One of my joys in life is teasing, and playing with, our four year old grandson Ayden. As a result, he has learned to tease back and last night was threatening me with his Captain Jack Sparrow sword[1], and calling me names while I occasionally karate kicked at him, causing him to shape-shift[2] from pirate to ninja.
Since Ayden has a relatively new pair of runners, he regularly needs to demonstrate how fast he is by sprinting in his slightly lopsided way from one end of the house to the other with a hilariously determined look on his face. It is mandatory (enforced by Grandma) to ooh and aah after this performance, and then to pay similarly serious attention as Ayden explains the various features of his runners that make them so fast. These include the amazingly "sharp" grips on the bottom, racing stripes on the side (the are mini-Asics[3]), etc.
During Ayden's runner recitation last night I told him that I was way faster than him, and it occurred to me that while we have had little races inside before, we have never taken this particular game outside. So after he got mad, I challenged him to "have a real race, outside". Though I am sure he had no idea what that meant, the idea that this was "real" (he thinks he understands what that means) and new (that is, "outside") appealed to him, and he got excited. I was still in my suit from work and having dinner (including a nice glass of Merlot), and he came to check on me at least half a dozen times during the next 15 minutes to see when I would be ready for our race. When I finally finished dinner, he followed me to my bedroom, telling me all the way how badly he was going to beat me, while I teased back in various incisive ways.
"Pooky head", I would say.
"Crack butt!", he would reply and then triple karate chop and kick the air while making "whoosh" noises since his hands and feet don't go fast enough to make them. I would reply in kind, and try to graze him with a kick and punch or two. Any more than a graze and he will run crying to Grandma. He does not bother with his Mom with this stuff because she doesn't give the kind of reaction he wants.
I proceeded to change into a pair of denim shorts and my favorite soccer jersey (Bayern Munich, Owen Hargreaves[4] team in Germany), hoping to one-up him — overawe him with a cool logo — "You don't have a soccer jersey! Ha ha!". But before I could do that, he went straight for the jugular I didn't realize I had.
"Those are not fast shorts", he deadpanned, while looking me square in the eyes.
"But soccer players are really fast!", I said, "look at my soccer Jersey! Bayern..."
There was no point continuing. All I got was an eye roll before he looked away.
I was being out trashed talked by a four-year-old. But then I realized that I had never heard him trash talk before. That is, he does not (as far as I know) pretend to believe realistic things for teasing purposes. He says what he really believes or drifts into a complete fantasy world involving becoming various characters, dinosaurs, etc. The idea that he might misrepresent a realistic belief for the purpose of teasing me was innovative. But after a few seconds thought about his past and present behavior, I satisfied myself that he has not reached that level of cognitive sophistication yet. I was faced with his real belief. My shorts were not fast, and hence he had me in our race.
So we finally went outside. It was a perfect Alberta summer evening on our small acreage. About 25 degrees C. (77 F.) and just enough breeze to keep the bugs down. The Rocky Mountains were in full grey blue splendor behind the house and the faded fields that surround it. Harvest was well underway, and so each field emitted a different sweet smell, and the rich greens of the alfalfa and grain golds have been leveled to their dull roots, seasoned by green bales and yellow swaths. Myriad wildflowers hid in the tall grasses where the prairie sod has not been broken. The sky was light with the kind of fluffy cloud that would produce a spectacular sunset within a couple of hours.
We were to run out about 30 yards to a big pine tree planted in the middle of a garden that makes a roundabout in our driveway, around the garden, and back. Grandma had been recruited to act as starter and umpire. Ayden tried to cheat by edging ahead before Grandma said "go". I protested so loudly that he came back to the starting line, with a sly smile on his face.
Finally we took off. It was brutally close. He pulled ahead first, but I caught him at the turn and passed him on the inside as he came back toward the house, causing his little face to convulse with fear and determination. He gradually reeled me in and I thought I had engineered a tie as we passed the finished line. The corrupt umpire, however, gave the race to Ayden. He was elated and ran shouting inside to tell the whole house about his win, and no doubt high-five his uncles, while Grandma laughed as she told me that the look on his face as he caught up to me was too much to toy with by doing anything other than declaring him the winner.
I awoke this morning with the thought that in addition to making a cute story, this incident speaks of something basically human. We habitually use the combination of our pattern finding skills and perception of things that are beyond our comprehension to support what we need to believe about ourselves. For example, it is hardwired into every child I have even known to think that he is fast. Ayden will find out soon enough that he is slow, as did his Mom when she was in elementary school (it took one race at one track meet to get this message across, and a pretended stomach cramp after the message sunk in to deal with it) and Ayden seems to have inherited her physique in this regard, as well as her artistic flair. But for the time being, he feels fast when he runs; he looks fast since he has the same kind of stuff the really fast people on TV wear; and in an instant he spotted the fact that his stuff looked faster than mine. He is not old enough to understand the physics of muscle power and limb length, or to notice that I do a lot of things that would likely indicate he does not have a chance in a real race with me. Then, courtesy of the kind of show that also bring Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny into a child's life, he is encouraged to feel good about his budding physical abilities. This confirms to him that he was right — anyone wearing shorts like mine has no chance in a race with someone like him.
There are a few concepts that have been thoroughly studied by social scientists that relate to my race with Ayden. The first is "bounded rationality"[5]. That is, what is rational is determined by context. Were I raised in the Artic and have never seen a cell phone, I am not stupid or irrational because I can't figure how to turn it on. If I am a 15 year old girl raised within certain Muslim sects or the Fundamentalist Mormons, I am not irrational if my most fervent desire is to marry a 60ish man who already has a dozen or more wives.
The second is feedback. Human belief is largely determined by feedback. If we have lots of feedback that supports an idea (polygamy is good; foot binding is good; self flagellation is good, especially around Easter) and none to contradict it, regardless of how bizarre the idea may seem to those who have received a different kind of feedback respecting it, we will tend to accept it. This is an important part of the boundedly rational concept, but worthy of special attention.
And so how can we expect Ayden, having never had any feedback that indicates anything except that he runs really fast, to believe differently? He is boundedly rational.
And finally, there is social mass[6]. During most of human history, if our group did not survive or if we got kicked out of it, we died. Hence, whatever seems to hold our group together and keeps us in it must be true. Our feelings of comfort and security within the group, and fear when we venture to its edges, confirm that there is something special about our group. Our pattern finding skills show us countless examples of why other groups do not measure up to ours. They dress differently, act differently, believe differently, etc. Since these things would cause difficultly within our group, they are clear signs that others do not enjoy the same exalted status as do we, etc.
As long as a child's perception remains in place, Santa is real and all races with people wearing slow shorts will be won. As that perspective gradually expands, Santa morphs into Mom and Dad in an inexplicably good mood, and races of all kinds are determined by ability instead of clothing. In fact, we relish it when the "posers" are exposed.
The expansion of adult perspective is more difficult to engineer. Adults largely control their own worlds, and are past that wonderful stage of life during which the mind is slowed down and cracked wide open so that it can learn. Adults are those beings evolution designed as doers. Learning uses so much brain power that not much is left for doing. So, the tradeoff is that each generation of children would learn and so adapt to the environment as it changed without doing much more than that, while their parents and other adults produced what was necessary to allow for this species-saving luxury. This means that the parents — the doing-instead-of-learning-adults — will be so busy doing that they cannot perceive much beyond what is required to keep their group on an even keel. And so they will be boundedly rational, shaped by their lack of feedback and inability to learn, and as a result should be expected to regularly mistake reality for whatever works to keep their world moving in its orbit.
So the next time you hear an adult (or child for that matter — it is all the same) say something that sounds profoundly irrational, like "I know that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the only true church on the face of the Earth, and that Joseph Smith restored the Gospel of Jesus Christ in its Fullness to the Earth, and that Gordon B. Hinckley is God's only true prophet on the face of the Earth today", you should think about bounded rationality.
But you only really need to remember one thing: "Those shorts are not fast".
[1] See "Pirates of the Caribbean", starring Johnny Depp.
[2] See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapeshifting. I am fascinated by the similarities between this and other mythic themes on the one hand, and what seems to come naturally to children in their imaginative play.
[3] See http://www.asics.com/.
[4] Hargreaves is a soccer player from Calgary who plays professionally in Germany, and since his parents of British, qualified to play for England's national soccer team during the last few big international tournaments, including the recently concluded World Cup.
[5] See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounded_rationality and http://mccue.cc/bob/documents/rs.denial.pdf at page 36.
[6] See http://mccue.cc/bob/documents/rs.denial.pdf, and the summary starting at page 120 in particular.