Raising a moral child • Hacker News Board

Re: Raising a moral child

#141

Post by snowwrestler » Wed, Apr 16, 2014, 2:22 PM UTC

Loughla wrote: post #136

snowwrestler wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument is not only wrong, it is actively harmful to people who seek to be better parents. Cognitively, little kids are not people, at least not the way we typically think of what a person is. The analogy of a delicate and hard to work piece of clay is not a bad analogy for the reality of the situation. What you dismiss as "tricks" is actually highly valuable technical knowledge. We would laugh at someone who s…

"you are helping to program the most complex computer ever created." I get the basic idea of what you're saying, but that sounds like a lovely way to raise a serial murderer. Sometimes, engineering doesn't translate well to other parts of life.

Look at it this way: a parent is choosing a preschool and asks what training the staff has. At one school the answer is "we don't have any training; we just try to be good people." At another school the answer is "every member of our staff has an associates degree in early childhood development." Which school would most parents prefer for their children?

If ignorance is no virtue for preschool staff, why would it be a virtue for parents?

Re: Raising a moral child

#142

Post by nevinera » Wed, Apr 16, 2014, 2:33 PM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #140

nevinera wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Children are not mechanisms, and you cannot engineer them into shape with your 'highly valuable technical knowledge'. (implied insult redacted - sorry about that.)

All humans are mechanisms, and developing a better understanding of how the mechanism works does not harm parenting. You're trying really hard to claim some sort of moral high ground here, but there is nothing immoral or harmful about knowledge. You've set up a false dichotomy between parents who are "good people" and parents who are interested in scientific knowledge about how children develop. Any parent can be bot…

I don't have any problem with studies of child development, and have found some of them quite interesting. The problem comes not from gaining knowledge, but from attempting to apply that knowledge inexpertly. Most humans are not equipped deceive at that level, and a child unconsciously can tell the difference between an authentic reaction and a deliberate one.

All humans are mechanisms in the physical sense, certainly. But unlike most mechanisms you might be accustomed to dealing with, they have self-will and can perceive differences in stimuli beyond your ability to control.

I have certainly set up no 'dichotomy' between goodness and knowledge - I have no issues with parents seeking to understand anything under the sun. (I do think that human nature causes parents to read correlative trends as consistent facts, which means that such studies are doomed to be misinterpreted by nearly all who read it).

I also don't specifically conflate 'goodness' (in whatever definition you choose to accept it) with any particular set of actions. I (for example) have no reason to believe that you are a bad person, I just rationally consider the techniques you are defending to produce harmful effects on the individuals to whom they are applied. I have claimed no 'moral high ground', I am engaged in rational debate about the effects of certain types of behavior.

Hop down off that very tall horse, Defender Of Science.

Re: Raising a moral child

#143

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Apr 16, 2014, 2:42 PM UTC

nevinera wrote: post #131

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Modern parenting literature seems largely to be about manipulating your child into being who and what you want them to be. That is not modern parenting, that's just parenting. Aside from some fringe philosophies (Summerhill for example) I have yet to come across any seriously taken historical example of parenting advice that is not focused on shaping children into something the parent desires, even if that is a very…

Throughout most of history, parenting was largely focused on equipping one's children to survive . The idea that one could impart specific qualities onto one's children is very new - until recently one instead struggled to impart religious rules onto them, with sufficient impact that they would continue to be followed. If you think 'treat people with respect and dignity' is about manipulating other people to behave a…

> Throughout most of history, parenting was largely focused on equipping one's children to survive. The idea that one could impart specific qualities onto one's children is very new - until recently one instead struggled to impart religious rules onto them, with sufficient impact that they would continue to be followed.

That's a big pile of self-contradiction. Both survival skills and religious rules are specific qualities.

Re: Raising a moral child

#144

Post by snowwrestler » Wed, Apr 16, 2014, 2:44 PM UTC

nevinera wrote: post #142

snowwrestler wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All humans are mechanisms, and developing a better understanding of how the mechanism works does not harm parenting. You're trying really hard to claim some sort of moral high ground here, but there is nothing immoral or harmful about knowledge. You've set up a false dichotomy between parents who are "good people" and parents who are interested in scientific knowledge about how children develop. Any parent can be bot…

I don't have any problem with studies of child development, and have found some of them quite interesting. The problem comes not from gaining knowledge, but from attempting to apply that knowledge inexpertly. Most humans are not equipped deceive at that level, and a child unconsciously can tell the difference between an authentic reaction and a deliberate one. All humans are mechanisms in the physical sense, certainl…

You're clearly making value judgments when you use words like "manipulate" and "deceive," neither of which occur literally or conceptually in the article.

Edit: the article does use the word "tricks", although I would argue as shorthand for technique rather than deceive. Nevertheless to be fair I replaced it above with "manipulate".

Re: Raising a moral child

#145

Post by snowwrestler » Wed, Apr 16, 2014, 2:52 PM UTC

skj wrote: post #139

gohrt wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That book has interesting experiments , but suffers psychology's common problem (especially baby psychology): massively over-extending the experimental data into unsupportable conclusions that ignore loads of confounding factors. Example, quoted from the website: """ The babies in the unjustified group spent more time looking at the adult's discordant expression and exhibited more checking behavior. Additionally, the…

Thanks, my thoughts exactly. Coming from a machine learning background, I am often shocked at the quality of experiments in psychology and even economics. I think the reason may be because in machine learning, you describe your algorithm and experiment exactly. If someone can use the same algorithm and devise an experiment to disprove your results, you look like a fool. With softer sciences, maybe people just say, "t…

In machine learning you are implementing known algorithms on fully understood systems.

Studies of humans (medical, psychological, economic, etc) are attempting to discover unknown algorithms on unknown, extremely complex systems. The quality will always seem lower than engineering studies because scientists don't know what they don't know.

Re: Raising a moral child

#146

Post by nevinera » Wed, Apr 16, 2014, 3:04 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #143

nevinera wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Throughout most of history, parenting was largely focused on equipping one's children to survive . The idea that one could impart specific qualities onto one's children is very new - until recently one instead struggled to impart religious rules onto them, with sufficient impact that they would continue to be followed. If you think 'treat people with respect and dignity' is about manipulating other people to behave a…

> Throughout most of history, parenting was largely focused on equipping one's children to survive. The idea that one could impart specific qualities onto one's children is very new - until recently one instead struggled to impart religious rules onto them, with sufficient impact that they would continue to be followed. That's a big pile of self-contradiction. Both survival skills and religious rules are specific qua…

Skills are skills, and religious rules are behaviors or habits (depending). You can of course define 'quality' incredibly broadly if you want, but I meant it in the sense of 'personality characteristics' or 'character attributes'.

Re: Raising a moral child

#147

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Apr 16, 2014, 3:35 PM UTC

nevinera wrote: post #146

dragonwriter wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Throughout most of history, parenting was largely focused on equipping one's children to survive. The idea that one could impart specific qualities onto one's children is very new - until recently one instead struggled to impart religious rules onto them, with sufficient impact that they would continue to be followed. That's a big pile of self-contradiction. Both survival skills and religious rules are specific qua…

Skills are skills, and religious rules are behaviors or habits (depending). You can of course define 'quality' incredibly broadly if you want, but I meant it in the sense of 'personality characteristics' or 'character attributes'.

What is the objective distinction between each of the following: a skill, a behavior, a habit, a personality characteristic, and a character attribute?

Seems to me that all of them, when they describe anything that is objectively meaningful, refer to patterns of action adopted in particular circumstances. The only thing that changes over time seems to be the name applied to the patterns of action that parenting seeks to impose on children, not the actual substance that parenting is about creating desired patterns of action.

Re: Raising a moral child

#148

Post by AndrewKemendo » Wed, Apr 16, 2014, 5:22 PM UTC

bildung wrote: post #121

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Modern parenting literature seems largely to be about manipulating your child into being who and what you want them to be. That is not modern parenting, that's just parenting. Aside from some fringe philosophies (Summerhill for example) I have yet to come across any seriously taken historical example of parenting advice that is not focused on shaping children into something the parent desires, even if that is a very…

> That is not modern parenting, that's just parenting. Aside from some fringe philosophies (Summerhill for example) I have yet to come across any seriously taken historical example of parenting advice that is not focused on shaping children into something the parent desires, even if that is a very loose mold. Try Emile from Rousseau. In general, what you are describing is the difference between the sciences of pedago…

>pedagogy tries to find the optimal conditions for humans to develop their true self

"True self" is not a real thing - it's mystical psychobabble. In reality you are a product of your genetics and experiences, the ratios of which are still contested, however as of now the latter is much easier to influence than the former and as a result is really the only medium we have to work with if we want to influence outcomes.

Re: Raising a moral child

#149

Post by nevinera » Wed, Apr 16, 2014, 6:00 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #147

nevinera wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skills are skills, and religious rules are behaviors or habits (depending). You can of course define 'quality' incredibly broadly if you want, but I meant it in the sense of 'personality characteristics' or 'character attributes'.

What is the objective distinction between each of the following: a skill, a behavior, a habit, a personality characteristic, and a character attribute? Seems to me that all of them, when they describe anything that is objectively meaningful, refer to patterns of action adopted in particular circumstances. The only thing that changes over time seems to be the name applied to the patterns of action that parenting seeks…

While I don't want to get bogged down into details of definitions, I'll take a swing at it:

A skill is a capability learned through experience which is wielded with intention.

A behavior is simply a way of acting - it could be conscious or unconscious, it could be enforced or intentional.

A habit is an unintentional behavior.

A personality characteristic and a character attribute are basically the same thing: unconscious ways of perceiving value and making decisions.

There are of course dozens of ways to define each of those terms, and I'm not interested in debating which of them is 'correct' - I am here primarily focusing on the distinction between instilling value-judgments via rituals and enforcement and attempting to control the self-perception or decision-making styles by behaving in artificial ways.

Describing them all as 'patterns of acting' is like calling all matter 'arrangements of chemicals'. It is of course accurate, and even in some cases useful, but you muddy very important distinctions by generalizing to that degree. In the case in point, the distinction lost is between valuations and perceptions.

Re: Raising a moral child

#150

Post by parfe » Wed, Apr 16, 2014, 6:01 PM UTC

hyp0 wrote: post #132

parfe wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simple enough to swap the actresses around to remove the individuals as confounding variables. On a related note. HN gets pretty obnoxious nit picking about experiments. Guaranteed half the posts about a social science experiment come from novices whining about some flaw only they can see in the experiment yet a hard science paper gets posted and surprisingly no one has any complaints about the experimental design.

How would swapping actresses help? The issue is not a quality of the individual person, but of their action - and the relationship between their action and the baby's later response to that person is very thing being tested. BTW: Whatever your intention, calling people "obnoxious", "nit picking", "novices" and "whining" because they question something does not actually raise the level of discourse.

>How would swapping actresses help?

Using many actresses would allow the investigators to see if an individual receives a different response compared to the overall group. But it looks like you actually meant say the babies knew the testers felt bad so refused to share, not because the baby had been slighted. I think you need to read more on what the study tested.

>BTW: Whatever your intention, calling people "obnoxious", "nit picking", "novices" and "whining" because they question something does not actually raise the level of discourse.

Reread your comment:

>I wonder if they controlled the effect of the actresses own response.

The level of disrespect you show is amazing. It would be one thing if you actually read the study and realized that "Hey, they used the baby's mom and a drug addict in withdrawal as the two testers! Clearly the study is flawed." Nope, your first comment is essentially "I wonder if these professionals are incompetent."