Alison Gopnik on Childhood Learning, AI as a Cultural Technology, and Rethinking Nature vs. Nurture

<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Help us keep the conversations going in 2026. <a href= "https://mercatus.donorsupport.co/page/cowenconvos26?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=shownotes&utm_campaign=eoy26"> Donate</a> to Conversations with Tyler today.</span></p> <p class="font-claude-response-body">Alison Gopnik is both a psychologist and philosopher at Berkeley, studying how children construct theories of the world from limited data. Her central insight is that babies learn like scientists, running experiments and updating beliefs based on evidence. But Tyler wonders: are scientists actually good learners? It's a question that leads them into a wide-ranging conversation about what we've …