I was mostly being humorous, but I was doing it in a way that I thought might have some connection to reality, based on stories I've heard about friends' children (of widely varying age).
There's the child who talked to his mum on the phone and hadn't grasped the idea that when he pointed at something at his end and said "it looks like that, mummy" she couldn't see what he could see. Then there's the child who said it wasn't fair mummy because she had to get her own stuff ready for school every day and mummy never got it ready for her, which could conceivably have been conscious selfishness but I prefer to interpret it as an understanding of the concept of fair division of labour without a corresponding understanding of the fact that mummy also has to do a hell of a lot of her own work that the child (perhaps wilfully) isn't seeing.
So my one-line comment at the top of this thread was intended to suggest that the child thought it would be a fair division of labour if the child made the effort to avoid stationary objects and moving objects made the effort to avoid the child (and, like the second example above, didn't consider that the moving objects had other stuff of their own to do and the labour to be divided did not solely consist of stopping things crashing into that particular child), and also that the child hadn't realised that even if this were the case the moving people would need to notice the child there before they could make the effort to avoid the collision (like the first example above, failing to draw the distinction between what they can see and what other people can see).
It wasn't intended as a serious theory (since I was consciously conflating behaviour of very differently aged children), but it was vaguely intended to bear enough relation to actual childish thought-errors that parents reading it might grin ruefully.
But I was a bit drunk last night, and a bit lazy, and half of the above thought process happened in my subconscious without bothering to reveal its working to my conscious mind, so I didn't really communicate any of that very effectively :-)
I was mostly being humorous, but I was doing it in a way that I thought might have some connection to reality, based on stories I've heard about friends' children (of widely varying age).
LOL, well described, that's how so often I say something, sometimes two often, but can find it difficult to convey.
I would have guessed that children observe moving objects generally *do* miss them -- eg. legs conveniently go round them, etc, and now expect that (not yet able to spot the exceptions of when the leg's teleoperator didn't see them, nor realising that it might be nice to take some of the responsibility).
didn't they do some experiments with ... smarties? and the way that the kid's perceptions of what was in /their/ smartie tube affected what they believed about what was in everyone else's smartie tube, and how that changed with age? but I can't remember any details.
I cycled into a dog once (fortunately not hard. it ran off again apparently unhurt) when it failed to get out of my way as I was expecting it to. The two ladies walking it didn't seem remotely bothered.
This one? (Just googled for "smartie" and "experiment".) Apparently a 3-year-old, after finding out that a Smarties tube actually contains pencils, will immediately believe that his mother also knows it contains pencils. Whereas a 6-year-old will be able to comprehend the concept that he might know something his mother doesn't, and will therefore realise that unless his mother has also checked carefully she will still think the tube contains Smarties.
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There's the child who talked to his mum on the phone and hadn't grasped the idea that when he pointed at something at his end and said "it looks like that, mummy" she couldn't see what he could see. Then there's the child who said it wasn't fair mummy because she had to get her own stuff ready for school every day and mummy never got it ready for her, which could conceivably have been conscious selfishness but I prefer to interpret it as an understanding of the concept of fair division of labour without a corresponding understanding of the fact that mummy also has to do a hell of a lot of her own work that the child (perhaps wilfully) isn't seeing.
So my one-line comment at the top of this thread was intended to suggest that the child thought it would be a fair division of labour if the child made the effort to avoid stationary objects and moving objects made the effort to avoid the child (and, like the second example above, didn't consider that the moving objects had other stuff of their own to do and the labour to be divided did not solely consist of stopping things crashing into that particular child), and also that the child hadn't realised that even if this were the case the moving people would need to notice the child there before they could make the effort to avoid the collision (like the first example above, failing to draw the distinction between what they can see and what other people can see).
It wasn't intended as a serious theory (since I was consciously conflating behaviour of very differently aged children), but it was vaguely intended to bear enough relation to actual childish thought-errors that parents reading it might grin ruefully.
But I was a bit drunk last night, and a bit lazy, and half of the above thought process happened in my subconscious without bothering to reveal its working to my conscious mind, so I didn't really communicate any of that very effectively :-)
But this kind of thing *is* fascinating. I love the way that all the bits of mental kit jumble themselves into place and start producing Thought...
LOL, well described, that's how so often I say something, sometimes two often, but can find it difficult to convey.
I would have guessed that children observe moving objects generally *do* miss them -- eg. legs conveniently go round them, etc, and now expect that (not yet able to spot the exceptions of when the leg's teleoperator didn't see them, nor realising that it might be nice to take some of the responsibility).
I cycled into a dog once (fortunately not hard. it ran off again apparently unhurt) when it failed to get out of my way as I was expecting it to. The two ladies walking it didn't seem remotely bothered.