The loop of putting out actions and evaluating the feedback is the key to understanding not just motor babbling but also social babbling. Consider how you learned (and continue to learn) communication with other people. You constantly put social actions into the world, assess the feedback, and adjust. We rove the space of possibilities, trying out

Thinking, then, is a kind of download of exchanges with other people. And of course the process can happen in reverse, when an internal exchange becomes the template for an interaction. The essential point is that there is an ongoing interaction between the interpersonal (the self and the other) and the intrapersonal (within the self).

In a pair, there’s always one speaker and one listener. A hundred percent of the response to what’s just been said is on the shoulders of the other person. A pair does not create enough diversity of opinion for the kind of collaboration you need.

linear languages, like English, permit us to talk about the loop only one step at a time,