One surprising thing I've learned from having kids is how deep completism runs in humans. (All toy companies know this.)
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Replying to @paulg
What evolutionary benefit could completism have? Or is it byproduct of something else?
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Replying to @paulg
Completism leads to abstraction. The focus inevitably shifts from the members of a collection to the criteria for membership.
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Replying to @MathPrinceps @paulg
As collections become large, their members grow too numerous to remain individually intelligible; membership itself is what matters.
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Replying to @MathPrinceps @paulg
The adjudication of membership, too, becomes an urgent project. Subtle edge cases make precise membership criteria highly salient.
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Replying to @MathPrinceps @paulg
A child with strong completist tendencies is also likely to be (or to become) a passionate "rules lawyer." Rules define membership.
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Replying to @MathPrinceps @paulg
The evolutionary value of a knack for abstraction and precision may not be so obvious as that of, say, acute vision. But still.
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The demands of abstraction and precision drive the refinement and extension of language, whose evolutionary value surely is obvious.
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