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The original “Bambi”

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Re: The original “Bambi”

#131
One folklore story we grew up with as kids was as simple as,

you misbehave -> some stranger called “Bag man” will come take you in a big bag

I don’t remember ever being actually scared of it but remember it since ever my memory had formed.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't be afraid, they're wrong.

List a single shred of scientific evidence showing that kids who are exposed to stories with similar themes to traumatic events they experience in real life are more likely the have better outcomes. Be afraid to call someone wrong without more than just-so stories and anecdotes.

This is a form of McNamara's fallacy. In reality, the data you are looking for is impossible to obtain. In practice, causing traumatic events is obviously unethical. Then, even if you had a proper study, there would be so many confounding factors that basically any conclusion is worthless. For instance, listening to an e-book on the subway is obviously different than discussing your emotions and response to the book. From first principles, it seems rather intuitive that if you expose anyone to a story of a trauma and discuss possible coping mechanisms, then that person is better prepared to cope with that trauma. Of course, being exposed to the thought might be traumatic itself (a kid might come to the realization that their dog is actually going to die) but if they react so poorly to the thought, how would they have reacted to the actual event? Intuitively, much worse. I'm all for data driven decisions, but our shared human experience can be a tremendous guiding light for things that are difficult to quantify.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

List a single shred of scientific evidence showing that kids who are exposed to stories with similar themes to traumatic events they experience in real life are more likely the have better outcomes. Be afraid to call someone wrong without more than just-so stories and anecdotes.

This is a form of McNamara's fallacy. In reality, the data you are looking for is impossible to obtain. In practice, causing traumatic events is obviously unethical. Then, even if you had a proper study, there would be so many confounding factors that basically any conclusion is worthless. For instance, listening to an e-book on the subway is obviously different than discussing your emotions and response to the book.…

Exactly. If you have an intuitive and common-sense take (exposure to stories with difficult themes can help kids cope with similar things in real life) and an unintuitive contrarian take (they don't, so let the kids get blindsided), the onus is on the contrarian to "list a single shred of scientific evidence."

Sure, it would be great if everyone could offer "evidence" for every position, but that's obviously unrealistic and impractical.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#134

For some reason I got my hands on George Orwell's "Animal Farm" at a very young age, as it looked like a kid's book. That's a fairly bleak book, for example when the pigs sell the draft horse to the glue factory, but only the goat (whose only friend is the horse) knows what's going on. Watership Down is another good one, the character of the Black Rabbit of Inle (the Grim Reaper of rabbitkind) was memorable. However…

I once asked my dad why people who committed treason against the king in medieval times were treated so cruelly.

He said that live was nasty, brutish and short in those days, and to make an impact and a deterrence the king had to be over the top cruel.

I don't know how true that is, as I suspect there's a large element of people just liking to be cruel if they have the opportunity.

I have a couple books on the cruelties done by armies in WW2, and in the American west, and could not finish reading them.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#135

For some reason I got my hands on George Orwell's "Animal Farm" at a very young age, as it looked like a kid's book. That's a fairly bleak book, for example when the pigs sell the draft horse to the glue factory, but only the goat (whose only friend is the horse) knows what's going on. Watership Down is another good one, the character of the Black Rabbit of Inle (the Grim Reaper of rabbitkind) was memorable. However…

As a kid I watched the film a bunch. It was scary but I liked it. Worth checking out. Amazing that it's from 1954 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047834/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

Re: The original “Bambi”

#136
post #6

Yes, Bambi is an utterly depressing story. Most original material Disney adapted was bleakier and more grisly than the adaptation. Most of the tales collected by brothers Grimm would today be horror stories. (Did you know that Cinderella's evil stepsisters had their toes and heels cut off so they could fit in the slippers? Or that the ravens pecked their eyes as punishment? Or that Maleficent ends up in a boiling cau…

Don't forget about Pinocchio, who in the original Italian children's book is tortured and hanged for being such a "bad boy" [0][1]. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinocchio#Fictional_character_... 1: https://slate.com/culture/2011/10/carlo-collodi-s-pinocchio-... The part of the movie where all of the boys on Pleasure Island begin to turn into donkeys always freaked me out as a kid.

>> Don't forget about Pinocchio, who in the original Italian children's book is tortured and hanged for being such a "bad boy" [0][1].

>> 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinocchio#Fictional_character_...:

> Pinocchio's bad behavior, rather than being charming or endearing, is meant to serve as a warning.

That reminds me something I read about "Inuit parenting." They live in a dangerous and difficult environment, so they'd tell kids all kinds of scary stories designed to get them to do the correct thing before they could understood the actual danger.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

List a single shred of scientific evidence showing that kids who are exposed to stories with similar themes to traumatic events they experience in real life are more likely the have better outcomes. Be afraid to call someone wrong without more than just-so stories and anecdotes.

This is a form of McNamara's fallacy. In reality, the data you are looking for is impossible to obtain. In practice, causing traumatic events is obviously unethical. Then, even if you had a proper study, there would be so many confounding factors that basically any conclusion is worthless. For instance, listening to an e-book on the subway is obviously different than discussing your emotions and response to the book.…

Eh, in psychology the default is "nothing ever happens ever". No one ever changes, no effect lasts, and nothing ever replicates. There are all sorts of "intuitive" results which utterly fail to replicate, so I'd be surprised if things are better when you can't do a real study even in principle. I suppose I might just be jaded from the replication crisis, but my expectation is that things mostly just kind of happen. It's why I left for the gentle shores of math, where things work exactly as much as any pure math can be said to work.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#138

For some reason I got my hands on George Orwell's "Animal Farm" at a very young age, as it looked like a kid's book. That's a fairly bleak book, for example when the pigs sell the draft horse to the glue factory, but only the goat (whose only friend is the horse) knows what's going on. Watership Down is another good one, the character of the Black Rabbit of Inle (the Grim Reaper of rabbitkind) was memorable. However…

This is only true if the young ones in question are in a psychologically safe and emotionally supportive environment. I read things as a young child, without having the support to talk and parse them out, and additionally on top of the chaotic environment I was already in, where reading things like Animal Farm, or, specifically in my case, being introduced to the concept of destructive extinction events in books, mov…

I remember clearly as a kid scrubbing my head furiously for weeks after a local spelunking adventure where the guide jokingly told me that, after a stalactite dripped on me repeatedly, that a stalagmite would grow from my head.

As a kid with a lot of anxieties (nuclear holocaust, overpopulation, etc) I really didn't need to be growing stalagmites from my head.

Up to about seven years old, kids take things very literally. Understanding metaphorical speech comes only after that period, and not everyone fully understands even as an adult.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#139
post #2

I’ve grown watching „The Animals of Farthing Wood” (1993 cartoon). It has episode showing family of mice struggling to survive and worried about future for their babies. In following episode we get shot of same mice family impaled on needles by birds going to eat them. https://www.wykop.pl/cdn/c3201142/comment_EkpfJKfyX8WRKQnr7H... Entire story is told around forest dying out and animals struggling to survive in it.…

I loved a cartoon growing up as a child, called Alfred J. Kwak [0], a Dutch / Japanese series about a duck and his adventures; I believe a lot of it is on youtube if you want. The first two episodes are about two anthropomorphised ducks that meet, fall in love, move into a clog and have a spawn of babies, happily ever after until the whole family but Alfred get killed by a car. That was err. a pretty brutal thing for…

Gotta love the idea of a dude named "Kwak" making a show about ducks. Talk about nominative determinism.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't be afraid, they're wrong.

List a single shred of scientific evidence showing that kids who are exposed to stories with similar themes to traumatic events they experience in real life are more likely the have better outcomes. Be afraid to call someone wrong without more than just-so stories and anecdotes.

I don't know how much scientific is the references on this article [1], but it's a good read about the topic

[1] - http://web.archive.org/web/20190423155359/https://medium.com...

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