291–300 of 433 posts
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I prefer "Working at love" to "Falling in love" - it addresses both of those "lies"
I prefer "Working at love" to "Falling in love" - it addresses both of those "lies" But that takes out quite a bit of the romanticism out of it, doesn't it?
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This is basically right. The words are taboo because it's useful to have taboo words, so the culture deliberately makes them so. Taboo words are useful because they transcend politeness. If a normally civil person comes into your dinner party and tells you that the fucking ceiling is about to fall down , you get moving . You don't waste time looking around for the ironic smile. You don't reproach the person for speak…
The spectrum of motivations for the pressure we put on kids to not "swear" includes "being polite" and "being polite" is related to communication skill. There is a quote attributed to Mark Twain which equates politeness with something which prevents people at the dinner table from killing each other.
In my experience a far better way would be to tell the truth, "I don't know if the Turkey wanted to die." Then, the parents could parent the child and explain how everything needs to eat to live. It was a perfect opportunity for the parents to illustrate why they purchase certain brands of Turkey, don't eat hot-dogs, are vegetarian, go hunting, etc.
Would your friend have spoken the same lie if he had been alone with his child?
It is a parent's job to judiciously teach their children, not to lie when they don't know how to teach or find it inconvenient to do so.
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See for example http://www.ncsu.edu/chass/philo/GRE%20Scores%20by%20Intended...
teachers seem solidly in the middle for the three groups. This brings up something interesting, as a group, we like to think of ourselves as above average when compared to other disciplines, but Computer & Info. Sciences was comparable to Education. Consider that in many states, ALL teachers must go to graduate school, so many more of them are taking the GRE than Computer & Info. Sciences. I suppose most schools with…
I know that these scores were a semi-common meme around grad school when I was there. People wondered why philosophers/physicists/mathematicians gravitated towards each other, but it was silently suspected among a few of us that it was due to similar analytical ability. The results were even more pronounced when the logic test still existed.
I think that one shouldn't overemphasize the mean though. There's a lot to be said for the distribution -- in physics, the entire lower part of the curve gets weeded out. That doesn't seem to happen in CS. And philosophers learn to write arguments and navigate arcane vocabularies as a matter of course. Perhaps the math result is indicative of general ability, but they have to do logic, too.
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I prefer "Working at love" to "Falling in love" - it addresses both of those "lies" But that takes out quite a bit of the romanticism out of it, doesn't it?
Not as much as a messy divorce or breakup between people who don't work at love :)
But we certainly misrepresent to children the prevalence of this sort of thing.
Look at fairy tales and movies. To a child, _all_ people grow up, meet their perfect true love, marry them and stay together forever. As for the damaging part of the lie, of course there's no need to work at a relationship because the match is just so perfect.
Is this the same article that you mentioned almost a year ago? I read it expecting more of an evolutionary psychology approach to the teenage sex issue. I've read a good bit of literature about religion and its roots in EP, and why it's such a good meme. The "payload" is part of the spread mechanism.
PG: "I think they've deliberately avoided learning about certain things. Certainly I do. I used to think I wanted to know everything. Now I know I don't." Can you give us some examples of things you don't want to know and avoid learning about? Also, you must already have some idea of what horrible truths you might discover if you learned further, so can you give us a general idea of what those are?
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Lying to your kids is like the kind of intellectual fashion I wrote about in "What You Can't Say." No parent thinks they lie to their kids-- except of course in necessary or harmless ways -- just as no one thinks what they believe is an intellectual fashion. But in retrospect it turns out most parents do, just as in retrospect it turns out most people's beliefs are influenced by intellectual fashions. So if one has a…
As my father once said: “they can make you go to school but they can’t make you do anything there.” Lying to your kids is common but optional . At 28 I can't think of a single time my father ever lied to me and as far as I can tell he never lied to my 10 year younger sister. Granted plenty of other people lied to me, but he had no problem pointing out that religion was silly, drugs where fun and dangerous, and confor…
Religion can or cant't be the truth. Tell the kid god exits and you are lying(you don't know it) Tell him the contrary and you are lying(you don't know it).
Don't confuse the fact that both of you agree in something(which is normal between parents and son) with the fact this is the truth.
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I don't think this is true. I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone under the age of 40 (that is, approximately of breeding age) who is genuinely offended by most words that are designated taboo. Any offence that is publicly displayed is most likely a put-on to illustrate they are more cultured that the offender. What's worse is that it's entirely subjective what words a culture counts as taboo. I've seen US TV…
I there are plenty of taboo words, but they have changed over time. 50 years ago people had no problem saying extremely racist or sexist things in the open but now it's a new taboo. IMO taboo words relate to taboo thoughts. The odd things is the FCC is not what's keeping really taboo words off the air but they still keep the old guard of psudo taboo words off of prime time.
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Not as much as a messy divorce or breakup between people who don't work at love :)
When I call them lies, I didn't mean to say they don't exist, or that two people can't be happy, in love and monogamous forever. But we certainly misrepresent to children the prevalence of this sort of thing. Look at fairy tales and movies. To a child, _all_ people grow up, meet their perfect true love, marry them and stay together forever. As for the damaging part of the lie, of course there's no need to work at a r…
There are a lot of things about my marriage that are worse than when I was single, but there are a lot of things that are a whole lot better. On balance I'm way ahead, but we both work at it every day. It's worth working at because of how great it is. And that's a truth worth telling.