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Lies We Tell Kids

paulgraham.com

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Re: Lies We Tell Kids

#91

Post by danohuiginn »

astine wrote: post #22

Does it count as a 'lie' if it is believed by the parent? The reason that parents don't want kids to swear is because they genuinely believe that it is wrong for some reason. The don't know the reason themselves, and so break the rule and become hypocrites, but they still believe that it is wrong and want their children to do better than they did. With regard to group identity (and religion,) most parents actually ad…

Swearing would lose its force if we weren't all told it was wrong throughout childhood. Parents who stop their children swearing are doing the hard work to Keep Cursing Special, and should be thanked for their services to the foul-mouthed.

Re: Lies We Tell Kids

#92

Post by jgrahamc »

sanj wrote: post #61
sanj wrote: post #35

Does PG have kids? I'm not advocating ignoring the essay if he doesn't. But just as I'm leery of taking startup advice from someone who hasn't done one, I'd be tempted to discount this a bit. The issue is that there are forces afoot in your brain when you have kids which are deep, powerful and extraordinarily difficult to ignore. Pre-mammalian lower-reptilian brain stuff. Wanting to protect them is one of those.

As a followup, it'd be interesting to know if any of the reviewers have raised kids.

I have.

This essay does not describe my approach to parenting, but I know parents like that.

Made me wonder if PG's SO is expecting.

Re: Lies We Tell Kids

#93

Post by pchristensen »

meredydd wrote: post #25
asnyder wrote: post #19

Besides being a woman, Marie Curie was the first and ONLY person to ever recieve a Nobel Prize in different sciences. Something her male counterparts have yet to do, so maybe there's something there besides her sex.

Indeed - Curie was most definitely "the shit", and that shouldn't be taken away from her. However , it is also almost certainly true that she was taught because she was female. Now, I'm not entirely sure that's a bad thing. I would, in fact, suggest an addition to PG's categories of lies: "Making kids think things are easier than they are". No-one knows better than PG, living in the start-up world, that Big Things ar…

"Making kids think things are easier than they are"

Probably the most important lie I've unraveled in my mind over the last couple years reading experiences from real people (pg, etc) and things like "Myths of Innovation", etc.

This is ESPECIALLY dangerous if you (or your kids) are smart. If you're fairly smart, then school is easy. It's easy, so you never fail, so you never understand that many things (including most worth doing) are hard.

Re: Lies We Tell Kids

#94

Post by jaydub »

"It's not enough to consider your mind a blank slate. You have to consciously erase it."

I really liked this point, and I feel its a good way to sum up the points Paul made. I think at times we underestimate the impact of socialization (work, school etc.) and we mentally seal off certain doors (opportunities) to mesh with the norms. With all the noise that we are absorbing, this notion of reconsidering even some of the more 'basic' assumptions becomes all the more important.

Re: Lies We Tell Kids

#95

Post by Retric »

brlewis wrote: post #46
mynameishere wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When something is falsifiable, that means it is suitable for examination by science. When something is not falsifiable it should be considered false, in most contexts.

"When something is not falsifiable it should be considered false, in most contexts." Is the above sentence falsifiable? How do you examine the "should be" question with science? If it is not falsifiable, should it be considered false, or is it an exception? How do you pick exceptions? My two assertions about your sentence: (1) It is not falsifiable. (2) You consider it very useful.

It is falsifiable if you can find a single non falsifiable thing that would be useful / treated as true.

Re: Lies We Tell Kids

#96

Post by wumi »

"It's obvious now that he was on the list because he was black (and for that matter that Marie Curie was on it because she was a woman), but as a kid I was confused for years about him. I wonder if it wouldn't have been better just to tell us the truth: that there weren't any famous black scientists. Ranking George Washington Carver with Einstein misled us not only about science, but about the obstacles blacks faced in his time."

(I would comment about Curie but someone already did)

Not sure if any school I know of raises GWC on the same pedestal as Einstein. For better or for worse, most people in America regard Einstein as one of the smartest people that ever lived, and the same is definitely not true for Carver.

" Public school textbooks represent a compromise between what various powerful groups want kids to be told. The lies are rarely overt. Usually they consist either of omissions or of over-emphasizing certain topics at the expense of others."

What powerful groups in America wanted a black scientist to be seen on the same level as Einstein? Carver is usually seen as a very smart black man, which if anything, belittles blacks as if this was the one and only black who could achieve anything in an advanced field.

Re: Lies We Tell Kids

#97

Post by epi0Bauqu »

pg wrote: post #32
epi0Bauqu wrote: post #5

PG: what does suburbia mean to you? You paint it in an extremely negative light, and so I'd just like some more detail of how you define that term. I know it means different things to different people.

I mean post-war neighborhoods of tract houses build on spec by developers. I don't mean places that are merely geographically suburban, in the sense that they're less densely settled areas on the perimeters of cities. (In the US, practically all the less densely settled area on the perimeters of cities are neighborhoods built by developers, but in Europe there are older cities where this isn't true.)

A few short follow-up questions:

1) Is any "development" part of suburbia?

2) What if there were multiple developers building the houses?

3) What if it is x miles from a town center?

4) What if the owners built their own houses in the development?

Let's get specific using the Boston area as an example.

5) Do you think any parts of Cambridge count as suburbia?

6) Do you think any of the following areas/towns count as suburbia: Revere, Brookline, Newton, Framingham, Wellsley, Waltham, Lexington?

And finally 7) if an area is just less densely settled does that make it just as unappealing as suburbia in your view?

Re: Lies We Tell Kids

#98

Post by sanj »

llimllib wrote: post #89
sanj wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very interesting point! But it seems like you'd want a judge who had at least been a stockholder, though not one in this particular company. Would either side consider a judge that stored his life savings in his mattress and disagreed with the right of corporations to be valid? The different (and I'll admit I'm on thin ice here) is that kids have a visceral component that is difficult to ignore. If I drop a…

> The different (and I'll admit I'm on thin ice here) is that kids have a visceral component that is difficult to ignore. Exactly - and thus there is value in having a neutral(ish) observer of the parenting process.

By that argument, all OBGYNs should be men. Or women who've not been pregnant.

Re: Lies We Tell Kids

#99

Post by pchristensen »

robg wrote: post #29

I'd love to see the sequel: Lies We Tell Ourselves. Seems like many of the things discussed have their origin in lies we continue to tell ourselves. Kids just get special versions. But if anything those instances provide a window into what we don't discuss honestly - sex, death, identity, formal education, and obeying authority.

I'd guess most of the top 10 start with "I don't have time for X", for many values of X.

If you don't have time for something, it just means you didn't make time for it. Despite what you think, it's not that valuable to you because you don't choose to do it.

I realized that by not exercising, I was explicitly saying my health or energy level were not important. Since that's just plain dumb, I started going to the gym 3x/week, and I'm going to start biking again soon.

Re: Lies We Tell Kids

#100

Post by danohuiginn »

Alex3917 wrote: post #42
wallflower wrote: post #7

"Probably the biggest lie told in schools, though, is that the way to succeed is through following "the rules." In fact most such rules are just hacks to manage large groups efficiently." Reminds me of something Seth Godin (?) once said - that the whole purpose of school is to institutionalize mediocrity

The main tool used by schools to manage large groups is competition. Whenever you get two or more people to compete then they have to be, by definition, doing the same thing. The rest of the rules are only there to cover the corner cases that competition misses. Similarly, no one who is the best at something can ever, by definition, push the human race forward. Because to be the best at something means you have to be…

To move forward you have to, by definition, be going in the same direction. The freakish geniuses change the human race, but it's the loyal hard-workers who move it forward.

[sorry to quibble over semantics, but it was too obvious an opportunity to pass p]

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