[Razengan]

> He has made several phonemes that aren’t in the language we speak at home.

No I mean absolutely zero contact with or help from modern (say since the last 10,000 years) human civilization.

I mean literally giving birth in a forest and then raising the baby there without ever speaking a word around it or showing it any tools etc.

(this assumes that it will survive to 1-2 years old without any fatal sickness etc. but let's say that the mother/parents will get just enough "outside" help to make sure it does, but the baby itself is not to come in contact with any tech or language)

[hmm37]

I'm pretty sure there were children where the parents basically locked them in cages or chained them to a post in the basement, where they had almost no social contact, etc. And in these cases they were considered effectively mentally disabled by the time they were rescued.

[throwaway173738]

That’s different. He’s not saying to totally isolate the child, but that the child is born to modern humans without any language or culture or knowledge but who live in a wilderness. So not a place of deprivation but a place of danger and exploration. I would argue that kids are wired to explore, and that the parents would do their best to protect the child. It’s kind of a useless thought experiment because our lineages stretch back unbroken to the beginning of life, and that includes culture and transmitted knowledge.