Was Clippy 6?

I think Clippy, the Microsoft helpful annoying animated Office assistant paperclip was about age 6.

This is an interesting TED talk from MIT's Rebecca Saxe. Researcher Rebecca Saxe describes our brains dedicated region for understanding what other people are thinking, and explains "It's not until age 7 that we get what looks more like an adult response." [Interesting note: her research is using high strength magnetic fields to slightly alter our perception of others]

Understanding what other people want is hard work—it takes us humans 7 years of life to get to the point that we understand the intentions and beliefs of others at an 'adult level'. Will we see another Clippy in the next decade?

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Information VS impulse

Because working memory and rationality share a common cortical source; the pre-frontal cortex, a mind trying to remember lots of information is less able to exert control over its impulses.

I've been listening to an audible audio book called 'How We Decide'; It's full of gems like this. Stanford Scientists discovered the above fact by asking people to memorize 7 digits, under the guise of a 'long term memory test'. The subjects would then walk down the hall and choose between decadent chocolate cake or a bowl of fruit salad.

The same experiment was repeated, but with new subjects being asked to remember a 2 digit number. The difference was striking:

• 59% of people trying to remember the 7 digits chose the cake
• But only 37% of people trying to remember the 2 digits chose the cake

Distracting the brain with a memory task made people more likely to give-in to temptation and choose the calorie dense dessert.

The substrate of reason is so limited, that a few extra digits can become an extreme handicap.

I actually don't know how this relates to the 7 ± 2 that is oft-(over) quoted, but I've never heard about this impact on our ability to mediate our emotions.

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