Matthew Yglesias and Sara Mead
VlogI comment.
Uh oh. I think I got a major form vs function problem here because I want to comment on the content of the post. She was great, but I am unconvinced by your feral child argument. We have basically no information on the life histories of those unfortunates and, so, can't tell whether their uhm lack of social skills is due to deprivation of human contact or vice versa. That is, there is a hypothesis that they are autistic children who were recently abandoned.
In contrast an excellent (if appalling) natural expreiment was conducted by indigenous Costa Ricans who raise(d) kids by keeping them in dark tents until they were about 2 or 3. The infants suffer almost total sensory deprivation. They end up normal. This case was studied by Jerome Kagan who is not a neoconservative and was once a psych prof at Harvard (I would guess still around when you were there).
Different cultures are very different. People are not as different as they would have to be if this baby Einstein stuff were true.
