191–200 of 433 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
check out Steven Pinker's "Why We Curse", http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=246c0071-a9cd-46e2...
That was a great article. It also touched on a commonly-told lie which pg's essay didn't mention: Eternal true love and monogamy in marriage.
To a person unfamiliar with economics, accounting, math, etc. the financial markets seem magical, or at least mysterious. Prophets emerge to explain the markets, and often do so in vague and opinionated ways, that to the uninformed seem brilliant and enlightened. Regarding this article, there are sociologists, psychologists, etc. that make a scientific/formal practice of answering questions like, 'Why do we lie to ki…
pg quotes Peter Mayle, writing about divorce: "You shouldn't put the blame on one parent, because divorce is never only one person's fault." to that pg replies: "Really? When a man runs off with his secretary, is it always partly his wife's fault?" my answer to that would be: yes, even in that case, the guy's wife has to take part of the blame. she married him in the first place. if she was observant, she would have…
Do you blame the people of Burma too for not "recognizing the signs" of the impending catastrophe? The rape victim for wearing a dress that's too tight?
Blame should be placed always with the actor. There may be extenuating circumstances for the people involved, but one should never allow those to dissolve and/or lesson the blame in the action.
Isn't this rather off-topic for HN? It's a well-written interesting essay, as always from Paul Graham, but is it at the top of the list for any reason other than it is written by Paul?
Because it's thought provoking and well written?
Does PG have kids? I'm not advocating ignoring the essay if he doesn't. But just as I'm leery of taking startup advice from someone who hasn't done one, I'd be tempted to discount this a bit. The issue is that there are forces afoot in your brain when you have kids which are deep, powerful and extraordinarily difficult to ignore. Pre-mammalian lower-reptilian brain stuff. Wanting to protect them is one of those.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
check out Steven Pinker's "Why We Curse", http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=246c0071-a9cd-46e2...
Aside from good analysis, the beginning is full of humorous gems. I'm not sure if the humor is accidental, or if the author picked humorous examples deliberately.
I can't help but think that if my kid asked if the turkey wanted to die that I would want to take him or her in the other room, away from all of the other parents and explain to them how turkeys are grown for eating by farmers.
I would want my child to be able to choose not to eat the turkey if they thought it was immoral.
beautiful.
" But why do we conceal death from kids? Probably because small children are particularly horrified by it." One of the hardest things for me answer was the question "Dad, am I going to die?". Even though it is incredibly hard to tell them the truth, I do. The aftermath of saying "yes" to that one really, really sucks no matter how you try to handle it.
I really don't know how I'm going to answer this question to my kids...
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…