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Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Babies and Bunnies: A Caution About Evo-Psych - Less Wrong
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The site includes the cutest images. The cuteness response can be set off strongly by a cute creature associating with human stuff or (just a few of them) seeming to do a distinctively human gesture. Any theories about what's going on there?
It might be an awful experiment to perform, but if we can find a parent with a newborn child and sufficient self-honesty to be trustworthy, we can ask them whether or not, in all honesty, their own baby is cuter than those images, which were cute enough to make my head explode into candy.
If a trustworthy self-honest rationalist parent looks at that and says "yes, my baby is cuter"... I'd have to say that explains a lot about parents and a lot about the continued survival of the human species.
What would be even more interesting would be to do a time-series. When do human infants have peak cuteness?
As a fairly observant and (as far as I can tell) realistic parent, I have noticed that both of my children have (up to their current ages of four years and 19 months) had several peak periods for cuteness. So far they have had peaks centred at the same ages: 5 months, 15 months and (oldest only so far) 3 years.
This is not to say that they are not cute at any other ages, but at these ages they have been radiantly, eye-wateringly cute.
My baby boy was at or near the top of all the images for cuteness for about 1 year. Or I would have said so at the time.