Based Camp - Why Do We Throw & Bite Babies？ (Other than them being delicious)

00:00:00.000 Hello, Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today, we are going to be talking about

00:00:04.760 the bizarre phenomenon of people, cross-culturally, it appears, bite infants as a sign of affection.

00:00:11.520 And another thing that people often do with young children as a sign of affection is toss

00:00:15.840 them in the air. These are both things that I have personally witnessed. And I think even with

00:00:21.560 biting gently an infant's hand, it's an instinctual saying, for me at least. My infant instinctually

00:00:27.300 puts their hand towards my mouth. Oh, and they laugh and are just so delighted if you pretend

00:00:31.820 to bite their hands or even bite them softly. Yeah. So weird. And so I was like, first, I was

00:00:38.640 like, is this just like a weird thing from maybe my family or my genetic line? So I go to look up

00:00:44.940 if this is, because I also have seen people in my family toss toddlers. And I also want to see,

00:00:50.000 is this something other people do? Do other people, because that seems like the opposite of what you

00:00:53.780 would want to do as a toddler, if your goal was to keep something who is genetically close to you

00:00:57.900 alive, is toss it in the air. And I go up and I look into it and there's a bunch of conservatives

00:01:10.480 who I guess have never had kids or been around kids a lot, or maybe they're from cultures that

00:01:14.500 just don't do this, freaking out over Joe Biden, like biting infant's feet. So apparently this is so

00:01:20.500 common that even Joe Biden did this. Now I would say that they are right. You don't do that to

00:01:25.520 other people's babies. I would never think to bite a stranger's baby. Or throw a stranger's baby.

00:01:31.160 Yeah. 100%. That feels like really over the line. Yeah. It's like, it's, it's an intimate act,

00:01:36.840 even if it's just playful and silly, you know? Yeah. In the same way, I wouldn't toss a stranger's

00:01:41.860 baby. You don't, you don't, you don't do that. Yeah. Obviously we'll go over some cultures where they

00:01:46.560 do do that. There's a ceremony in India where they'll throw babies off of a roof. Wait, what? 0.94

00:01:50.940 Into like a, a ball pit? No, no, no, no, no. They like hold the sheet like taut to make like a

00:01:57.680 trampoline that they can like catch it in. And they'll throw it off the roof.

00:02:06.340 It's an annual tradition in India where babies are tossed from a rooftop. The practice known as

00:02:12.460 Oakley involves priests tossing babies off the roof of the temple onto a sheet held by the people

00:02:18.760 below. Prosperity, apparently. So. Prosperity. Well, I mean, at this point, you know, if only the

00:02:27.680 really fittest survived. But we did mention that toddler tossing is a uniquely, like the way that

00:02:33.940 I have seen it for practice. It's a uniquely European and white phenomenon. They do it more than 1.00

00:02:39.420 other groups. There aren't a lot of other groups. It'll do like the five foot in the air toddler

00:02:43.020 toss, which I've definitely seen. Yeah. So we're going to go over the scientific research that

00:02:48.420 exists on this. Just, you know, like how common this is. I found an article here I can share

00:02:53.740 in Motherly. It's science. Wanting to eat your baby makes you a better parent. 1.00

00:02:59.940 No. Okay. Well, no, think about it. You hear this all the time. Like, I just want to eat him up or

00:03:06.320 something like that. That's a common thing of, and you don't just see this with, with biting and

00:03:11.480 tossing. A form of this that is not common within my culture. I've literally never seen anyone in my

00:03:16.380 family unit do this, but I've seen people do it on shows is pinching infants. Yeah. Yeah.

00:03:22.800 So we're going to go into why I think people actually do this, what the scientists say about

00:03:27.400 this, which I think that they're wrong about it and what's going on here. All right. So the science,

00:03:32.760 this behavior is linked to a psychological phenomenon known as cute aggression,

00:03:36.920 also called playful aggression or dimorphous expression. I'm sorry, wait, cute aggression

00:03:43.580 is a scientific term? Yes. This world is beautiful. Positive emotions towards something adorable,

00:03:51.300 such as a baby, trigger seemingly aggressive, but affectionate impulses like wanting to squeeze,

00:03:56.180 pinch, or bite. It serves as an emotion regulation mechanism, helping individuals cope with intense

00:04:02.100 feelings of adoration to enable better caregiving. Do you think a playful butt slap or the punch on

00:04:08.380 the shoulder, is that cute aggression too? No, I think a scientist who believes in this theory may

00:04:14.300 argue that, but I'm going to argue that cute aggression doesn't exist at all. And that this

00:04:18.980 is something totally different, but I'm going into it first. Okay. Okay. Because I think the scientists

00:04:22.740 are just wrong on this one. They, they noticed a collection of behaviors where you toss a baby or

00:04:28.900 lightly bite a baby or pinch a baby's cheeks that all appear aggressive. And they mistook these

00:04:35.420 behaviors is all being caused by the same impulse. When I actually think that they are each caused by

00:04:40.720 a different and unique impulse that better explains them than what the scientists say.

00:04:46.220 So scientific basis and prevalence research since 2015 led by psychologists like Irena Aragon has shown

00:04:52.880 that cute aggression is experienced by about half of adults when viewing or interacting with cute stimuli,

00:04:57.040 including infants. Brain imaging studies, e.g. using EEG and fMRI revealed heightened activity and

00:05:04.140 reward in emotional centers like the orbitofrontal cortex when people encounter cuteness leading to

00:05:09.720 these paradoxical urges. For instance, one study found participants reported stronger aggressive

00:05:15.020 expressions, e.g. I want to bite it! Exclamation mark. Towards more infantile looking babies compared to

00:05:22.100 less cute ones, mediated by feelings of being emotionally overwhelmed. It's not driven by harmful

00:05:27.880 intent or neurohormones, but by neurohormones like oxytocin, promoting affection and vasopressin

00:05:33.160 linked to protective aggression, which evolves to enhance bonding or protection of vulnerable osprey.

00:05:40.680 So I note there that the only evidence that they have of this is you get what they consider an

00:05:46.200 aggressive sentiment. I want to bite it when the thing is more cute, but I'm going to argue there's

00:05:50.940 something else that could lead to that. It's so cute I could crush it! Exclamation mark. That's the

00:05:56.700 name of a study. Understanding neural mechanisms of cute aggression. Catherine K.M.,

00:06:01.220 Stephopopoulos, and Laura A. Alba, 2018. Using EEG to measure brain activity, this study found that

00:06:07.300 cute aggression correlates with heightened neural responses in emotional salience, larger N200 amplitude

00:06:13.240 for cuter stimuli, and reward processing. Repu amplitude. The relationship was mediated by feelings

00:06:20.060 of being overwhelmed and a desire for caretaking. The explanation posits cute aggression as a

00:06:25.680 bottom-up neural mechanism to balance intense positive emotions evoked by quote-unquote baby

00:06:31.080 schema features, e.g. large eyes and round faces exceeding beyond humans to animals. It prevents

00:06:37.340 emotional paralysis, enhancing adaptive behaviors like nurturing. Strongly disagree with this. I think that

00:06:43.320 it is actually a nurturing behavior and there is a reason for it, and I do not agree that what they

00:06:48.880 find, i.e. this correlation with the N200 amplitude, couldn't be used to argue that. Also, as a side note

00:06:55.140 here, the neural mechanism that they're displaying here that we have in relation to baby faces, you know,

00:07:00.540 larger eyes, sort of cute-looking face, that is humorously triggered by killer whales, which is one of the

00:07:08.940 reasons why. Why we like them so much, even though they're freaking terrifying and horrible. They're

00:07:13.420 horrifying. They like to, like, play whiz and torture things before killing them and everything 1.00

00:07:17.600 like that. Toss them in the air if you see them, like, tossing seals. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

00:07:24.200 That's sealed by the 80 feet up in the air. Really some of the most aggressive and brutal killers in the

00:07:30.820 animal world, and yet our brain often categorizes them as, like, cutie matuties, because they've got those 0.98

00:07:36.420 giant eye spots that make it look like they have big, cute anime eyes. You know, so I've always

00:07:42.420 found that to be a really funny way that, like, we're accidentally hacked by nature. So let's look

00:07:47.380 at a cross-cultural example of this. In the Philippines, it's called Gigiel, describing the

00:07:52.020 urge to pinch or bite something cute, like a baby's chubby cheeks, as an expression of endearment.

00:07:57.000 Studies in the United States and South Korea show similar patterns with no significant gender

00:08:00.900 differences, though cultural norms may influence how openly it's expressed, e.g. more verbal in the U.S.

00:08:06.420 subtler in East Asia. In some Thai, Japanese, and Hindu-influenced groups, gently nibbling or

00:08:12.600 pretending biting is noted as affectionate play with infants. Broader anthropological observations

00:08:18.500 suggest this akin to social biting in primates, testing bonds without harm. So note, this is

00:08:22.980 something primates will do, is gently bite each other to, like, see if their friends. We'll get back

00:08:28.660 to this in just a second, because I think that this is a much better explanation. So in, then I asked

00:08:33.380 it about baby tossing, because I want to know, do other cultures toss babies? And they're like,

00:08:38.940 in non-Western cultures, similar physical play exists, but there are even ritualistic forms of

00:08:44.180 baby tossing for symbolic purposes, such as in parts of India, where babies are dropped from temple

00:08:48.440 roofs, caught safely in sheets, to invoke good luck, health, and prosperity. This 700-year-old

00:08:54.400 tradition occurs in places like solopar marasustra, practiced by both Hindu and Muslim families.

00:09:01.560 However, this Indian practice is a communal ritual rather than everyday parental play,

00:09:06.000 and playful tossing, as in gentle repeated throws and catches, is less emphasized in

00:09:10.060 collectivist societies like India, Taiwan, and Thailand, where RTP is overall reported at lower

00:09:15.180 frequencies. This is called rough and double play, compared to individualistic Western societies.

00:09:19.680 In hunter-gatherer groups, such as the Aka Bofi foragers in Central Africa, father-infant physical

00:09:25.480 play is common, and includes things like holding, bouncing, or wrestling, but not high tosses. So

00:09:31.720 this behavior is done pretty much exclusively by males. First of all, rough and double play is three

00:09:37.080 to six times more common in males than females, that is play that could potentially hurt an infant,

00:09:41.740 and is really predominant in Western societies. And if I could break it down, which I'd really love to

00:09:48.100 be able to break it down, it may just come from one cultural group. Like, it could come from just

00:09:52.100 the backwoods tradition. It could come from just the Puritan tradition, the two that I'm descended from.

00:09:56.040 So in the comments, if you are from a different Western country or a non-Western country, let me know

00:10:00.620 if your family throws infants. Keep in mind, the age of the children that are thrown are typically older

00:10:06.280 than infants. Did you see this in your family, by the way, throwing infants, like toddlers, typically around

00:10:10.860 two or three to like four or five? I mean, I didn't have peers that were younger than me,

00:10:17.840 so I wouldn't have seen it. Yeah, I saw it at family gatherings mostly. I know you don't see

00:10:25.220 this in public if you don't have like a large family, because it's something you typically only

00:10:30.460 do in an affectionate context. And it'd be seen as, I don't know, kind of vulgar to do like in a

00:10:35.560 subway station or something, right? Oh yeah, no one would, no, of course not. You do it when you're

00:10:40.760 all out back at a barbecue or something, right? Like that's where this behavior is undertaken if

00:10:45.620 your family doesn't engage in it. All right, so explanations for the various behavior on display

00:10:51.740 here. First, we need to talk about showing vulnerability as a sign of affection, because

00:10:58.680 this is something that actually adults do as well. It is why women, when they are attracted to a man, 0.99

00:11:06.580 will expose their neck to him. And it's why one of the most common reasons to be kissed is on the

00:11:12.180 neck, because it demonstrates sort of like a, if you wanted to, you could kill me or seriously injure 0.94

00:11:18.520 me. And that signaling from both parties, from an evolutionary perspective, it's like a very,

00:11:24.220 it's the woman showing their willingness to put themselves at risk of the man, like this is how

00:11:32.960 much I trust you, which is important to signal from a societal bonding perspective. And it's the

00:11:38.600 man signaling, and I would not take advantage of this opportunity to kill and eat you, I guess. 0.80

00:11:45.600 Well, no, I mean, you know, in a historic context, that's a real potential risk when you're talking 0.61

00:11:50.140 about like early evolutionary ancestors, when this behavior was evolving. And that is likely why

00:11:55.400 monkeys do it as well to be like, look, I could hurt you if I want to. But now you know that even

00:11:59.740 in an environment where I could hurt you, I won't hurt you. And it's a way of establishing trust at a

00:12:07.380 very deep level. This is also where a number of rituals come from that are designed to establish

00:12:13.440 trust. So the key ones here, well, no, kneeling and bowing your head is meant to know that you

00:12:20.800 would be willing to have them chop your head off. Like if they have a sword, they could cut 0.99

00:12:24.040 your head off. Like you're basically getting into a position like, see, cut my head off if you want 1.00

00:12:28.560 to. Right. And hadn't you said that prayer, like prayer hands? Yeah, praying often this as well. 0.99

00:12:33.140 So the way that you used to show vassalage is you would bind your fingers like this. I don't know

00:12:37.280 if anyone's ever done this in like a children's game, but they're the children game, but one person

00:12:40.540 binds their fingers like this and another person will put their hands over the person who's done

00:12:43.840 this and you just cannot get out of this. Even if the person is significantly weaker than you,

00:12:48.620 it's very, very difficult to break. And this was done during vassalage ceremonies to show one person's

00:12:55.620 beneath the person who they're pledging to serve. Like I, you can control me, right? Like in this

00:13:00.400 moment, you can control and do whatever you want to me. And that when we developed ways of to God

00:13:08.180 saying like, I am your vassal, you are my Lord, the ceremony used, the bowing of the head and the

00:13:16.240 hands together symbols were two different symbols used in vassalage ceremonies, which is, I mean,

00:13:23.040 there's nothing perverse about that. That's, I suppose, fairly befitting. That's what the person is

00:13:28.780 saying. And if you're in a medieval context, obviously that's what you're going to have around

00:13:32.360 you. How do I show someone more powerful than me that they are more powerful? Well, there's these

00:13:36.580 ceremonies. Now they may not have understood why those ceremonies had the things that they had

00:13:41.420 was in them. This is why hand up like this is a sign of peace across many different cultures,

00:13:46.540 because it's a way of showing that you don't have weapons in your hands. Now these don't seem to

00:13:50.520 trigger as much of a evolved response as the showing the neck response does. But I think that that's part

00:13:57.160 of what we see going on here is the parents sort of hijacking. And after all, somebody can be like,

00:14:01.780 well, why would an infant, because our infants will put their hands out, like without understanding

00:14:08.800 our culture, without any cultural backing, will put their hands towards our mouths if we're

00:14:14.620 interacting with them. And this has happened with multiple infants we've had. And the question could

00:14:21.060 be, well, why would an infant put itself in a dangerous situation like that, right? And the answer is a

00:14:26.700 fewfold. The first is, and another thing you'll note with infants is when they're doing the baby

00:14:32.320 toss game, I have never seen an infant distressed by this game. Typically, they think it is like the

00:14:36.660 best thing in the world when they're being tossed. 100% laughing crazy. Laughing like maniacs. It's the

00:14:43.480 same with the mouth thing. Like if you actually like take the child's hand and gently bite it, the kid will

00:14:50.560 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

00:14:55.560 child cannot trust a parent to not kill it, it's as good as dead. So it's actually not really making a

00:15:02.080 calculated risk in either instance. It has to be like, if my parent is interacting with me in a way

00:15:08.240 that's dangerous, they are showing me affection. In a way that's like controlled dangerous and not

00:15:12.660 likely to actively immediately hurt me. So they take it. It was in an evolved context as a sign of

00:15:17.840 affection. But you have the secondary thing here, which is children when they are in the first year of

00:15:24.540 development, or really two years of development, are overly focused on the parent's mouth, because

00:15:30.580 it's when they're learning to talk. And so they have a huge fixation with mouths and paying extra

00:15:38.740 attention to mouths and wanting to touch or be close to mouths. And so I think that that's the secondary

00:15:46.340 thing that's going on here is children have a natural, like if there's a part of my face they

00:15:51.420 want to interact with, it's the mouth, right? So that's why you would have this interaction

00:15:56.760 between babies and caregivers. Now, what's interesting is most interactions that you have

00:16:02.400 between babies and caregivers were later picked up by our sort of romance system when humans began to

00:16:10.520 find a pair bonded partners later in their evolution. So if you look at our writing on this,

00:16:14.120 we argue that a lot of the behavior, whether it is laughing, whether it is love, or like the broader

00:16:21.040 emotional like affection and attachment that we associate with the word love that we argue doesn't

00:16:25.460 exist like a separate concept, that a lot of this stuff originally evolved only for parent-child

00:16:30.020 interactions. And then it was later adopted by sort of stolen where we are with evolution to cheat

00:16:36.060 programmer. When we started creating long term monogamous pair bonds with other partners are the

00:16:41.760 primary form of relationship in human societies, because it helps facilitate that. Because before

00:16:46.880 that, the only long term relationship you would have definitely had is with your kids. And now

00:16:50.380 you've got this new long term relationship. It's like, let's just borrow, you know, oh, you originally

00:16:55.020 evolved kissing for children, but then it gets borrowed in a romantic context for partners. You know,

00:17:02.040 you initially, and you see this was most affectionate displays. If it's done with a kid, it's done with an

00:17:06.540 adult. Why hugging, for example, with kids, you do this with romantic partners. So the question is,

00:17:13.280 I don't even know how universal kissing and hugging is among romantic partners. It's not that universal,

00:17:19.900 is it? They're fairly universal. I can check in post. Okay, checked in post. Approximately 46% of cultures

00:17:26.660 practice romantic kissing as a form of affection. Hugging, by contrast, is near universal human behavior

00:17:31.860 across cultures, with rare exceptions, the Himbu people of Nambia. While the frequency and social

00:17:37.400 contacts of hugging vary, such as being more common in high contact cultures like those in Latin America

00:17:41.660 and the Mediterranean, and less frequently in low contact cultures like Japan or the UK, hugging is

00:17:47.020 a gesture of affection, greeting, or comfort is present in virtually all human societies.

00:17:51.060 Yeah. Yeah. Not totally universal, but just very frequent. Yeah. So as an adult, first, I would

00:17:59.120 know, actually, because they're like, well, why isn't this a romantic display in adults like all

00:18:03.640 these others? And the answer is, it may have been in fairly recent history. We know from fairly recent

00:18:09.900 history, a man kissing a woman on the hand was seen as a sort of progenitor to anything more in a

00:18:18.260 relationship. You know, it goes hand-holding, kissing on the hand. This is, if you read romance

00:18:23.100 manga, which I do, this is something that happens frequently in these sorts of stories. It was common

00:18:27.940 in sort of a medieval context. So we do know that some societies did adopt like a proto-version of this.

00:18:34.560 Secondly, why would it be less common than the other signs of affection? I'd argue because it's more

00:18:40.300 likely to transmit dangerous diseases. In an infant, I can be fairly certain that I have made a strong

00:18:46.500 effort to have its hands not touch anything that are going to get me sick. In your average working

00:18:51.960 adult, now, where you didn't see this was in nobles during the medieval period because they would have

00:18:57.120 been the one class that like didn't have to do manual labor, its hands were less likely to have a lot 0.99

00:19:01.300 of germs on them, and that women often wear gloves. So you could have had this ceremony, but then as

00:19:07.260 society began to, you know, become more working and social customs began to drift up from the working

00:19:12.660 classes to the upper classes. This, you know, you don't want to be working at a factory all day

00:19:17.080 or in a farm and then kiss someone's hand. That's, that's, that's going to be worse than kissing

00:19:22.740 their lips. Um, obviously kissing lips can also transfer diseases, uh, prize that it has become as 0.67

00:19:29.800 common, but it's, it's only likely to transfer diseases that you already have and are suffering

00:19:34.620 from not random things you picked up in your environment, like licking a doorknob or something

00:19:38.800 or, or biting a hand more broadly. Like even if you're not kissing lightly, biting a hand.

00:19:42.960 Although I think even in a romantic context, if you did that to an adult partner, like gently bit

00:19:49.100 their hand, I think it would be immediately interpreted as romantic. Like anyone would be

00:19:54.520 confused about what's intended by that. So it is an intimate thing to do. Yeah. It's an intimate

00:20:00.820 thing to do. If you did that with somebody who wasn't a partner, they would freak right the F out,

00:20:05.280 which is why it's weird that Biden is doing this to other people's kids. It shows a lack of,

00:20:10.240 I can see why people are thinking he's crossing some sort of like, and I know they don't want to

00:20:14.000 be like a sexual line because it's something that people do as kids, but it's because so many of

00:20:18.480 these things are things that we normally only do as romantic partners in our own children.

00:20:22.620 Okay. So that explains the hand biting. All right. So what about pinching cheeks? Well,

00:20:29.120 remember people think that infants are cute when they look more infant to eat. Even adult women 0.88

00:20:35.040 in an attempt to look younger, often put blush upon their cheeks to make their cheeks lighter.

00:20:41.160 Pinching cheeks, if the baby is healthy, will cause a flush response, which makes the baby appear

00:20:47.140 cuter and also is a way to test the health of the baby. So that is what is going on with cheek 1.00

00:20:52.540 pinching. I find it odd that it's not done, that that's not done in any of my cultures. And I have

00:20:57.840 never had an impulse to pinch my baby's cheeks to the extent where I would feel uncomfortable if you

00:21:02.980 pinched a baby's cheeks. I'd be like, doesn't that just hurt the child? Like that, you know,

00:21:07.220 the reason it's causing the flush response is because you're breaking the capillaries. Like

00:21:10.980 that's, you know, I don't, I don't, I obviously some cultures do it, whatever. Right. But I,

00:21:17.920 and it's not going to cause permanent damage or anything, but you know, the, the next one is,

00:21:22.820 is baby tossing. Well, one, I can say this is probably not a biological impulse because it doesn't

00:21:30.200 really exist cross-culturally. It is predominantly a Western, potentially even American thing sound

00:21:35.200 off in the comments as to why men do it. Some men have sounded off in, in comments that they only

00:21:43.800 really do it when the child's mother is around and that they don't do it in private. And they've

00:21:49.720 argued that it might be an attempt to get a rise out of the wife, that that might be the, 1.00

00:21:55.920 the true intention of the behavior, that the actual biological drive that's leading to the

00:22:02.240 behavior is wanting to get a rise out of your partner. It's like keeping women in check being 0.98

00:22:08.240 like, I could, I could do this maybe what's going on. So a lot of our kids have a very strong impulse.

00:22:15.520 So it's clear that this is within our cultural group to break rules and watch your face when they

00:22:22.240 break rules. They really like this. Our kids really, I told this story before. One of my

00:22:27.120 favorites was Titan is I'm eating macaroni and cheese and she walks over and she pours the bowl,

00:22:32.640 like off the edge of this, this balcony thing. And I was like, well, that was a jerk thing to do 0.97

00:22:38.400 Titan. Like, why'd you do that? And then she goes down to where it all fell. And she's like two at the 0.99

00:22:44.820 time. So very young. This is not like a behavioral impulse. She learned from us picks up all the macaroni.

00:22:49.440 I'm like, oh, that's so sweet. Like, obviously I'm not going to eat it now because we've been on the

00:22:52.240 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, 0.96

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

00:25:23.200 indicates that it's a very common behavior.

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 0.53

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

00:28:55.680 into doing with its interaction. Exactly.

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 1.00

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 0.99

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 1.00

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. 0.87

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, 0.98

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 1.00

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. 0.90

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,

00:35:19.040 and bonding. Father,

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

00:36:28.240 physical

00:36:28.720 expression and that if you feel really

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.

00:36:45.680 Yeah. Yeah. I don't know.

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. 0.99

00:40:16.800 The child tossing, finger biting, bopping, genetically selecting technofascist parents. 0.65

00:40:27.280 That's us.

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.

00:40:42.480 It's fine.

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.

00:41:17.440 But yeah. Anyway, love you to death.

00:41:19.520 I love you too. Gorgeous.

00:41:21.440 So people were pleased with the last episode?

00:41:24.080 I think so. Yeah.

00:41:26.160 They like, they like things that show that women are terrible. This is the one on women. 1.00

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.

00:43:09.440 Octavian, what are you up to?

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.

00:43:47.600 They live in the water a long, long time ago.

00:43:51.120 Well, they live in the water today too, my buddy.

00:43:53.360 Hi, food. Hi, daddy.

00:43:59.600 There's a small fish.

00:44:01.440 Can you catch it?

00:44:02.800 I don't think I can.

00:44:06.480 Whoa, this is a slippery rock.

00:44:09.040 Don't pick up rocks.

00:44:10.000 Don't pick up rocks. Sometimes bitey bugs live under them.

00:44:17.040 Bitey bugs.

00:44:17.600 You look bitey bug.

00:44:22.000 What bitey bugs look like under them?

00:44:24.720 Bitey bugs live under rocks sometimes.

00:44:26.640 Yeah.

00:44:27.600 That's good.

00:44:28.160 Thank you.

00:44:28.480 That's a good sign.

00:44:28.880 Don't pick up rocks.

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?

00:44:32.720 No.

00:44:36.480 Right then?

00:44:39.280 Oh.

00:44:49.440 Bueno, Dana?

00:44:49.840 See you soon.

Based Camp - August 20, 2025

Why Do We Throw & Bite Babies？ (Other than them being delicious)

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