CarwilBJ's Twitter Archive—№ 24,941

Just started reading Michael Tomasello's book Why We Cooperate, which uses research w/ children and chimpanzees to puzzle out what cooperation is, and what innate tendencies it draws upon.
Permalink On twitter.com 2020 May 19 Mood 0

…in reply to @CarwilBJ
Simply and lucidly written. I already know that the distinction between being generous, helpful, and informative (it's about sharing goods, services, and information, which have different kinds of costs) will stick with me.
Permalink On twitter.com 2020 May 19 Mood +4 🙂

…in reply to @CarwilBJ
Also, if you have children in your life, you will enjoy visualizing adorable scenarios: toddlers want to help adults w/ things they try to do (like picking up dropped clothespins), have no interest in chasing thrown clothespins.
Permalink On twitter.com 2020 May 19 Mood +9 🙂

…in reply to @CarwilBJ
Or this: "the adult has a trivial problem, and the infants help him solve it… 22 [out of 24] helped at least once, and they did so basically immediately"; to detect variation, researchers had to create fun "distractor activities" so they don't all help all the time.
On twitter.com 2020 May 19 Mood +7 🙂

…in reply to @CarwilBJ
More about the book: mitpress.mit.edu/books/why-we-cooperate MIT Press is offering free access to libraries through May. Get yours to link up: direct.mit.edu/pages/covid-19
Permalink On twitter.com ❤️ 1 Favorite 2020 May 19 Mood +1 🙂

…in reply to @CarwilBJ
Unlike chimps, 1-year-old "human children collaborated in the social games as well as [reward-seeking] tasks. Indeed, they sometimes turned the instrumental tasks into social games by placing the obtained reward back into the apparatus to start the activity again"
Permalink On twitter.com ❤️ 2 Favorites 2020 May 20 Mood +2 🙂