Comment by persnickety

Comment by persnickety 3 days ago

2 replies

The crackers question changes from amount to fairness. It's possible that the kid uses a different rule to evaluate it. Like "a small person needs small portions" or some variation.

I'd be convinced that the kid doesn't get it if they swapped crackers and then it stopped being fair.

alphazard 3 days ago

> It's possible that the kid uses a different rule to evaluate it. Like "a small person needs small portions" or some variation.

Fair enough. It's definitely missing the opposing case where 1 graham cracker each is split on only one side and therefore the situation goes from fair to unfair, even though it's the same amount of graham cracker.

> I'd be convinced that the kid doesn't get it if they swapped crackers and then it stopped being fair.

I wouldn't count on that. I think the kid (and most adults) would claim it's fair if they thought they could get away with it. The deep intuition for "fair" that I expect from children would be derived from past experience negotiating with peers, not from any kind of moral theory.

directevolve 3 days ago

The kid has the same portion of cracker before and after she splits it, though.