The Hand Licking Incident • Hacker News Board

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#151

Post by benj111 » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 9:15 AM UTC

dfgert wrote: post #57

cryptonector wrote: post #47

It's so easy for parents (and teachers) to misdiagnose strange child behaviors. TFA is a wonderful example. Parents need to watch for things like blood sugar problems, autism (e.g., failure to make eye contact), skin problems, mild food allergies (why does the kid not like _fill in the blank_, maybe it's because it tastes "spicy" to them), and much else. Young children will not figure these things out by themselves.…

I don't understand when will medicine recognize the cause of all health complications instead of trying to individually path each and every problem. People can then start correct precautionary measures. All health issues that we see on rise today were virtually absent in pre-industrial era and are directly result of our newly adopted habits and environment. We are paying so much of cost to live in a "modern" world.

We already know the causes and cures for most common ailments. People aren't exactly queuing up to do more exercise, eat healthily etc, etc.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#152

Post by dri_ft » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 9:16 AM UTC

random314 wrote: post #49

georgebarnett wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If violence worked, the drug war would be over because people would not take drugs. .. and there would be no crime and police would have only one encounter with each person. Clearly this isn’t true, so it suggests there was an alternative to violence that could have been applied in your youth.

You receive the special hacker news award for shittiest extrapolation - 2019.

And it's only January!

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#153

Post by adrianN » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 9:16 AM UTC

manmal wrote: post #128

Baeocystin wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plug covers are easily and rapidly removed by curious children, and are potentially a choking hazard. Tamper-resistant receptacles, however, do seem to provide a real increase in safety. FWIW. https://www.esfi.org/resource/how-protected-are-children-fro... (These did not exist when I was a child, but had they been available, I'm sure my parents would have used them.) >I listened because why wouldn't I? So did I, abou…

You are arguing that the spanking AFTER you tampered with a wire saved you. First, you could have died before the spanking. Punishment after the fact never rights a done wrong. Second, at the age of 4, if your parents had just sat down with you and told you that you can die from electric shock, don't you think that would have made a lasting impression either?

I wouldn't trust a four year old to understand what death means.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#154

Post by benj111 » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 9:21 AM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #54

Baeocystin wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh... I can count on a shop teacher's hand the number of times I was actually spanked or swatted when I was a kid, but after talking to my Mom about it, I think she made the right choice the times she did. To give a specific example, once was when I was about five, I had just learned about electromagnets, and was actively trying to shove bare wire into an outlet. Yes, the spanking did make me a little afraid of pokin…

> But appropriately, rarely applied, I can say with certainty it worked for me. No, you can't. Maybe it did, but you don't know how you'd acted if they'd just talked to you instead. It's easy to think we can untangle how a given event shaped us, but we really are horribly bad at it. It ignores that people who never were spanked regularly can tell similar stories about just having been talked to (that's how I learned…

My 2 year old announces that the oven is hot, then goes up to touch it to confirm, regardless of me explaining it to him.

I've never spanked him, I wouldn't be confident of him understanding a danger I had explained to him though.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#155

Post by DanBC » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 9:23 AM UTC

I don't understand why this example of abusive and poor parenting has got so many upvotes.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#156

Post by amelius » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 9:32 AM UTC

fzeroracer wrote: post #142

exolymph wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a manifestation of Chesterton's Fence! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence

This is also, as it turns out, one of the most pertinent things a developer should be considering at all times. Sometimes we may get a bit too refactor-happy, not seeing the use behind a certain fix, a line of code or a strange function. Our first instinct isn't to understand it, but to tear it down, gleefully assuming that it's useless.

Proper testing procedures will catch it, though.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#157

Post by Tempest1981 » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 9:33 AM UTC

My favorite is when non-parents tell parents, "why don't you tell your child to stop doing that?"

If only it were that simple.

Or "explain that it's for their own good". Sure, logic should work.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#158

Post by benj111 » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 9:36 AM UTC

icu wrote: post #53

markdown wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It never ceases to amaze me how many authority figures think violence “fixes” a behaviour I think it's safe to assume that most humans currently alive were spanked as children and most parents alive today spank their children. If that assumption is true, than it's not amazing... it's just the norm.

In the UK it is actually illegal to smack your kid... so it's not like corporal punishment is still the norm now. There is also a large portion of parents who have rejected corporal punishment and opted for 'peaceful parenting' techniques from a moralistic perspective based on the non-aggression principle. Even if you don't agree on moral grounds there have been loads of research papers written on this topic. The pap…

Smacking (not hitting) is legal in England but not Wales or Scotland.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families...

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#159

Post by RobertoG » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 9:37 AM UTC

rukuu001 wrote: post #141

I love this story. Little kid logic is so foreign to me now it makes me a little sad. Another example - we have our nephew stay over sometimes. One night, he did not, absolutely NOT want to go into the room he sleeps in. We couldn't work it out. He slept there a bunch of other times, no problem. Tried picking him up to carry him in, but no, he screamed like crazy. After a long, long time, he settled enough to tell us…

>>"Little kid logic is so foreign to me now it makes me a little sad."

Well, you have to admit that your nephew logic was flawless.

As him, you wouldn't go into your room if you though there is a one meter frog waiting for you.

His priors were weird, but that's to be expected with little experience of the world.

Re: The Hand Licking Incident

#160

Post by jstanley » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 9:39 AM UTC

tigershark wrote: post #140

georgebarnett wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If violence worked, the drug war would be over because people would not take drugs. .. and there would be no crime and police would have only one encounter with each person. Clearly this isn’t true, so it suggests there was an alternative to violence that could have been applied in your youth.

So do you think that if from today all the crimes were depenalised there would be no whatsoever increase in thefts, assaults, murders and all the other crimes? I think that instead we would see a massive increase.

I don't think there would be a very big increase.

Most people just don't want to steal, assault, murder, etc. because of their own morality, not because of the law.