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No Way to Grow Up

nytimes.com

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Re: No Way to Grow Up

#651

Post by blindmute »

yupper32 wrote: post #99

Honest question: At what point do we give up? I'm in the Bay Area and it'll be coming up on 2 years soon of what basically amounts to a social shut down. -- Many social groups are just not getting together anymore, including most of mine. -- Concerts, sporting events, parties of most sizes, crowded bars/clubs just seem off the table at this point. -- Masks for the majority of it, which makes gym going and working out…

Sounds like you need to make some new friends who aren't so neurotic. People without anxiety issues are in fact still socializing. Concerts, bars, restaurants are full. Your problem is with you.

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#652

Post by CountDrewku »

ModernMech wrote: post #163
CountDrewku wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can say the opposite about the other side as well... Anything short of eradication (which is impossible) means nonstop lockdowns, masking, vaccine mandates and making the unvaccinated pariahs. What I don't understand is why you would shut down schools and enforce silly unhelpful mask mandates on them when the science shows children do not spread the disease in any meaningful way and are not badly affected by it.…

Schools in my district are shut down because there aren’t enough substitute teachers to fill in for sick or retired faculty. The older ones are getting sick and dying, or quitting before they do. The younger ones don’t want to be paid $35k a year to be screamed at by parents for not teaching subjects the way parents want them to be taught. Browse /r/teachers some time. It used to be a sub full of teachers venting ste…

My mother was a teacher for 20+ years and my wife is a teacher. I know exactly how schools are handling this.

They're quarantining people that aren't sick, that's why they don't have staff. They've scared away substitutes with unscientific fear mongering about super spreader events in school. This is a problem of over-testing and unnecessary quarantining not a shortage.

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#653

Post by blindmute »

yupper32 wrote: post #358
pb7 wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been on the table since early summer in the Bay Area too. I have no idea what this dude is on about. There are more concerts and events than I remember there being in 2019 and they are frequently sold out.

Of course they're still around, legally. I said they're not really on the table because the vast majority of experts are still saying not to gather in large groups. You have to go out of your way to ignore those experts in order to go to these concerts and events.

Do you generally take no responsibility for your happiness and life trajectory, merely marching to orders from faceless strangers, or is that a recent development?

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#654

Post by School-Cotton »

khazhoux wrote: post #313
shmel wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say they don't work. They clearly work to significantly reduce deaths and hospitalizations. I totally agree on this. But they didn't stop the spread anywhere in the world. If you want to paint me with your stereotypes, go ahead.

In fairness, you are using the stereotypical language of anti-science vaccine deniers: "Non-compliance", "Take back your freedom."

They weren't even talking about the vaccine. They were talking about restrictions on (or general unwillingness to participate in) events and social gatherings.

This pattern of thinking "if you believe X, you probably believe completely different thing Y, because a lot of people who believe X also believe Y" is a huge part of the problem with contemporary political discourse.

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#655

Post by musicale »

> Children fell far behind in school during the first year of the pandemic and have not caught up. Among third through eighth graders, math and reading levels were all lower than normal this fall

Educational television (which taught letters and phonics) and parents reading to me is what taught me to read. (Then I got a library card and checked out tons of books.)

I also learned basic arithmetic from television. (And simple algebra from teaching myself computer programming - which is probably backwards.)

Perhaps the remote instruction and home learning methods we adopted during the pandemic were not the right ones to emphasize.

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#656

Post by teh64 »

partiallypro wrote: post #507
honkycat wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think democrats are the left?

I love this talking point, because in comparision to basically every country, US Democrats are socially very far left. It's only fiscally where they are more moderate. Which is basically the opposite of what most Americans want, yet they seem confused on why they struggle.

How are US Democrats socially far left? There are multiple countries with parties that are literally communists. There are sizable number of US Democrats (especially in the government) who support the death penalty, torture, nukes, a large military, interventionism and mass surveillance (look at the votes concerning the US Patriot act and the reauthorizations). How is any of this "very far left"? They may talk sometimes about socially left issues (homeless, healthcare, etc...), but in terms of actually fixing anything, very little is done, especially that would be considered "left" in any country. Like instead of getting universal healthcare, they just voted to "reform" healthcare companies.

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#657

Post by xboxnolifes »

zepto wrote: post #634
xboxnolifes wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The vast majority of how society is organized seems to eschew quantification in favor of descriptive qualification. > The use of metrics in governance has been dramatically increasing as our methods of quantification have developed, but that is definitely a modern development. These two statements seem slightly contradictory. If quantified metrics in governance has increased as our ability to quantify things has in…

> The only times we don't quantify things is when we cannot. Just because something has increased recently doesn’t mean there is an inbuilt human tendency for it. For example the wearing of lounge suits for business is a modern development. I don’t think you are going to claim that means there was a ‘human tendency’ for lounge suits all along.

> Just because something has increased recently doesn’t mean there is an inbuilt human tendency for it.

Sure, but that wasn't my point. I was just showing the flaw in logic of the two quotes given. My original claim was not that we definitely quantify when we can, but that the reasonings given do not support your claim.

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#658

Post by xboxnolifes »

zepto wrote: post #638
xboxnolifes wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not much of a history buff, but I can't recall a good example of cultures or societal periods with emphasis on optimizing the unquantifiable (Or having no optimization preference at all). The only decent examples that I can think are in laws, and that only seems to be favored because things are difficult to be quantified, not because the unquantifiable was more preferred.

Can you think of a historical period in the distant part where there is evidence of a preference for quantification? It seem like you are simply assuming that was present.

Assuming we are talking about innate and not cultural qualities:

If I do not assume we optimize for the quantifiable, I must assume either (1) we optimize for the unquantifiable, (2) we do not favor one way or the other (innately), or (3) human nature has changed over a very short (few thousand year) time period.

I was trying to rule out (1). (3) Seems pretty easy to rule out purely on our understanding of evolution. And (2) would follow after ruling out (1) and accepting the original assumption.

But onto this:

> Can you think of a historical period in the distant part where there is evidence of a preference for quantification?

Tax law.

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#659

Post by wizzwizz4 »

mholm wrote: post #635
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It works for 10-year-olds, and I'd say it works for younger children too. The problem is needing supervision (curiosity leads to doing some very harmful things, and that's not even considering bouts of malice…). If children want to learn, and they can learn, there's no stopping them (except with video games, television, toys, a field, a garden, a paved area, a woodland, the fact that books make a loud noise every tim…

> It works for 10-year-olds No. It works for some 10-year-olds. Few, even. The school system is not intended to educate a few children, it is intended to educate all the children in the country. Even the poorest and least motivated. You cannot just throw children into a room with an adult and computers and tell them to learn.

It could well be selection bias, but I've seen the least-interested (middling-motivated) 10-year-olds rapidly learn when something that interests them is placed in front of them, and they're not expected to do anything with it. (Specifically, Scratch, with a “you could make a game” directive, after a quick back-and-forth game design session.) The existing school system isn't doing a particularly great job of educating those kids.

Is the goal for kids to pass exams and then forget most of it by adulthood? Or is it for kids to gain basic life skills, find out what interests them, and have the environment to pursue their interests? (Almost everyone finds some “work”-type things interesting.)

Note: I'm not saying that my system would work for everyone; I'm challenging the suggestion that the existing system works for most people. Some people require interactive (rather than book) teachers to learn well, but that doesn't mean that “You Must Learn This, Then This, Then This” is an effective approach.

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#660

Post by SuoDuanDao »

flerchin wrote: post #648
SuoDuanDao wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nearly everyone is experiencing more baseline stress these days. I doubt a more predictable daily schedule would be all that reassuring against a backdrop of cascading supply chain disruptions and spiralling political dialogue. I'm not a parent but I like the sentiment behind the saying, 'Talk to your kids about the changing world order, before someone else does'.

> I'm not a parent This is clear. Predictable daily schedules are quite reassuring for kids. Supply chain disruptions and politics are not even on their radar.

Adults being nervous without telling them why certainly is. I'm not saying the disruption to your child's schedule is helping things, but I know plenty of people who aren't nine, haven't had a significant disruption in their routine, and are still constantly anxious because everyone else is. I'd just caution against seeing a fixed routine as a magic bullet.
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