Conversation

This Tweet is from an account that no longer exists. Learn more
Interesting. 🤔 Would you also say “no nature here, only politics” when making sense of how different amounts of human contact lead to different outcomes for young children?
Quote Tweet
Infants in hunter-gatherer societies carried by mothers as much as 90% of the time (similar to other primates) In 1970s America, skin-to-skin contact with mother was as low as 16% - might be considered child abuse by some societies. Similar issue: isolating sleeping children
Show this thread
2
2
This Tweet is from an account that no longer exists. Learn more
"What we're optimized for" equally sets off naturalistic fallacy alarm bells for me. "Humans are social" != "groups of 14-15 are optimal regardless of context" "Social" needs may be met by anything from Wilson the basketball to Kumbh mela. Human sociability is very programmable.
1
4
re: naturalistic fallacy, fair I wouldn’t say “14-15 = optimal regardless of context”, but generally I think it’s pretty clear that lots of people (most?) living in modern cities are lonelier and more isolated than they would prefer to be, & this is bad for health/wellbeing
1
2
this is *exactly* backwards historically... the vast urban migrations of 19th and 20th centuries happened from small villages and towns... because people wanted to get the hell away from small community squalor (both material and psychological)
2
2
ie, their actual behavior... or a least their grandparents/great grandparents, reveals a true preference for larger, more anonymous social groups to get away from oppressive patterns of community. And most of us now *wouldn't* go back to small towns. We just pretend we want to