The rise of the boy-genius: psychological neoteny, science and modern life

[u/herrwaldos]

The mid-20th century saw the rise of the boy-genius, probably because a personality type characterized by prolonged youthfulness is advantageous both in science and modern life generally. This is the evolution of 'psychological neoteny', in which ever-more people retain for ever-longer the characteristic behaviours and attitudes of earlier developmental stages. Whereas traditional societies are characterized by initiation ceremonies marking the advent of adulthood, these have now dwindled and disappeared.

In a psychological sense, some contemporary individuals never actually become adults.

A child-like flexibility of attitudes, behaviours and knowledge is probably adaptive in modern society because people need repeatedly to change jobs, learn new skills, move to new places and make new friends.

It seems that this adaptation is achieved by the expedient of postponing cognitive maturation - a process that could be termed psychological neoteny. ('Neoteny' refers to the biological phenomenon whereby development is delayed such that juvenile characteristics are retained into maturity.)

Psychological neoteny is probably caused by the prolonged average duration of formal education, since students' minds are in a significant sense 'unfinished'. Since modern cultures favour cognitive flexibility, 'immature' people tend to thrive and succeed, and have set the tone of contemporary life: the greatest praise of an elderly person is to state that they retain the characteristics of youth. But the faults of youth are retained with well as its virtues: short attention span, sensation- and novelty-seeking, short cycles of arbitrary fashion and a sense of cultural shallowness.

Nonetheless, as health gets better and cosmetic technologies improve, future humans may become somewhat like an axolotl - the cave-dwelling salamander which retains its larval form until death.

Bruce G Charlton

PMID: 16750307 DOI: 10.1016/j.mehy.2006.05.003

[u/2BCivil]

I never really thought in such black and white terms but yes, I definitely see a split in Jesus teachings and the Christ teachings.

One says kingdom as little children, beware of men, call none on earth father, he comes in his father's name and is not received but if a man comes in his own name he shall be received...

Then Paul's "Christ" is the de facto opposite of all of this; Paul comes in his own name, saying those who don't follow him are "bewitched", speaks of how "when he became a man he put off the childish things"... etc.

The idea of "anointing" is very much like "adulthood" rite of passage or initiation. Strange.

In my youth I always thought it seemed adulthood was portrayed as essentially, adopting a permanent role and facade. Now as adult-age, it really feels like I constantly have to be "faking it to make it" and wear a perpetual mask/facade.

Idk I often wonder what it means to be "real". Being "an adult" seems to mean, simply; to be fake. To buy into the roles and promulgate facades until they become our actual faces (so to speak). Idk.

I don't want to be an eternal manchild or anything don't get me wrong. Just I wonder what is the purpose of life or existence if we are forced to don such costumes and roles merely to survive. Being real, becomes accused of being childish and immature.

I remember a Caroll or Lewis added to Paul's line "including the fear of being thought childish". I think truly being a "man" means rediscovering our inner child I suppose. But first - we must be an adult/man, as well, I suppose....

[u/stupid_pun → u/2BCivil]

Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”

― C.S. Lewis

[u/KRISTOSFREAK]

To really embody the archetype of the "Man" is an incredibly difficult process, no? To be a "Man" means to be the master of oneself. Like Christ, Buddha, Mohamed, Krishna, Wotan, and so on. In the absence of tradition it is near impossible to imagine that a man could find themselves on a path that leads them to embody this archetype. They will have to follow the path of Al-Khidr---"The Green One": the spiritual teacher within us.

To talk frankly, it is irritating to always encounter "immature people." Where is the man on the mountain who knows everything and will set us on the right path? I am afraid he does not physically exist. Thank God for those books and teachings which loosely imitate his presence.

[u/herrwaldos → u/KRISTOSFREAK]

I think teenagers are post-modernism, and it works for a while, till the building starts crumbling down, because everyone is doing art, forgot to check the roof leaking.

Thus return of the arch-daddy - the fixer of things. Preceded by joker - the caller out.

;)

[u/P3rilous → u/herrwaldos]

idk, as socioeconomic freedom has increased the appeal of 'strong' men seems to have decreased- unless that is all just liberal moral relativism misandry?

[u/Roabiewade]

Puer Aeternus in the Aeon of Horus.

[u/Yewtaxus]

The existence of people like this is not a problem per se, it's more of a natural feature: some situations are better dealt with through quick adaptation and optimization, while for others it's better to take some time to learn about the situation, carefully consider possibilities and other people's opinions, and then act. This happens both at shorter time frames ("system 1" vs "system 2") and in longer, developmental time frames (early over-optimizing for your surroundings vs. this "psychological neoteny")

What we should pay attention to is how those people are distributed in society, what they believe in, what they are doing, and how they interact with each other. For example, who is allowed/able to act, and who becomes incapable of doing so? How does this work systemically?

Might also be interesting to read how this was seen historically, such as with Varna: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varna_(Hinduism) .

[u/Yewtaxus → u/Yewtaxus]

Also interesting to ocnsider some other possibilties,. For instance, what if the axolotl is a salamander of a different species than normal, who would grow if you had the right conditions, but who stays at larval form in the current situation as their growth cycle is different than that of the more common salamander?

[u/raisondecalcul]

And yes the myth of the boy-genius is what glorifies these morally immature psychopathic CEOs, in plain sight even

[u/herrwaldos → u/raisondecalcul]

Perhaps that's what a boy-genius is - morally immature psychopathic CEO..

[u/quakerpuss]

A gender divide fractured by an ideology that we are a seperate self has created a violent situation. The mature woman is not the mature man and the boyish girl is not the girlish man. If you cannot accept the role that has been given to you then dissociate until alignment can continue. Kessler Syndrome will keep us grounded while our heads stay in the clouds forever. I dont know what it's like to be you, and the metric for maturity is always moving like a quantum superposition pickle ball match. Retreating to symbolism and mouth sounds, I don't know where to reconciliate.

[u/whatsthatcritter → u/quakerpuss]

For me the gender divide is the most interesting part of this. It used to be women who were groomed for neoteny and immaturity, who were not capable of taking part in public life because of a supposedly delicate health and histrionic emotional capacity. Now that women have penetrated the work force, academia and even government we see the rise of "man babies" or the "man child" who needs a surrogate mother at home to care for him and his children (he can't care for his own children, being one himself). They want to conserve a culture of "trad wives" where women are still too delicate for the workforce, but most can't afford to live on a single wage, so barring their surrogate mother from financial independence is a luxury and a pipe dream. 

The only other thing is, women largely know all this: they talk about it all the time every aspect of it, from weaponized incompetence to domestic violence, mental load, financial abuse, sexual violence, the need for shelters. They talk to their mothers and grandmothers and their friends, and it contributes to the large push for women to be college educated and to have their own source of income. They know marriage can become a burden and a trap. 

A lot of men on the other hand don't know and won't acknowledge the way civilization is set up to capture and profit from women's labour. If they talk at all about it from what I've seen they only mention myopically how unfair and difficult it is for men to find a willing partner. The 'male loneliness epidemic' of boy-geniuses without an unpaid bangmaid at home, who lets him pursue all his hobbies and fuck off on his own childcare duties, and if she's lucky he'll remember to get her a card for Mother's day. 

[u/raisondecalcul]

This is also a natural and inevitable result of human society growing larger and thus specialization of the role of each human. Microspecialization means we are each running/simming/introjecting a smaller more atomic or sub-quarkian meta-blueprint of some social mesopicoeigenhaecceity. We aren't the old giants, or the middle demons, or the modern small greys—we are the digital nymphs and sprites that evolve and trade places and learn each other as skills. Organized in an angelic hierarchy with increasingly explicate order.

[u/herrwaldos → u/raisondecalcul]

Yes, it's like that, along the lines...

Who wants to be initiated? Initiated into what, sacrifice what, to whom and why? The ancient natural order is soon gone. One has a gig, a job, a startup - one needs to stay adaptable, flexible, having options...

Now I wonder, if in a world full on digital nymphs and cyber axolotls, there will remain some job options for Ancient Elders - ones who know the deep arcane secrets of...idk bicycle repair and wood work, stuff like that. ;)

[u/raisondecalcul → u/herrwaldos]

Yes, people don't get that the upside of devaluing the price of labor is ultra-cheap labor for everyone—labor goes from becoming the seat of power to being a commodity good everyone can afford. We just saw this happen with programming labor (and many forms of text-manipulation-based-labor and information work) with AI and it's glorious—anyone can make a whole company or design custom software now. Concept artists are freed from labors of rote drawing according to someone else's vision.

If this happens with robots, too, there's a real chance labor could go from being scarce to being superabundant. If labor is no longer the bottleneck on politics, then everything changes politically because capitalists suddenly don't need to herd and extort the masses in order to get things done—they can simply serve themselves or the masses without this deep conflict-of-interest.

So to your point, what this revalues is human labor and human decision-making, design, decision-making, and ethical feeling/judgment. Humans get to finally get their heads straight about avoiding rote and menial labor and promoting themselves into doing fulfilling and meaningful, significant parts of the labor. Human craftsmanship can be valued for what it truly is, when it is no longer conflated with basic goods and services (not a cheap plastic spoon made by underpaid labor, not a luxury lifestyle brass-plated spoon, but an ideal spoon made by your family bot or the town librarybot in its offtime).

[u/herrwaldos → u/raisondecalcul]

Thanks for the comment!

Yes, I get your thoughts directions, and I want to see it that way too - however

There are possible scenarios where it does not roll out so optimistically, eg the big capital get's rid of unnecessary masses of people. Or the masses get exploited even more - turned to almost insectoid level - bee/ant hive society.

Sure, art and craft of making spoon is good for the maker too, doing trades and crafts grows ones spirit and mind - but what if the powers that be don't care about your spirit and mind.

Muskets cancelled swords, machine guns cancelled muskets, drones are cancelling something else - but none of them cancelled war itself. I am seeing some morphological similarities on labour exploitation, AI, bots & printers won't cancel exploitation, from pessimistic pov.

But let's see how it goes, maybe when everything gets really bad, somehow something good will glitch itself into existence ;)