Ana went to a birthday party today.

[conuly]

Now, Jenn didn't want to bring Evangeline, so I ended up being the one to drop Ana off. (And I do mean "drop off". The woman was hedging trying to get me to stay to help "supervise" to which I said a. she's seven! b. she's seven! I'm sure she'll be fine! and finally c. actually, I just kinda hate people, but here's my sister's number!) Luckily, it happened that somebody there lives a block away from us, so I imposed upon her to drive Ana home afterward because the bus is a bitch on a Sunday. (This woman also doesn't seem to have stayed. She didn't say anything to the hostess, though, which maybe is the trick? Or maybe she came back after I left?)

Now, we had to walk a long way to get to the bus to this kid's house. (This is because I went the long way to get to that bus, because I wanted to get Sri Lankan food to fortify me. We walked along Jersey Street. We didn't get murdered. I'm sure some people who think folks get killed there every day will be disappointed to hear this, but actually, there have only been three murders there in the past decade, all of which were family affairs. You don't, as my sister once noted, open up the paper to read "Another ten shot dead on Jersey Street!", but it can be hard to convince some people. If you have no idea, this is because you don't live on Staten Island.)

And as we were walking, Ana and I talked about vampires. Ana was DRESSED as a vampire. It was a costume party.

I said something about what she'd do if she met a real vampire, and she asserted that vampires are not real.

Me: How do you know?
Ana: Because vampires are monsters, and monsters aren't real.
Me: Ana, that's a bit of a circular argument there. You haven't proven anything. How do you know monsters aren't real?
Ana: Well, monsters are real, in a way, but not like monsters with lots of arms and ten eyes and scary like that, so vampires aren't real.
Me: Ana, you're still assuming the premise! How can you prove vampires aren't real?
Ana: Because everybody says vampires aren't real!
Me: But everybody could be wrong, you can't just-
Ana: And MOMMY says vampires aren't real, and she should know!
Me: Appealing to authority? Mommies make mistakes. That's not proof.
Ana: And I know people die, and I know they don't die from vampires, they die from being sick or hurt. Like Grandma's dog died, and it wasn't a VAMPIRE, she was just OLD.
Me: So just because you've never seen a vampire attack, you don't think vampires are real?
Ana: Right.
Me: But what if you saw somebody who had been killed by vampires?
Ana: Well, then I'd think they were real. But they're not.
Me: That makes sense. But just so you know, it's still not proof. You have reasonable doubt of vampires, but you can't prove they don't exist. It's really hard to prove something doesn't exist.
Ana: Enough! Don't talk about what you believe in!
Me: Actually, I don't think vampires are real :)
Ana: Well, don't talk about what you don't believe!
Me: Uh... I can't talk about what I think is real, OR about what I think isn't real?
Ana: Right!
Me: Well, what the heck is left? Schrodinger? Is this Schrodinger's conversation, it's neither real or unreal?
Ana: Uh-huh! (Yes, that went over her head, but she was busy trying to not lose her shoes.)

*sighs*

Sooner or later she's going to have to learn a little bit more logic instead of non-logic. Maybe it's something you grow into?

Comments

[feebeeglee.livejournal.com]

She's so much further along already than 98% of the freshman logic students I had.

[conuly]

That's terrifying, just so you know.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it is. A book you would probably find interesting is Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast: The Evolutionary Origins of Belief (http://www.amazon.com/Six-Impossible-Things-Before-Breakfast/dp/0393332039/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1254156472&sr=1-1).

Actually, her arguments were pretty damn good for a 7-year-old:

1. Vampires don't exist because they are members of a class of being generally considered to be mythical or fictional.

2. Some members of that class do exist in real life, but most are improbable on the face of it, and that includes vampires.

3. Societal consensus says they don't exist.

4. MOMMY, the Ultimate Authority, says they don't exist. (Note that evolution has arranged matters so that you will not succeed in convincing a child of her age to believe that Mommy is not the Ultimate Authority. The answer to "Mommies make mistakes: is "Not my Mommy", and there the defense rests, unbudging.)

5. She has never heard of any evidence to contradict the premise that they don't exist.

6. She is willing to reconsider if she does see such evidence, but she doesn't expect to see it.

7. She doesn't wish to talk about personal beliefs she finds nonsensical and disturbing.

8. She doesn't wish to be 'shined on' by devil's-advocate logic-games that she can't possibly win because she's seven and you're grown up.

9. It was Schroedinger's Conversation, and she went with the only logical solution; i.e. refuse to be trapped in the box in the first place.

... yeah, I'd say the girlie won that one on points, even though she was too young to scholar's-mate your first "How do you know?" with "I don't know, but there's no good reason to think they do, and lots of good reasons to think they don't." That does appear to have been the basis of her argument, though, and it is a logical one.

It'll probably be a couple of years before she's ready to explore the differences between knowing, believing, assuming and surmising. At seven, 'knowledge' and 'belief' are pretty-much interchangeable, because in order to see the difference requires a more sophisticated level of self-reflection: the ability to grasp that "I think some things are true/not true even though I have no way to verify them", and what the heck does verification comprise anyway, and so on.

Ya can't refute solipsism either, and the assertion that "nobody believes it" is not true, but believing in it gets a person nowhere: whether or not this world is 'real', it's the one you've got to live in.

As it happens, vampires are real. At least, they call themselves vampires, they believe themselves to be vampires, apparently in all sincerity, and they drink human blood - usually, but not always, consensually. This is probably not information a 7-year-old needs to have; nor is she ready to sort out the whole life-imitates-art issue of people who attempt to embody mythic archetypes in their real lives, but... I'm just saying.

In fact, living where you do, there's probably at least one vampire within walking distance, probably more.

[conuly]

Just to be clear, she was mostly giggling and enjoying the discussion, up until the end. And when she said quit it, we did quit it. Driving small children to tears is never my intent.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know, and it's good to stretch their little brains with some more complex topics than they usually have to think about. She can obviously hold her own in a logical debate more articulately than most kids her age; equally obviously, she knows when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em.

My girlie was about that age when Jurassic Park came out and scared the heck out of her (she shouldn't have seen it at all, but her father had no sense about such things) so I had to engage in interminable discussions of What To Do If Tyranno Comes.

There was no convincing her that Tyranno was never, never coming because Tyranno is extinct as hell and cannot be revived from DNA in fossilized mosquitos. The whole thing came under the heading of "There's no such thing as AAAAAAA!!!!!" in her mind, because hadn't she seen Tyranno reborn from a dead mosquito, and how did I KNOW it couldn't happen, and there was no way to explain how I knew because she didn't yet have enough science to understand the explanation.

Therefore I abandoned logic and went with violence instead: "If Tyranno comes, I will get into the car, drive straight at him at high speed and crash right into his knee. That'll break it and knock him down, so he can't chase us; then we'll call 911 and the Army will come take him away with helicopters and big nets." This reassured her - always good to know that Mama has a contingency plan - but, soft-hearted animal-lover that she is, then I had to reassure her that the vets at the zoo (well duh, where else?) would, of course, fix poor Tyranno's broken knee, under extremely heavy sedation no doubt. (Tyranno, not the vets, silly. Although I bet they'd want at least a drink afterward!)

Anyway, the logic-circuits don't really start lighting up till around age 9 or 10, and until they do, as Spock once said, "Logic is a little bird chirping in a meadow. Logic is a wreath of pretty flowers that smell bad."

[conuly]

My girlie was about that age when Jurassic Park came out and scared the heck out of her (she shouldn't have seen it at all, but her father had no sense about such things) so I had to engage in interminable discussions of What To Do If Tyranno Comes.

When my mother was young, her baby brother was scared of the lion. (Don't ask what lion, nobody knew.)

When logic didn't work (well, he was THREE), they finally resorted to the following bedtime routine:

Every day, they'd troop into his room and then around the house banging drums and yelling to scare the lion. When they'd succeeded in chasing the lion into the bathroom, they'd lock the door. And then her brother could go to bed.

There's a time and a place for just giving in.

[pne.livejournal.com]

Does the first word of Staten Island really rhyme with "batten"?

I thought it had the vowel of "state" all this time. (So, kind of like the middle word of "I'm just statin' my point".)

[redbird]

Yes, it's stat, as in "give me that retractor, stat!"

[pne.livejournal.com]

A slightly dangerous comparison given that I've never *heard* "stat", so I could have a wrong pronunciation in my head for that, too.

But despite the vagaries of English spelling, I feel pretty confident that "stat" rhymes with, say, "flat cat sat mat rat".

Er, in other words: thank you for the confirmation!

[conuly]

Oh yes. And do you know why it's called Staten Island?

[pne.livejournal.com]

No - why?

[conuly]

Well, you see, Henry Hudson was sailing in his ship, and when he saw it he said "Is DAT an ISLAND?"

:P

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

AAAAGGGHHH!!!

*whacks you with the traditional Rubber Chicken*

Y'know how Worcestershire sauce got its name? The first time it was served, the guests were so thrilled by it, everybody kept asking "Wot's dis here sauce?"

*ducking, grinning and running before I get whacked with the traditional Rubber Chicken my ownself."