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Lies We Tell Kids

paulgraham.com

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Re: Lies We Tell Kids

#141

Post by te_platt »

As a parent I have found myself lying to my kids exactly as layed out in this essay. Mostly along the lines of protections. I just have a couple of specific dissagreements.

Sex,

Having a soon to be 14 year old daughter this section hit close to home. My wife and I haven't told her lies about sex but we have certainly held back some things. Pregnancy and STD are important topics to understand but even more so are the emotional aspects. Sex can be a powerful binding and richly rewarding part of a relationship but only so far as each partner treats it with the appropriate respect. You may have casual sex but it comes at the cost of less meaning for sex in a committed relationship. I don't want her having sex now not because it may cloud her judgement but because I want her to be able to have something much better in the future.

Swearing,

Minor point. I tell my kids not to swear (and don't hardly swear myself) for the same reason I don't let them track mud in the house. I just think it's ugly. I hope that doesn't set me off as less educated.

Death,

There is too much to talk about in this kind of forum. I just wanted to note that talking about religion is far less controversial than talking about parenting.

Re: Lies We Tell Kids

#142

Post by j2d2 »

pchristensen wrote: post #129
j2d2 wrote: post #102

When I was younger my Dad used to tell me roadkill was just sleeping. I remember accepting this for a while. One day, my Mom was driving behind someone who ran over a cat. The cat thrashed around in the road for a long time until it finally laid down, breathing very hard. My Mom told me to stay in the car and told me explicitly "you don't want to see what this cat goes through right now." I sat and contemplated what…

That's a key reason for many "lies" told to kids - let them deal with it when they're ready.

Precisely the point of the story. :)

Re: Lies We Tell Kids

#143

Post by gscott »

I am not sure if letting the parents of children explain sex to there children instead of myself (say these were your kids) would be a lie.

If your kids came up to me on the street and were to ask me questions about sex and I tell them anal sex is 'the best'... is that what you want me to tell your kids? Or maybe I should not discuss sex with your kids at all and let you, the parent do so.

While I respect the author, you just can't write something like this and pass it by parents of children. When you have a child and say you are in favor of Gay Sex & Marriage and are an Athiest you want to be able to help your child reason through these things and whatever answer they decide to pick is fine, but if you don't have a chance to at least have a real discussion about it before they make a decision is disappointing.

Re: Lies We Tell Kids

#144

Post by astine »

pg wrote: post #123
astine wrote: post #22

Does it count as a 'lie' if it is believed by the parent? The reason that parents don't want kids to swear is because they genuinely believe that it is wrong for some reason. The don't know the reason themselves, and so break the rule and become hypocrites, but they still believe that it is wrong and want their children to do better than they did. With regard to group identity (and religion,) most parents actually ad…

Does it count as a 'lie' if it is believed by the parent? There are senses of the word that include that, but I meant mostly things parents say knowing they're false, or at least that they'd admit were false if questioned.

Thanks for the clarification.

It seems to me then, that some of the situations that you describe are more often not lies but situations where parent actually believes it himself.

Re: Lies We Tell Kids

#145

Post by hugh »

greendestiny wrote: post #66
astine wrote: post #22

Does it count as a 'lie' if it is believed by the parent? The reason that parents don't want kids to swear is because they genuinely believe that it is wrong for some reason. The don't know the reason themselves, and so break the rule and become hypocrites, but they still believe that it is wrong and want their children to do better than they did. With regard to group identity (and religion,) most parents actually ad…

I don't know that I've ever read a really good account of the hows and whys of swearing. It seems to me the idea that we're mistaken that swear words are taboo completely misses the fact that we defined these words as taboo to start with. I think restricting children from swearing is in part to give more power to swear words, because as adults we find it useful to have these powerful words. Teaching children that swe…

Swear words seem to be such a necessary part of language that I'm pretty sure new ones would arise if we ever completely legitimised the old ones. When you wake up at 2 am and discover that your balcony is on fire(^), it's nice to know that your language has a word set aside specifically for situations like that.

In the last few decades, it seems that the C-word has become more taboo even as the F-word has become less so, thanks to the efforts of feminists who like to bitch about it. (Come to think of it, "bitch" seems to have got slightly more taboo during my lifetime as well, for similar reasons.) And then there's a whole new class of newly-taboo words like the N-word -- admittedly nobody shouts that word when they hit their finger with a hammer just yet, but perhaps they will in the future.

(^) That happened to me the other week. I can't remember exactly what I said, but it was neither intelligent nor graceful.

Re: Lies We Tell Kids

#146

Post by timr »

pchristensen wrote: post #93
meredydd wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed - Curie was most definitely "the shit", and that shouldn't be taken away from her. However , it is also almost certainly true that she was taught because she was female. Now, I'm not entirely sure that's a bad thing. I would, in fact, suggest an addition to PG's categories of lies: "Making kids think things are easier than they are". No-one knows better than PG, living in the start-up world, that Big Things ar…

"Making kids think things are easier than they are" Probably the most important lie I've unraveled in my mind over the last couple years reading experiences from real people (pg, etc) and things like "Myths of Innovation", etc. This is ESPECIALLY dangerous if you (or your kids) are smart. If you're fairly smart, then school is easy. It's easy, so you never fail, so you never understand that many things (including mos…

It's not just that they're "hard"...it's that things are usually downright unfair. We never really teach children the essential role of luck in success, and how you can be the best by every objective metric, yet still fail because of phenomena that are outside of your control.

Re: Lies We Tell Kids

#147

Post by danohuiginn »

Alex3917 wrote: post #113
danohuiginn wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To move forward you have to, by definition, be going in the same direction. The freakish geniuses change the human race, but it's the loyal hard-workers who move it forward. [sorry to quibble over semantics, but it was too obvious an opportunity to pass p]

"To move forward you have to, by definition, be going in the same direction." The idea that progress has directionality is just a metaphor to aid visualization. It has no basis in reality. Your argument is a logical fallacy; I forget the name, but it involves using the same word in two different senses.

You can't have an idea of progress without some way of distinguising better from worse, forward from back, more progressed from less progressed. it's been part of the word all along (latin 'progredi', to step forward) - not that etymology always matters, but in this case the metaphor is essential to the concept.

If we have a clear idea of what "pushing the human race forward" is (more knowledge? less famine? better morals?), then somebody can be the 'best' at it - even if they are the best by being somehow innovative.

I'm not sure that this is a fruitful discussion to be having, though - except that people often seem to talk about progress without reflecting on what they mean. Besides, you started it with "push the human race forward" ;)

Re: Lies We Tell Kids

#148

Post by r7000 »

sofal wrote: post #90
shawndrost wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you disagree with, and why? Dissent is fun to read about.

I sense that some of the disagreements that I have with Paul Graham are deeply fundamental and have to do with the fabric and meaning of our existence. First of all, I'm a religious person. This I have seen immediately qualifies me for ridicule from some on a forum such as this, as believing in God is seen as the logical equivalent to believing in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. If you think I am totally deluded be…

I think it is possible to have interesting and useful discussions about the nature of who and what we are that includes viewpoints that are religious, non-religious and 'other'. Message boards seem to be very bad places for them.

These are the sorts of things that people have put a lot of time and effort into thinking about and wrestling with - and there are very often emotional personal experiences tied up in those beliefs. On message boards, however, you usually just want to spend a short amount of time making relatively concise statements. Not the best format for getting across a complex worldview. This creates the "Amazon rating effect" where in order to influence the "overall results" you feel compelled to rate things either 5-stars or 1-star even though almost everyone holds 2-4 star beliefs.

Re: Lies We Tell Kids

#149

Post by timr »

Alex3917 wrote: post #113
danohuiginn wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To move forward you have to, by definition, be going in the same direction. The freakish geniuses change the human race, but it's the loyal hard-workers who move it forward. [sorry to quibble over semantics, but it was too obvious an opportunity to pass p]

"To move forward you have to, by definition, be going in the same direction." The idea that progress has directionality is just a metaphor to aid visualization. It has no basis in reality. Your argument is a logical fallacy; I forget the name, but it involves using the same word in two different senses.

Progress must have direction (at least implicitly, relative to that which is not progress), or we wouldn't be able to define it; it would just be "change".

Moreover, to say that freakish geniuses "change" the world would be a truism, except for the fact that "the world" doesn't actually change unless everyone else follows the freak. So the parent comment has merit -- you need the people who do weird things, and you need the people who do the hard work of filling in the gaps. Progress is defined by the movement of the whole, and not the movement of an individual.

Re: Lies We Tell Kids

#150

Post by graywh »

astine wrote: post #31
brlewis wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Grandma went to heaven" is not falsifiable. I'd prefer keeping this discussion focused on falsifiable lies. Let those of us who believe in the resurrection of Jesus, the coming of the semantic web, or other supernatural phenomena believe what we want to believe.

Ah the semantic web, as it was for told in the Book of Revelations.

Funny, my Bible doesn't have that one--just something called "Revelation".
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