Musing on the essential skills, I wonder whether we're witnessing the species generating a new one that doesn't fit into any of the categories above, perhaps fueled by AI. I've no idea what it may look like, but it feels as if there's something just round the corner that will make the industrial revolution pale into insignificance. So the new kids on the block may need not just another kind of skill, but a whole new category of skill to manage their future.
Charles, it's nice to hear from you here. Now you are referring to skills that have not been part of our long biological evolutionary history but are the result of cultural evolution. My next letter will be concerned with such skills. A hint: Kids are more attuned to such skills and quicker to acquire them than are we older adults.
Michael Tomasello and his associates have done some really interesting work in this area, specifically the role of play in developing the foundations for understanding and dealing with rules. There's one great book chapter by Tomasello and his then-student (I think) Hannes Rakoczy where they argue that childhood imagination play builds the meta-representational and social skills for dealing with institutional reality in general — laws, norms, roles, and status functions. So the decline of play has some sobering long-term implications for things like the rule of law and the preservation of core institutions.
What I would love to know is does evolutionary psychology mention what play is for adults? In a state where we have learned everything there is to survive, do you think restorative practices will fall under this?
Play is where children learn that they have control of rules. They can create rules and change them to meet the circumstances of play. It is where they learn that the purpose of rules is to make the game (or life) fair and fun.
Thanks so much for this, Peter.
Musing on the essential skills, I wonder whether we're witnessing the species generating a new one that doesn't fit into any of the categories above, perhaps fueled by AI. I've no idea what it may look like, but it feels as if there's something just round the corner that will make the industrial revolution pale into insignificance. So the new kids on the block may need not just another kind of skill, but a whole new category of skill to manage their future.
Charles, it's nice to hear from you here. Now you are referring to skills that have not been part of our long biological evolutionary history but are the result of cultural evolution. My next letter will be concerned with such skills. A hint: Kids are more attuned to such skills and quicker to acquire them than are we older adults.
Looking forward to No. 6!
Michael Tomasello and his associates have done some really interesting work in this area, specifically the role of play in developing the foundations for understanding and dealing with rules. There's one great book chapter by Tomasello and his then-student (I think) Hannes Rakoczy where they argue that childhood imagination play builds the meta-representational and social skills for dealing with institutional reality in general — laws, norms, roles, and status functions. So the decline of play has some sobering long-term implications for things like the rule of law and the preservation of core institutions.
What I would love to know is does evolutionary psychology mention what play is for adults? In a state where we have learned everything there is to survive, do you think restorative practices will fall under this?
See my #3 https://petergray.substack.com/p/3-why-do-we-play
Also, in some of my newer posts I discuss adult play.
I think 'play' is also where we learn to bend/break rules too.
Play is where children learn that they have control of rules. They can create rules and change them to meet the circumstances of play. It is where they learn that the purpose of rules is to make the game (or life) fair and fun.
(This would be corroborated by the scholarly references to play as disruptive/deviant.)