Right off the bat, humans are social creatures and cutting off social activity is the cruelest form of punishment, as evidenced by prisons.
An unobstructed face communicates a rich set of subtle queues and non-verbal emotions, and it’s indispensable to socializing. If you need evidence, I don’t know what to say to you other than this is self-evident to any human experiencing life among other people.
But further: why is the null hypothesis here that prolonged, universal masks wouldn’t disrupt child development?
Is it unreasonable to assume that a multiple-year long regime of obscuring the primary mode of human identity and emotion would upset such a complex system like the development and socialization of a human being?
Since when has it become normal to fiddle with major components of a complex system like society and make the burden of evidence: prove there’s harm. Humans generally screw things up in completely unexpected ways, overconfident in their own agency and supposed knowledge. This is hubris.
It’s intuitively obvious that humans are social creatures after millions of years of evolution. There’s boatloads of knowledge around child development and how crucial it is to see facial expressions. You know, the stuff around mirror neurons, etc.
But outside that common sense based in very well-understood science, there is evidence that the disruption to normal life is dropping childrens’ IQs substantially.
An unobstructed face communicates a rich set of subtle queues and non-verbal emotions, and it’s indispensable to socializing. If you need evidence, I don’t know what to say to you other than this is self-evident to any human experiencing life among other people.
If you think I’m just making this up: https://theconversation.com/face-time-heres-how-infants-lear...
But further: why is the null hypothesis here that prolonged, universal masks wouldn’t disrupt child development?
Is it unreasonable to assume that a multiple-year long regime of obscuring the primary mode of human identity and emotion would upset such a complex system like the development and socialization of a human being?
Since when has it become normal to fiddle with major components of a complex system like society and make the burden of evidence: prove there’s harm. Humans generally screw things up in completely unexpected ways, overconfident in their own agency and supposed knowledge. This is hubris.