> Like, what the fuck do we think these babies are actively scheming to find ways to get soothed?
That's exactly what they do. Do you believe they're processing sophisticated ideas of love, attachment and comforting? That they're making a choice to ask their parents for soothing?
Infants are acting on basic instincts. With very limited but rapidly expanding space of possible actions, they're actively learning what behavior will lead to their basic needs being satisfied. They can and will overfit on whatever pattern they can spot.
> I swear our brains are looking for adversaries in infants now.
In operational sense, they are - they're fighting for resources for their own survival.
> Your infant child can not manipulate you. The brains barely understand action and consequence. Your infant child is trying to communicate its needs, and having it unmet with indifference is honestly hilariously sad.
Of course they can and will manipulate you. That's, like, parenthood 101. The whole set of biological and psychological changes parents undergo, the whole deal with attachment, is to make the parents vulnerable to the child. The brain of an infant may understand little at first, but it understands enough of "action and consequence" to start doing gradient descent and quickly learn how to get what it needs from its parents. Of course it helps that the parents want to fulfill their child's needs - initially, the kid isn't really learning how to get the parents to respond, but rather training the parents to respond to specific cues.
Eventually, children learn to speak, and that's when it's really clear just how devious and manipulative kids are. It's both amusing and rewarding to watch them push the boundaries of their intelligence to get you to react they way they want. Except in those cases where they succeed, and you only realize it moments later that you've been had :).
No I'm not. I'm talking about older infants, older than about 6 months. They are capable of falling asleep independently. There isn't a "need" here. The idea is to take care of all their needs before putting them to bed, make sure they are fed, make sure their diaper is dry, don't do it if they're sick or in pain from teething; meet their actual needs. Being rocked to sleep is a want not a need.
> But infants aren't capable of looking after their own needs.
That's my point. They aren't capable of looking after their own needs. They need their parents for that. But what they are capable of is correlating their behavior with their needs being fulfilled, and doing more of the thing that correlates well with those needs being met.
That's exactly what they do. Do you believe they're processing sophisticated ideas of love, attachment and comforting? That they're making a choice to ask their parents for soothing?
Infants are acting on basic instincts. With very limited but rapidly expanding space of possible actions, they're actively learning what behavior will lead to their basic needs being satisfied. They can and will overfit on whatever pattern they can spot.
> I swear our brains are looking for adversaries in infants now.
In operational sense, they are - they're fighting for resources for their own survival.
> Your infant child can not manipulate you. The brains barely understand action and consequence. Your infant child is trying to communicate its needs, and having it unmet with indifference is honestly hilariously sad.
Of course they can and will manipulate you. That's, like, parenthood 101. The whole set of biological and psychological changes parents undergo, the whole deal with attachment, is to make the parents vulnerable to the child. The brain of an infant may understand little at first, but it understands enough of "action and consequence" to start doing gradient descent and quickly learn how to get what it needs from its parents. Of course it helps that the parents want to fulfill their child's needs - initially, the kid isn't really learning how to get the parents to respond, but rather training the parents to respond to specific cues.
Eventually, children learn to speak, and that's when it's really clear just how devious and manipulative kids are. It's both amusing and rewarding to watch them push the boundaries of their intelligence to get you to react they way they want. Except in those cases where they succeed, and you only realize it moments later that you've been had :).