Alison Gopnik Quotes & Sayings (Page 4)

“We learn differently as children than as adults. For grown-ups, learning a new skill is painful, attention-demanding, and slow. Children learn unconsciously and effortlessly.”

“As adults, when we attend to something in the world we are vividly conscious of that particular thing, and we shut out the surrounding world. The classic metaphor is that attention is like a spotlight, illuminating one part of the world and leaving the rest in darkness.”

“One of the things I say is from an evolutionary point of view: probably the ideal rich environment for a baby includes more mud, livestock, and relatives than most of us could tolerate nowadays.”

“What makes knowledge automatic is what gets you to Carnegie Hall - practice, practice, practice.”

“Imaginary friends are one of the weirder forms of pretend play in childhood. But the research shows that imaginary friends actually help children understand the other people around them and imagine all the many ways that people could be.”

“Like most parents, I think, my children have been the source of some of my most intense joys and despairs, my deepest moral dilemmas and greatest moral achievements.”

“If you wanted to design a robot that could learn as well as it possibly could, you might end up with something that looked a lot like a 3-year-old.”

“The radio was an improvement on the telegraph but it didn't have the same exponential, transformative effect.”

“Each new generation of children grows up in the new environment its parents have created, and each generation of brains becomes wired in a different way. The human mind can change radically in just a few generations.”

“Culture is our nature, and the ability to learn and change is our most important and fundamental instinct.”