babies have a more vivid and stronger experience of it than us! But their mental life isn’t similar to ours- it’s more of images, thoughts, ideas popping in & out of existence without the constant internal monologue we experience.
   
   
   

6. Memory: You and I have a coherent identity - we unite our past and present into the idea of a single “self”- making a story about our life and thinking about it as a journey that “I” have lived through. But this ability to form an autobiographical narrative (or a single story of my life) doesn’t arrive till we’re 5. In an amazing study, kids were being video recorded while playing, and a sticker was put on their foreheads during the play. When they were shown the video after a while, they saw the sticker on their heads. Here’s the fun thing: the 5-year-olds immediately felt their forehead and tried to remove the sticker but the 3 yo’s didn’t. This means that the 5 yo could integrate his past with his present (that kid in the video was me, so the sticker must still be on my forehead). But the 3 yo’s couldn’t do that!
   
   
   

7. Love: Babies also engage in the statistics of love, observing their caregivers closely. If a baby cries and the mother comforts her instantly, she grows up to be a secure child. But if the baby learns that crying makes the situation worse, they grow up to become “avoidant”, learning to discard their problems and growing to become detached and hyper-independent. How we respond to babies shapes them, and their reactions, in turn, shape us because a happy baby makes the parents happy, but a persistently cranky one can frustrate the parents. Vicious and virtuous cycles are common, but it’s not that only parental love determines how babies do in the future. As Taarein Zameen Par shows, even an avoidant or anxious baby can, with a great teacher, flourish and become secure later on in life.
   

Childhood is a period of joy, wonder…and most importantly, shitloads of learning. It may not seem obvious, but kids are learning at a pace that’ll never be matched in their lives.

So babies aren’t just wild, fun-loving, and slightly dumb creatures.

They’re scientists running experiments. They show a keen grasp of probability at the age of 2, and they engage in psychological counterfactuals to comprehend the world from other people’s points of view. They engage in philosophy, asking profound questions that often stump their parents- all in the pursuit of building a coherent world model so they can thrive.

There’s a lot to learn from babies. We must try to adopt their unique POV- a sense of awe and wonder, where nothing is assumed, everything is fascinating, and the quest to answer questions makes our lived experience richer.

Be like a baby, and become an eternal learning machine.

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Thanks for tuning in! Have you had some anecdotal experiences of babies that confirm some of these ideas? I’d love to know your thoughts- share them by responding to this email.

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