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The Surreal Magnificence of Fatherhood

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Re: The Surreal Magnificence of Fatherhood

#231

Post by wat10000 »

anthonypasq wrote: post #214
The_Colonel wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you’re poor, it’s not changing what you can do with your life. You were never able to go to dinner or on vacation. When you're poor and child-less, you can still sleep in on weekends, watch Netflix/game all day/night or whatever other (cheap) hobby you have. It's even possible to do a decent amount of travelling on a very tight budget these days (low-cost airlines, couchsurfing...). All things considered, toda…

is just so absolutely bizarre to me as a 28 year old childless man who intends to have kids that gaming could possibly be something that you would trade vs raising a literal human child who is a genetic copy of you and the person you love most in your life

You’re sort of begging the question that the second thing is really desirable. You accurately describe the experience, but that doesn’t necessarily make it something people want.

Re: The Surreal Magnificence of Fatherhood

#232

Post by wat10000 »

anon291 wrote: post #121
627467 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you don't think the destruction of the village and sharp decline in birth rate feed of each other? Individuals have outsourced so much to abstract "institutions" that they can't see alternatives whatever precarious and worsening services these institutions provide.

Part of the problem is that preferring family today is seen as nepotistic. Witness the widespread shock that Joe Biden pardoned his son.

Nothing wrong with preferring family in your private affairs, but it has no place in government.

Re: The Surreal Magnificence of Fatherhood

#233

Post by wat10000 »

VMG wrote: post #197
Simon_ORourke wrote: post #140

It's f*cking hard work, for those in any doubt. It's the most difficult web server config file you've ever to edit at 4am to resolve some production outage, for years, without any hope of let up. Is it rewarding, yes, but it's a duty and there's no backup or timeout, you get to experience this 24/7 for at least a few year while they're young.

counterpoint: it's not you don't have to sift through some indecipherable mountain of information to find a solution you just have to provide some basic mammalian service like provide warmth or food in a first world country it can be stressful but it's actually quite simple

The early years are a ton of simple work. Later, it becomes incredibly complex and difficult. Try dealing with bad choices, power struggles, figuring out and enforcing rules.... Now try it as a typical techie person who has trouble engaging with things they don’t enjoy and doesn’t understand people.

Sifting through an indecipherable mountain of information is fun. I’ll do it in my spare time. My reaction to some ridiculous bug report is, hell yeah, let’s go.

The hardest stuff in my life has nothing to do with computers and it’s not even remotely close.

Re: The Surreal Magnificence of Fatherhood

#234

Post by nickpsecurity »

hiatus wrote: post #229
nickpsecurity wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To understand this, you have to start with four components: God’s sovereignty; human’s autonomy with consequences; individual vs group effects; all sin (evil) must be punished. God is sovereign which means He can do what He pleases. He created us to worship Him and love each other. He’s also painting a story of humanity that shows who He is (all attributes), who we are, and how that interacts. We are all part of the…

I do appreciate the thoughtful responses you have given. I need time to digest what you have said, but you have given me a lot of food for thought.

I try. Thank you for your kindness. :)

Re: The Surreal Magnificence of Fatherhood

#235

Post by anon291 »

triceratops wrote: post #213
anon291 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the problem is that preferring family today is seen as nepotistic. Witness the widespread shock that Joe Biden pardoned his son.

> preferring family today is seen as nepotistic That's kinda the definition of the word so it isn't surprising. Nepotism as a negative is a relatively new phenomenon, historically speaking. I suspect this is what you actually meant.

You're correct in both your criticism and in your interpretation.

Re: The Surreal Magnificence of Fatherhood

#236

Post by BehindBlueEyes »

wat10000 wrote: post #69
exitb wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. And that’s a bit of an issue - I’ve encountered people that plan to become parents and their understanding of the process is all wrong. Not saying that they’ll end up being bad parents - most people rise to the occasion, but it feels like society tricks people into having kids.

Absolutely. It’s pushed from all angles: you may not think you want kids, but it’ll be amazing. Once you do it you’ll have no regrets. You’ll never experience joy like the joy that they bring. And that’s actually true for a lot of people. But not everyone. And there’s zero support for trying to figure it out and come to an informed decision before you dive in, and even less for concluding that actually you don’t thin…

Being "the village" for someone else's kid(s) can give a decent idea of what to expect. And by that I mean actually moving in and helping 24/7 for a months at a time, not just babysitting one evening here and there. Did that one full year for a sibling. I'm told your outlook is different when it is your own kid, and I did ok but it definitely taught me that signing up for the full 18 years isn't for me.

Re: The Surreal Magnificence of Fatherhood

#237

Post by BehindBlueEyes »

snthd wrote: post #45
mr_mitm wrote: post #9

Is it like this for everyone? I sometimes wonder how large the number of cases is where the parent does not feel like that at all but refrains from sharing it due to societal expectations and fear of being judged. It would introduce a bias regarding these stories.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8294566/ >Surveys conducted over the last few years on representative samples in the US and Germany suggest that the percentage of parents who regret having children is approximately 17–8%.

I'd be curious to see regret vs. would you make the same choice again. I can imagine parents nor regretting it, but maybe thinking about it twice if they had known what to expect.

Re: The Surreal Magnificence of Fatherhood

#238

Post by DAGdug »

llm_trw wrote: post #152
llm_nerd wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that your position is the "perfectionist parenting" nonsense that many have used to avoid having children. Do you think all of the latchkey lone children of the current generation are the most psychologically healthy individuals the world has seen? Do you think they're the most loved or coddled? The most educated? Your anecdote is actually kind of hilarious in context. The idea that 2 children splits th…

>Do you think all of the latchkey lone children of the current generation are the most psychologically healthy individuals the world has seen? https://www.census.gov/newsroom/stories/siblings.html 80% of kids under 18 have siblings in the USA today. >The idea that 2 children splits the love is absolutely insane. It's also what's blindingly obvious when you spend more than 5 minutes in a playground with single kids an…

It’s the same logic as: when I married, the time to cook each meal doubled. Ugh, no - many things scale vastly sublinearly with the number of kids one has.

Re: The Surreal Magnificence of Fatherhood

#239

Post by aweb »

pedrosorio wrote: post #63
dgfitz wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes when they have a temper tantrum (at home) it’s ok to let them scream for 5 minutes. Usually when they realize you don’t care they start to calm down. Letting a baby fuss in their crib for 5-10 minutes won’t kill them if you need to take a shit. Start feeding them more than just milk/formula at 6-8 months. They’re going to fall and hurt themselves a lot, kids bounce. Kids feel your energy and reflect it like…

> Start feeding them more than just milk/formula at 6-8 months. This feels out of place. What did you do the first time?

We actually start what we call "diversification" (=eating solid food) even earlier in France: we were advised by our paediatrician to do it when the baby was 4 months old.

Apparently if you start early and have him try a lot of different stuff (especially potentially allergenic things like nuts), it causes less allergy problems later on.

It's worked very well for us, the kid loves it and feeding him is quite fun (although certainly messy!)

It's interesting to see how different it is depending on the country though!

Re: The Surreal Magnificence of Fatherhood

#240

Post by throw10920 »

mistermann wrote: post #166
throw10920 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The HN (and other "intellectual" online spaces) guidelines are a big part of The Problem. I would argue that, as far as "intellectual online spaces" go (e.g. LessWrong, less memey subreddits), HN has one of the best sets of rules that are the most consistently enforced. But you probably have something specific that you mean by The Problem that I'm not anticipating. Could you elaborate?

That on certain topics, logic trumps rhetoric. That on certain other topics, rhetoric trumps logic. And if one should point this out, guess which one is used in response? :) (To be fair to HN: this is true of all such communities to differing degrees, but at least LessWrong as a platform at least aspires to take such things seriously*.)

Are you talking about the platform rules, or merely what the community thinks?

If it's the latter, I absolutely agree with you - tons of posters have double-standards and switch from logic mode to rhetoric (or even emotion) mode when there's something they don't agree with (e.g. lwhalen, who is engaging in blatant emotional manipulation and logical fallacies).

But, at least aspirationally, the HN rules are designed to constrain rhetoric to keep the discourse civil, while allowing users to set the standards for what's acceptable logic and what's not (although in practice, users like lwhalen and lproven just completely ignore the guidelines).

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