Why Do We Throw & Bite Babies？ (Other than them being delicious)
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Summary
In this episode, Simone and I discuss the bizarre phenomenon of people biting infants and throwing them in the air as a sign of affection. We discuss the science behind this behavior, and why it may not be as cute as it sounds.
Transcript
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Hello, Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today, we are going to be talking about
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the bizarre phenomenon of people, cross-culturally, it appears, bite infants as a sign of affection.
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And another thing that people often do with young children as a sign of affection is toss
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them in the air. These are both things that I have personally witnessed. And I think even with
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biting gently an infant's hand, it's an instinctual saying, for me at least. My infant instinctually
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puts their hand towards my mouth. Oh, and they laugh and are just so delighted if you pretend
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to bite their hands or even bite them softly. Yeah. So weird. And so I was like, first, I was
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like, is this just like a weird thing from maybe my family or my genetic line? So I go to look up
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if this is, because I also have seen people in my family toss toddlers. And I also want to see,
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is this something other people do? Do other people, because that seems like the opposite of what you
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would want to do as a toddler, if your goal was to keep something who is genetically close to you
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alive, is toss it in the air. And I go up and I look into it and there's a bunch of conservatives
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who I guess have never had kids or been around kids a lot, or maybe they're from cultures that
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just don't do this, freaking out over Joe Biden, like biting infant's feet. So apparently this is so
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common that even Joe Biden did this. Now I would say that they are right. You don't do that to
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other people's babies. I would never think to bite a stranger's baby. Or throw a stranger's baby.
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Yeah. 100%. That feels like really over the line. Yeah. It's like, it's, it's an intimate act,
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even if it's just playful and silly, you know? Yeah. In the same way, I wouldn't toss a stranger's
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baby. You don't, you don't, you don't do that. Yeah. Obviously we'll go over some cultures where they
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do do that. There's a ceremony in India where they'll throw babies off of a roof. Wait, what?
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Into like a, a ball pit? No, no, no, no, no. They like hold the sheet like taut to make like a
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trampoline that they can like catch it in. And they'll throw it off the roof.
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It's an annual tradition in India where babies are tossed from a rooftop. The practice known as
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Oakley involves priests tossing babies off the roof of the temple onto a sheet held by the people
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below. Prosperity, apparently. So. Prosperity. Well, I mean, at this point, you know, if only the
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really fittest survived. But we did mention that toddler tossing is a uniquely, like the way that
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I have seen it for practice. It's a uniquely European and white phenomenon. They do it more than
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other groups. There aren't a lot of other groups. It'll do like the five foot in the air toddler
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toss, which I've definitely seen. Yeah. So we're going to go over the scientific research that
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exists on this. Just, you know, like how common this is. I found an article here I can share
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in Motherly. It's science. Wanting to eat your baby makes you a better parent.
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No. Okay. Well, no, think about it. You hear this all the time. Like, I just want to eat him up or
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something like that. That's a common thing of, and you don't just see this with, with biting and
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tossing. A form of this that is not common within my culture. I've literally never seen anyone in my
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family unit do this, but I've seen people do it on shows is pinching infants. Yeah. Yeah.
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So we're going to go into why I think people actually do this, what the scientists say about
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this, which I think that they're wrong about it and what's going on here. All right. So the science,
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this behavior is linked to a psychological phenomenon known as cute aggression,
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also called playful aggression or dimorphous expression. I'm sorry, wait, cute aggression
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is a scientific term? Yes. This world is beautiful. Positive emotions towards something adorable,
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such as a baby, trigger seemingly aggressive, but affectionate impulses like wanting to squeeze,
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pinch, or bite. It serves as an emotion regulation mechanism, helping individuals cope with intense
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feelings of adoration to enable better caregiving. Do you think a playful butt slap or the punch on
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the shoulder, is that cute aggression too? No, I think a scientist who believes in this theory may
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argue that, but I'm going to argue that cute aggression doesn't exist at all. And that this
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is something totally different, but I'm going into it first. Okay. Okay. Because I think the scientists
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are just wrong on this one. They, they noticed a collection of behaviors where you toss a baby or
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lightly bite a baby or pinch a baby's cheeks that all appear aggressive. And they mistook these
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behaviors is all being caused by the same impulse. When I actually think that they are each caused by
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a different and unique impulse that better explains them than what the scientists say.
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So scientific basis and prevalence research since 2015 led by psychologists like Irena Aragon has shown
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that cute aggression is experienced by about half of adults when viewing or interacting with cute stimuli,
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including infants. Brain imaging studies, e.g. using EEG and fMRI revealed heightened activity and
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reward in emotional centers like the orbitofrontal cortex when people encounter cuteness leading to
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these paradoxical urges. For instance, one study found participants reported stronger aggressive
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expressions, e.g. I want to bite it! Exclamation mark. Towards more infantile looking babies compared to
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less cute ones, mediated by feelings of being emotionally overwhelmed. It's not driven by harmful
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intent or neurohormones, but by neurohormones like oxytocin, promoting affection and vasopressin
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linked to protective aggression, which evolves to enhance bonding or protection of vulnerable osprey.
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So I note there that the only evidence that they have of this is you get what they consider an
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aggressive sentiment. I want to bite it when the thing is more cute, but I'm going to argue there's
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something else that could lead to that. It's so cute I could crush it! Exclamation mark. That's the
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name of a study. Understanding neural mechanisms of cute aggression. Catherine K.M.,
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Stephopopoulos, and Laura A. Alba, 2018. Using EEG to measure brain activity, this study found that
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cute aggression correlates with heightened neural responses in emotional salience, larger N200 amplitude
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for cuter stimuli, and reward processing. Repu amplitude. The relationship was mediated by feelings
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of being overwhelmed and a desire for caretaking. The explanation posits cute aggression as a
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bottom-up neural mechanism to balance intense positive emotions evoked by quote-unquote baby
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schema features, e.g. large eyes and round faces exceeding beyond humans to animals. It prevents
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emotional paralysis, enhancing adaptive behaviors like nurturing. Strongly disagree with this. I think that
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it is actually a nurturing behavior and there is a reason for it, and I do not agree that what they
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find, i.e. this correlation with the N200 amplitude, couldn't be used to argue that. Also, as a side note
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here, the neural mechanism that they're displaying here that we have in relation to baby faces, you know,
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larger eyes, sort of cute-looking face, that is humorously triggered by killer whales, which is one of the
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reasons why. Why we like them so much, even though they're freaking terrifying and horrible. They're
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horrifying. They like to, like, play whiz and torture things before killing them and everything
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like that. Toss them in the air if you see them, like, tossing seals. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
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That's sealed by the 80 feet up in the air. Really some of the most aggressive and brutal killers in the
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animal world, and yet our brain often categorizes them as, like, cutie matuties, because they've got those
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giant eye spots that make it look like they have big, cute anime eyes. You know, so I've always
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found that to be a really funny way that, like, we're accidentally hacked by nature. So let's look
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at a cross-cultural example of this. In the Philippines, it's called Gigiel, describing the
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urge to pinch or bite something cute, like a baby's chubby cheeks, as an expression of endearment.
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Studies in the United States and South Korea show similar patterns with no significant gender
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differences, though cultural norms may influence how openly it's expressed, e.g. more verbal in the U.S.
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subtler in East Asia. In some Thai, Japanese, and Hindu-influenced groups, gently nibbling or
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pretending biting is noted as affectionate play with infants. Broader anthropological observations
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suggest this akin to social biting in primates, testing bonds without harm. So note, this is
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something primates will do, is gently bite each other to, like, see if their friends. We'll get back
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to this in just a second, because I think that this is a much better explanation. So in, then I asked
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it about baby tossing, because I want to know, do other cultures toss babies? And they're like,
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in non-Western cultures, similar physical play exists, but there are even ritualistic forms of
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baby tossing for symbolic purposes, such as in parts of India, where babies are dropped from temple
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roofs, caught safely in sheets, to invoke good luck, health, and prosperity. This 700-year-old
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tradition occurs in places like solopar marasustra, practiced by both Hindu and Muslim families.
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However, this Indian practice is a communal ritual rather than everyday parental play,
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and playful tossing, as in gentle repeated throws and catches, is less emphasized in
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collectivist societies like India, Taiwan, and Thailand, where RTP is overall reported at lower
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frequencies. This is called rough and double play, compared to individualistic Western societies.
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In hunter-gatherer groups, such as the Aka Bofi foragers in Central Africa, father-infant physical
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play is common, and includes things like holding, bouncing, or wrestling, but not high tosses. So
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this behavior is done pretty much exclusively by males. First of all, rough and double play is three
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to six times more common in males than females, that is play that could potentially hurt an infant,
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and is really predominant in Western societies. And if I could break it down, which I'd really love to
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be able to break it down, it may just come from one cultural group. Like, it could come from just
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the backwoods tradition. It could come from just the Puritan tradition, the two that I'm descended from.
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So in the comments, if you are from a different Western country or a non-Western country, let me know
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if your family throws infants. Keep in mind, the age of the children that are thrown are typically older
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than infants. Did you see this in your family, by the way, throwing infants, like toddlers, typically around
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two or three to like four or five? I mean, I didn't have peers that were younger than me,
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so I wouldn't have seen it. Yeah, I saw it at family gatherings mostly. I know you don't see
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this in public if you don't have like a large family, because it's something you typically only
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do in an affectionate context. And it'd be seen as, I don't know, kind of vulgar to do like in a
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subway station or something, right? Oh yeah, no one would, no, of course not. You do it when you're
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all out back at a barbecue or something, right? Like that's where this behavior is undertaken if
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your family doesn't engage in it. All right, so explanations for the various behavior on display
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here. First, we need to talk about showing vulnerability as a sign of affection, because
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this is something that actually adults do as well. It is why women, when they are attracted to a man,
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will expose their neck to him. And it's why one of the most common reasons to be kissed is on the
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neck, because it demonstrates sort of like a, if you wanted to, you could kill me or seriously injure
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me. And that signaling from both parties, from an evolutionary perspective, it's like a very,
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it's the woman showing their willingness to put themselves at risk of the man, like this is how
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much I trust you, which is important to signal from a societal bonding perspective. And it's the
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man signaling, and I would not take advantage of this opportunity to kill and eat you, I guess.
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Well, no, I mean, you know, in a historic context, that's a real potential risk when you're talking
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about like early evolutionary ancestors, when this behavior was evolving. And that is likely why
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monkeys do it as well to be like, look, I could hurt you if I want to. But now you know that even
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in an environment where I could hurt you, I won't hurt you. And it's a way of establishing trust at a
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very deep level. This is also where a number of rituals come from that are designed to establish
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trust. So the key ones here, well, no, kneeling and bowing your head is meant to know that you
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would be willing to have them chop your head off. Like if they have a sword, they could cut
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your head off. Like you're basically getting into a position like, see, cut my head off if you want
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to. Right. And hadn't you said that prayer, like prayer hands? Yeah, praying often this as well.
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So the way that you used to show vassalage is you would bind your fingers like this. I don't know
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if anyone's ever done this in like a children's game, but they're the children game, but one person
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binds their fingers like this and another person will put their hands over the person who's done
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this and you just cannot get out of this. Even if the person is significantly weaker than you,
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it's very, very difficult to break. And this was done during vassalage ceremonies to show one person's
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beneath the person who they're pledging to serve. Like I, you can control me, right? Like in this
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moment, you can control and do whatever you want to me. And that when we developed ways of to God
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saying like, I am your vassal, you are my Lord, the ceremony used, the bowing of the head and the
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hands together symbols were two different symbols used in vassalage ceremonies, which is, I mean,
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there's nothing perverse about that. That's, I suppose, fairly befitting. That's what the person is
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saying. And if you're in a medieval context, obviously that's what you're going to have around
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you. How do I show someone more powerful than me that they are more powerful? Well, there's these
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ceremonies. Now they may not have understood why those ceremonies had the things that they had
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was in them. This is why hand up like this is a sign of peace across many different cultures,
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because it's a way of showing that you don't have weapons in your hands. Now these don't seem to
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trigger as much of a evolved response as the showing the neck response does. But I think that that's part
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of what we see going on here is the parents sort of hijacking. And after all, somebody can be like,
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well, why would an infant, because our infants will put their hands out, like without understanding
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our culture, without any cultural backing, will put their hands towards our mouths if we're
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interacting with them. And this has happened with multiple infants we've had. And the question could
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be, well, why would an infant put itself in a dangerous situation like that, right? And the answer is a
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fewfold. The first is, and another thing you'll note with infants is when they're doing the baby
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toss game, I have never seen an infant distressed by this game. Typically, they think it is like the
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best thing in the world when they're being tossed. 100% laughing crazy. Laughing like maniacs. It's the
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same with the mouth thing. Like if you actually like take the child's hand and gently bite it, the kid will
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just delight and start laughing a ton. So you've got to keep in mind what's going on with the child here. If the
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child cannot trust a parent to not kill it, it's as good as dead. So it's actually not really making a
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calculated risk in either instance. It has to be like, if my parent is interacting with me in a way
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that's dangerous, they are showing me affection. In a way that's like controlled dangerous and not
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likely to actively immediately hurt me. So they take it. It was in an evolved context as a sign of
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affection. But you have the secondary thing here, which is children when they are in the first year of
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development, or really two years of development, are overly focused on the parent's mouth, because
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it's when they're learning to talk. And so they have a huge fixation with mouths and paying extra
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attention to mouths and wanting to touch or be close to mouths. And so I think that that's the secondary
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thing that's going on here is children have a natural, like if there's a part of my face they
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want to interact with, it's the mouth, right? So that's why you would have this interaction
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between babies and caregivers. Now, what's interesting is most interactions that you have
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between babies and caregivers were later picked up by our sort of romance system when humans began to
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find a pair bonded partners later in their evolution. So if you look at our writing on this,
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we argue that a lot of the behavior, whether it is laughing, whether it is love, or like the broader
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emotional like affection and attachment that we associate with the word love that we argue doesn't
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exist like a separate concept, that a lot of this stuff originally evolved only for parent-child
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interactions. And then it was later adopted by sort of stolen where we are with evolution to cheat
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programmer. When we started creating long term monogamous pair bonds with other partners are the
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primary form of relationship in human societies, because it helps facilitate that. Because before
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that, the only long term relationship you would have definitely had is with your kids. And now
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you've got this new long term relationship. It's like, let's just borrow, you know, oh, you originally
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evolved kissing for children, but then it gets borrowed in a romantic context for partners. You know,
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you initially, and you see this was most affectionate displays. If it's done with a kid, it's done with an
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adult. Why hugging, for example, with kids, you do this with romantic partners. So the question is,
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I don't even know how universal kissing and hugging is among romantic partners. It's not that universal,
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is it? They're fairly universal. I can check in post. Okay, checked in post. Approximately 46% of cultures
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practice romantic kissing as a form of affection. Hugging, by contrast, is near universal human behavior
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across cultures, with rare exceptions, the Himbu people of Nambia. While the frequency and social
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contacts of hugging vary, such as being more common in high contact cultures like those in Latin America
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and the Mediterranean, and less frequently in low contact cultures like Japan or the UK, hugging is
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a gesture of affection, greeting, or comfort is present in virtually all human societies.
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Yeah. Yeah. Not totally universal, but just very frequent. Yeah. So as an adult, first, I would
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know, actually, because they're like, well, why isn't this a romantic display in adults like all
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these others? And the answer is, it may have been in fairly recent history. We know from fairly recent
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history, a man kissing a woman on the hand was seen as a sort of progenitor to anything more in a
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relationship. You know, it goes hand-holding, kissing on the hand. This is, if you read romance
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manga, which I do, this is something that happens frequently in these sorts of stories. It was common
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in sort of a medieval context. So we do know that some societies did adopt like a proto-version of this.
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Secondly, why would it be less common than the other signs of affection? I'd argue because it's more
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likely to transmit dangerous diseases. In an infant, I can be fairly certain that I have made a strong
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effort to have its hands not touch anything that are going to get me sick. In your average working
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adult, now, where you didn't see this was in nobles during the medieval period because they would have
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been the one class that like didn't have to do manual labor, its hands were less likely to have a lot
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of germs on them, and that women often wear gloves. So you could have had this ceremony, but then as
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society began to, you know, become more working and social customs began to drift up from the working
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classes to the upper classes. This, you know, you don't want to be working at a factory all day
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or in a farm and then kiss someone's hand. That's, that's, that's going to be worse than kissing
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their lips. Um, obviously kissing lips can also transfer diseases, uh, prize that it has become as
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common, but it's, it's only likely to transfer diseases that you already have and are suffering
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from not random things you picked up in your environment, like licking a doorknob or something
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or, or biting a hand more broadly. Like even if you're not kissing lightly, biting a hand.
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Although I think even in a romantic context, if you did that to an adult partner, like gently bit
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their hand, I think it would be immediately interpreted as romantic. Like anyone would be
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confused about what's intended by that. So it is an intimate thing to do. Yeah. It's an intimate
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thing to do. If you did that with somebody who wasn't a partner, they would freak right the F out,
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which is why it's weird that Biden is doing this to other people's kids. It shows a lack of,
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I can see why people are thinking he's crossing some sort of like, and I know they don't want to
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be like a sexual line because it's something that people do as kids, but it's because so many of
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these things are things that we normally only do as romantic partners in our own children.
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Okay. So that explains the hand biting. All right. So what about pinching cheeks? Well,
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remember people think that infants are cute when they look more infant to eat. Even adult women
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in an attempt to look younger, often put blush upon their cheeks to make their cheeks lighter.
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Pinching cheeks, if the baby is healthy, will cause a flush response, which makes the baby appear
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cuter and also is a way to test the health of the baby. So that is what is going on with cheek
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pinching. I find it odd that it's not done, that that's not done in any of my cultures. And I have
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never had an impulse to pinch my baby's cheeks to the extent where I would feel uncomfortable if you
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pinched a baby's cheeks. I'd be like, doesn't that just hurt the child? Like that, you know,
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the reason it's causing the flush response is because you're breaking the capillaries. Like
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that's, you know, I don't, I don't, I obviously some cultures do it, whatever. Right. But I,
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and it's not going to cause permanent damage or anything, but you know, the, the next one is,
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is baby tossing. Well, one, I can say this is probably not a biological impulse because it doesn't
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really exist cross-culturally. It is predominantly a Western, potentially even American thing sound
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off in the comments as to why men do it. Some men have sounded off in, in comments that they only
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really do it when the child's mother is around and that they don't do it in private. And they've
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argued that it might be an attempt to get a rise out of the wife, that that might be the,
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the true intention of the behavior, that the actual biological drive that's leading to the
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behavior is wanting to get a rise out of your partner. It's like keeping women in check being
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like, I could, I could do this maybe what's going on. So a lot of our kids have a very strong impulse.
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So it's clear that this is within our cultural group to break rules and watch your face when they
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break rules. They really like this. Our kids really, I told this story before. One of my
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favorites was Titan is I'm eating macaroni and cheese and she walks over and she pours the bowl,
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like off the edge of this, this balcony thing. And I was like, well, that was a jerk thing to do
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Titan. Like, why'd you do that? And then she goes down to where it all fell. And she's like two at the
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time. So very young. This is not like a behavioral impulse. She learned from us picks up all the macaroni.
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I'm like, oh, that's so sweet. Like, obviously I'm not going to eat it now because we've been on the
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floor, but you know, she's picking it up. She's bringing it back to me. She picks it all up
00:22:56.080
very diligently, walks it back to me. And then right before handing it to me, it slowly puts it
00:23:02.000
over the edge again. And then slow motion turns it upside down just to watch me guffaw at this.
00:23:09.680
She just wanted to bring back the moment. It was so pleasant.
00:23:13.440
To get my hopes up that she was actually a sweet girl, just so she could be like, no,
00:23:19.280
I'm just farming your frustration. Just to dash them again. Yes.
00:23:23.840
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And she thought it was so funny. I think that that's what it is here.
00:23:31.280
I think it is that combined with something similar to bops, as I've heard that many parents also engage
00:23:38.160
in, in toddler tossing when toddlers are throwing tantrums, um, or other tantrums. I feel like they'd
00:23:44.960
flail too much then. No, they start laughing immediately as a response or, well, because
00:23:50.240
it's, you've changed the context, the physical context of what's happening.
00:23:53.600
Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. So just like, yeah, bopping is sort of to reorient.
00:23:57.360
This would be talking reorient. Yeah. Yeah. Huh? Huh?
00:24:01.360
Somebody today said that one of our kids beat our other child. And I was like, what are you talking
00:24:09.680
about? And they were like, well, when he was trying to run away from the park and I was like,
00:24:13.600
dude, I saw that incident. The kid brought him over, our older child. He said, do not run away
00:24:19.440
again. You cannot leave the park or I'm going to bop you. And then the little one got a big smile on
00:24:24.160
his face and attempted to run away again. And so the other one grabbed him and lightly bopped him on the
00:24:29.280
head because he had been warned. I didn't punish him for this because he had been warned. It was a
00:24:34.560
reasonable and good assumption. People are like, how dare you let your kid's parent. And it's like,
00:24:39.360
you need to eventually put trust in your older children to be able to lay out basic rules,
00:24:47.360
especially around things like safety related stuff, or your younger kids are going to get hurt.
00:24:52.160
But I want to hear your thoughts on all this. Are these impulses you saw growing up? Are they
00:24:59.760
impulses that you have in interacting with the kids, et cetera?
00:25:03.280
These are definitely things that I saw take place growing up and also in media. It's not like it's
00:25:08.800
something we've only observed privately. So I know it's pervasive.
00:25:12.720
The handbiting you do not see in media as common as-
00:25:15.600
Handbiting, no, but the throwing is more common.
00:25:18.640
The fact that Biden thought this was a normal thing to do and it's not a huge scandal to me
00:25:28.880
Well, and I've always just been so confused by why our kids think it's so funny to stick
00:25:34.400
their hands in our mouths. And then even more funny if we pretend to bite them.
00:25:38.800
So I think it's along your lines also of your theory of humor, which is when something is
00:25:45.760
surprising, but it makes sense. And especially if kids are really focused on mouths and they discover
00:25:53.040
that their hand can go inside the mouth, this thing that they find so interesting, it's just like
00:25:59.040
wild. Like, whoa, I'm obsessed with this thing and the sounds and the shapes that it makes. And now
00:26:04.560
I can stick my hand in it. This is crazy. I'm kind of wondering if that's also a fact.
00:26:10.320
Yeah. Well, I mean, keep in mind, as we pointed out, the obsession
00:26:13.680
babies have with mouths is super normal. Like it is a really high stimulus for them. And so,
00:26:20.640
yeah, I think that you've hit on something there. To note this theory of laughter that she's talking
00:26:27.200
about is one that I came up with. I was going to say we came up with, but I guess I came up with it.
00:26:30.720
It really was. I never would have thought of this.
00:26:34.400
To say that laughter likely originally evolved to promote. So babies have very few ways to
00:26:41.760
communicate with their parents. They can cry to show distress and they can laugh to show that they
00:26:49.600
liked a thing. Laughter is basically how babies say, do more of that thing you just did. So, you know,
00:26:56.720
if you're, if you're lightly biting a baby's hand and the baby laughs, like if it sticks your hand in
00:27:01.440
near your face and you, you, you lightly bite and it lasts, it's saying, that's what I wanted you to
00:27:05.920
do. Like, that's why I did that because that, that positive emotional stimuli do that again. Because
00:27:11.520
when a parent sees their child laugh, they get this positive emotional stimulus,
00:27:15.600
right? Which causes us to repeat the behavior patterns that lead the child to laugh in the first place.
00:27:20.640
So what, what laughter likely originally evolved with was for that. It was so that when a baby was
00:27:29.760
attempting to learn something and it felt like it was beginning to get a concept, but needed it to be
00:27:34.880
repeated because some parts of it were still surprising to them. They would laugh to get you
00:27:40.320
to repeat what you just did. Think of this like peekaboo, like object permanence, right? Like
00:27:44.880
the baby's like, well, part of me thinks that they're not there anymore because they can't see
00:27:51.040
me, but I guess it does make sense that they're still there, right? You know, they're, they're
00:27:55.920
learning the concept of object permanence and they find that very funny because they are trying to get
00:28:01.600
you to repeat the thing that you just did. This is true with like jokes or behaviors with the kid.
00:28:06.960
The kid's like, I almost got it. So basically the, the code under this is that think you, you did
00:28:15.280
almost made sense to me. Like it made sense in context, like understand how that could happen
00:28:19.280
in context, but it was still surprising. So I need to be trained on that again. And you actually see
00:28:24.160
this was in other token predictors, not just humans. Humans are token predictors. You can see our
00:28:28.000
episodes on this or a large parts of our brains are, is that if you are training them, what you do
00:28:34.720
is to, to train them better is you take the data sets that were most surprising to them,
00:28:40.880
and then you retrain them on those data sets. This is a technique in AI training. It's basically
00:28:46.240
you take the data sets that the AI laughed at that made sense in context, but were surprising.
00:28:51.440
And then you run those data sets again, which is exactly what the baby is prompting you
00:28:59.920
So then, then why in adults? Well, because a lot of these systems is specifically in romance is where
00:29:08.000
you see laughter being most important is, and we're able to show certain types of verbal intelligence
00:29:16.000
through making somebody laugh and, and demonstrate that in a way that like couldn't easily be faked
00:29:22.320
to women. And so women then sort of like how, you know, your, your, your ability to process milk in
00:29:30.000
human evolution was supposed to turn off after infancy and really only evolved to beyond fairly
00:29:35.440
recently. By the way, people are wondering why her eyes are closed. She has really bad allergies right
00:29:39.760
now. Yeah. I'm just trying not to sneeze. I'm sorry. You can sneeze. I can edit this. No.
00:29:45.440
Okay. Sorry. I was saying, oh yes. So milk, lactose tolerance, we, we, at the evolution,
00:29:53.360
it dropped what's supposed to happen, which is it's supposed to turn off after infancy,
00:29:57.440
when some people began to become like herders and were able to eat, you know, milk and cheese again.
00:30:02.560
And then it spread from the two populations that that happened in. Now I'm basically arguing earlier
00:30:09.040
in our evolution. The same thing happened, but with humor is humor was supposed to turn off after
00:30:15.600
infancy, but then it became hijacked and readopted by the system associated with romance and partner
00:30:21.760
selection as a way. And this is why when a woman likes a guy, she's likely to laugh at the things
00:30:27.280
that he does, even if they're not actually funny, because that is her signaling to him that she thinks
00:30:33.200
he's funny. So he thinks, oh, I look good in this person's eyes, right? Like you see this, uh,
00:30:39.280
with other traits, like women's eyes dilating when they look at a man or a man's eyes also dilate when
00:30:43.600
they look at a partner that they find attractive. Which is why people would use things like belladonna
00:30:50.880
to dilate their eyes artificially because it made them look more attractive. Yes. That's, that's a
00:30:55.760
nightshade, definitely nightshade. Well-known fact, but you recently learned that that started
00:30:59.920
for a different reason. Yeah. Because they were likely using it as a treatment for conjunctivitis,
00:31:05.600
pink eye. Oh, I thought you said it was because of syphilis. No, sunglasses started with people.
00:31:12.400
Oh, so you're going to have to explain that one now too. Apparently syphilis makes your eyes a little
00:31:17.120
bit more sensitive to light. So the first people wearing sunglasses tended to be wealthier people
00:31:22.560
who had syphilis and were trying to just be more comfortable. So I could see why it would make
00:31:28.160
sunglasses kind of cool because only fairly wealthy people. Wealthy studs, what wore them?
00:31:36.640
Yeah. Wealthy, wealthy, wealthy studs with syphilis. So yeah. So letches really. Yeah.
00:31:44.720
I mean, I, well, and then yeah, I wonder, sunglasses used to be way more popular when we were younger.
00:31:52.320
And I wonder if it was because marijuana was more popular when we were younger. And part of
00:31:56.320
of sunglass culture came downstream of not wanting to show that you were high.
00:32:00.640
Yeah. I don't know. You're right. I, yeah, I used to wear sunglasses a ton or is it just a young
00:32:07.040
person thing? We don't see it as much because we don't hang out at college campuses and at high
00:32:12.960
school anymore. You know, I get, I drive through college campuses to pick up girls, Simone.
00:32:19.440
Uh, I'm in, I'm in college campuses all the time. I'm joking. I don't ever go to college campuses,
00:32:25.520
except for more giving speeches. So yeah, that, that's all I can think to say about that.
00:32:31.040
I always wondered about that. It, I just found it so odd. Cause I don't like putting things in
00:32:37.200
my mouth and then we've always like babies shoving their hands on my mouth. Like I'll play along,
00:32:43.120
but this is weird. If you want to hear some studies on play fighting, you've got the relationship
00:32:49.840
between father child rough and tumble play and children's working memory 2022 frequency and
00:32:55.520
quality of father child RTP rough and tumble play observed in games like wrestling was linked to
00:33:01.840
better working memory and children age three to five, explaining 35% of the variance in cognitive
00:33:06.720
outcomes. What benefits included improved executive function and fewer behavioral problems.
00:33:11.920
How and why? Well, I wrestle with our kids a lot. I know. Why would that improve memory function or retention?
00:33:24.400
I, it might be part of, I mean, finding an increased modeling, right? So, cause you're, you're,
00:33:31.920
you're thinking your next movie, you have to think very carefully about what they're going to do.
00:33:35.200
Well, I think children may, especially male children may not feel secure if they're not
00:33:39.680
engaging in rough and tumble play with a parent because they don't, may not feel that the parent
00:33:43.280
really cares enough to train them to protect themselves, which is why I think it's really
00:33:47.520
bad. These parents who, who get mad at us for being rough with our kids, they, because we do lots of,
00:33:52.640
of, of wrestling and sock and boppers. And on the weekends, I'll set up a blow up castle to have the
00:33:57.040
kids fight in or fight me. And, you know, some people are like, this is real. Why are you doing this?
00:34:03.360
Right. And it's like, it's actually really cognitively good for the kids. And, and,
00:34:06.720
and how do I know it's cognitively good for the kids? Cause they laugh when it happens.
00:34:11.040
Well, they seek it out. They, they do it whenever they can.
00:34:14.640
Then we've got child. Oh, hit me, daddy, hit me. The Titan, our youngest daughter will do this,
00:34:20.720
run up to me and start yelling, hit me, daddy, hit me. And then I get up and she'll start running
00:34:25.920
away and laughing like a maniac. And I'm like, oh my God, that kid is going to have problems when she grows up.
00:34:31.840
But anyway, so child gender influences parental behavior, language, and brain function.
00:34:38.400
Fathers of sons engage in more rough and tumble play and used achievement oriented language brain
00:34:43.760
scans showed stronger responses and reward slash emotion areas to sons neutral faces correlated with
00:34:50.000
rough and tumble play. Fathers of daughters were more attentive and emotional in language.
00:34:55.200
Mothers were not directly compared, but prior research notes,
00:34:57.840
fathers differentiate by child gender more than mothers do, which is interesting.
00:35:02.640
This is interesting. So the fathers seem to be more bonded to their children.
00:35:06.320
If they engage in rough and tumble play with sons specifically play fighting,
00:35:10.560
rough and tumble play in children, developmental and evolutionary perspectives.
00:35:15.040
Rough and tumble peaks in middle childhood promotes emotional control, social competence,
00:35:20.240
child rough and tumble play is more common than mother child with evolutionary roots in mammals
00:35:24.640
for skill building and stress coping. Gender differences was more, more was boys,
00:35:30.160
but less segregated and hunter gatherers. So hunter gatherers do it more with both genders.
00:35:35.360
Measurement of father child rough and tumble play and its relation to child's behavior.
00:35:42.000
Developmental tools were used to measure rough and tumble play quality and frequency.
00:35:46.480
High quality rough and tumble linked to better child self-regulation and less aggression.
00:35:50.960
Includes physical elements like tossing in some studies. So tossing a child makes them less
00:35:56.320
aggressive. I think it's because they're able to get their aggression out within a play context.
00:36:01.440
And then finally here, we've got proximate and ultimate mechanisms of human father and
00:36:06.400
child rough and tumble play rough and tumble activates a child risk-taking and competitive
00:36:11.280
adaptive for survival skills. Fathers predominate with hormonal e.g. testosterone
00:36:15.520
neural mechanisms e.g. fathers with more testosterone engage in more rough and tumble play with sons.
00:36:20.880
Oh, that is interesting. I also wonder if it just correlates with like there being an outlet for
00:36:34.720
suppressed around that and you, you also don't contextualize it as just this positive fun thing
00:36:38.960
that you do, then you're going to have a negative, you know, physical reaction.
00:36:48.960
No, I mean, I think that I suspect that it does differ across culturally, right?
00:36:52.800
Like there's probably a culture that does none of none of these three things.
00:36:56.720
And there's going to be some cultures that do all three of these things.
00:36:58.800
Yeah. But if you associate rough and tumble play with like a hug,
00:37:02.400
you're probably not going to hug people when you're angry, you know?
00:37:06.960
Yeah. When you, when you see it as being the same kind of a thing, like a fun
00:37:10.960
and loving thing you do with your family, well, it also teaches you better emotional control.
00:37:14.160
That's why I'm like you, you, emotional control is very important in young kids and our society just
00:37:18.720
ignores it. It's just like never put them in a situation where they must, might need to exercise
00:37:23.280
emotional control. And I'm like, that's really bad idea. Yeah. Yeah. Love you to Decimo.
00:37:30.880
Me too. This is so interesting. Thank you for sharing that with me. It's sort of,
00:37:35.760
it makes things seem less confusing, which I really like as a parent.
00:37:38.960
Yeah. There was an article recently that was like, they picked up their parental discipline from
00:37:43.040
studying animal behavior. And I was like, I mean, yeah, we did. Cause I don't really trust the science
00:37:48.240
anymore. So I was like, well, how do other mammals do this? Yeah. Yeah. It's otherwise
00:37:54.880
just so divorced from reality. And they certainly don't want to trust societal standards. So this is
00:37:59.760
great. Well, when they go against the urban monoculture, which has never exposed kids to
00:38:03.680
any challenging emotions. Totally. That's probably not great. Probably not. So now let's see how evil
00:38:12.320
we look to, to the people who hate us. We, we bite our children. We toss our children. We don't love
00:38:18.800
our children. We didn't have our children for love. We had them for instrumental reasons.
00:38:23.200
The nerve of it. We beat our children, as they say. I mean, barely, but you know,
00:38:29.040
still by societal standards, you know, so trifecta there, right? Truly an evil family.
00:38:35.840
Well, don't forget, we also, you know, select based on genes when choosing birth order. So
00:38:41.920
there are so many more things we do. Yeah. We're just the worst.
00:38:45.440
As soon as we can. Gene edit children. Oh no. Oh no. I mean, I've realized that we are probably the
00:38:54.080
most, and this has been really groundbreaking to me recently, the most prominent influencers
00:39:01.440
who are of this like techno accelerationist, capitalist, Darwinist type perspective,
00:39:08.320
like sort of wristless Darwinism in terms of the humanity's future. And it's weird to me because
00:39:14.160
like, obviously Elon is bigger than us, but his primary job is in an influencer and he's at the
00:39:17.920
same mindset. But being like that, the full-time, like talking heads who are the biggest into this
00:39:23.600
perspective, it's weird for me because it's such a common perspective in TV and media. Like as a trope,
00:39:28.880
it makes a lot of sense and like anyone would follow it. But when I think about, you know,
00:39:32.640
any of the other influencers I can think of, you know, Tim Pool, Matt Walsh, you know, Crowder or
00:39:39.360
progressives, you know, the young Turks guy or shoe on head or, you know, so many people out there
00:39:48.480
and just none of them really take this like pro future perspective, at least not in a way that's
00:39:53.360
serious, like involved with a lot of kids and everything like that. The more that's just like
00:39:57.600
a cover on the urban monoculture. So that's been, that's been surprising for me. And I guess
00:40:02.240
that's sort of our role was in the ecosystem. So if you want to see the, the ruthless
00:40:10.160
tech, tech bros, tech lords, I don't know. Technofascist takeover is what Mother Jones called us.
00:40:16.800
The child tossing, finger biting, bopping, genetically selecting technofascist parents.
00:40:27.760
Yeah. When we have a robot to help raise our kid, we'll make sure it hits them, you know,
00:40:32.400
when they act out. The AI is going to be like that.
00:40:35.280
I feel like it won't be the same, you know, but it's okay. Our children hit each other so much.
00:40:43.840
I think, I think that that's, you know, we'll have the family AI butler in the future
00:40:49.680
be like, knock it off. You little, the people who don't know, even in Albion seed,
00:40:53.920
you little s is something that I heard frequently growing up. We don't use it with our kids mostly
00:40:58.080
because I don't want the media to freak out, but it's a classic backwoods Americans term for a child.
00:41:03.440
Yeah. Which I never heard of it before I met your family though.
00:41:08.720
So well, well documented in like the 1800s and the 1700s from this cultural group. Well,
00:41:13.600
that's because it's only from the backwoods cultural tradition. That's, that's where it comes from.
00:41:26.160
They like, they like things that show that women are terrible. This is the one on women.
00:41:32.560
Women will like you less if you apologize and progressives will like you less,
00:41:35.840
but conservative men care less, which is interesting phenomenon.
00:41:40.880
Yeah. I mean, I haven't looked at the history of apologies though, but it,
00:41:45.680
I kind of get the impression when I think about it, that apologies aren't even
00:41:51.360
really a thing. I mean, they don't do anything. And biblically speaking, if you did something wrong,
00:41:55.600
you had to pay for it. Like you'd, you'd give someone a goat. If you maimed someone's child,
00:42:02.160
you know, like there were, there were exchanges. It wasn't, oh, I'm sorry. You know, you had to pay
00:42:06.080
the price. There were consequences. And this concept of apologizing seems more just like an act,
00:42:13.040
like a modern version of prostration. That's just purely symbolic and about power plays and
00:42:19.040
dominance hierarchies and not actually about writing a wrong. It's not about like restorative justice or
00:42:26.080
actually I think when people use that term today, they mean something that's like extended long
00:42:31.360
apologies. It's completely feckless, but you know what I mean, right? Like it's not justice and it doesn't
00:42:36.240
make anything better. Actions are really all that matter, but. Well, you, you described it as like
00:42:41.360
prostrating yourself in front of somebody. Yeah. It's a modern version of prostration.
00:42:46.560
It doesn't, it doesn't fix anything. It doesn't make it better. Anyway. All right. I'll get started.
00:43:16.560
Octavian, these aren't sea creatures. This is a little stream.
00:43:30.560
They're just aquatic animals. What are they called actually? Aquatic animals, not sea creatures.
00:43:35.920
Wait, that's an aquatic animal. Yeah, that's an aquatic animal. Right, Twisty?
00:43:42.080
Yeah. And they live in the water a long, long time ago.
00:43:51.120
Well, they live in the water today too, my buddy.
00:44:10.000
Don't pick up rocks. Sometimes bitey bugs live under them.
00:44:29.360
Yeah, first of all Hong Kong is around the sky.
00:44:30.640
Like comic books Leo, where'd they find myself?