This discussion highlights why these questions are so difficult and frightening: ethics prevents good science. Randomly sample a bunch of kids, hook them all u

This discussion highlights why these questions are so difficult and frightening: ethics prevents good science. Randomly sample a bunch of kids, hook them all up to monitoring devices, put them in different schools and societies that involve transitions into adulthood at different rates and onsets, set up a control group (Lord of the Flies setup), do the longitudinal study, and write it up. An associate professor and his 5 grad students would get a bunch of solid papers out of it. Theorists would have fun defining "optimality" in this context (to be fair, the philosophers have been gnawing at it for a while..) This is unethical .. right? Then, you have to ask yourself: wouldn't it be more ethical to do the study, figure out how best to raise kids, and let all human young for posterity (or at least 'til the results are invalidated) benefit from the wisdom? Hmm.. :)