Comments on: Generally Accepted Parenting Practices

By: Lucklucky

Lucklucky — Sun, 26 Apr 2015 07:45:01 +0000

Another co-argument could be societal specialization, specialization breads a narrative of perfection, obsessiveness: indoctrination and consequent evolution up to paranoid levels. Everyone of us can go over the top in every subject because now we can. Being parent is like being a top athlete dedicating inordinate amounts of resources to the project.

By: Lucklucky

Lucklucky — Sun, 26 Apr 2015 07:37:26 +0000

What about societal evolution and its “muscle memory”?

Protecting children is so good that societal evolution takes it to paroxysm.

By: Alrenous

Alrenous — Sat, 25 Apr 2015 00:47:50 +0000

Derp.

The actual trigger is the belief the event is preventable. Traffic fatalities are ‘accidents.’ They just happen, you accept them if they do. Kidnappings or terrorism are agent-caused. Agents can be influenced, unlike Lady Luck.

Since hobbits don’t have ‘low probability’ only ‘zero’ and ‘moderate,’ they think there’s a moderate chance of kidnapping, which they can prevent. They go into a death spiral, looking for feedback that the interventions are working. Solution: tell them it’s hopeless and they can’t do anything.

Ironically traffic accidents are preventable.

By: Alrenous

Alrenous — Sat, 25 Apr 2015 00:12:13 +0000

“I need certainty that this thing won’t happen!”
“You can’t have certainty.”
“PC LOAD LETTER”

As a leader your options are to assure them, which means you’ll lose most of your authority if the thing does happen, or to not assure them, meaning they go into self-amplifying hysterics. Apparently we’ve gone with option B.

By: Bill

Bill — Fri, 24 Apr 2015 22:25:20 +0000

I’d also like to point out what we miss in not giving our children the absolute freedom that I had in childhood. As an 8 year-old, I could go where I wanted and had complete control over my time (as long as I was back by dinner, of course!). I’d meet with my friends at a local park, and we organized all of our own activities. We never participated in stuff that was organized by adults; no coaches yelling at us, no scoutmasters telling us the rules, no parents driving us here and there, organizing all our social interactions (“playdates”).

I think that too many people are used to the idea that someone else is going to organize all their time, find things for them to do, organize who their friends are, feed and house them, etc. Is that one of the reason so many young people finish college and then promptly return home?

This level of dependence is extremely attractive to the principal owners of our economy, and the politicians who run things for them.

By: Bill

Bill — Fri, 24 Apr 2015 22:06:28 +0000

I like both of the items listed, but I’d add one. I can’t remember the book, but Dick Cheney made a big deal about how outcomes that are extremely unlikely (1%… 1/10 of 1%…1/100 of 1%) were still too horrific to even contemplate, and if we had to give up all of our freedom and political liberty, and go deep into debt, we had to do it.

We’ve really lost our perspective. 9/11 was terrible; 3,000 people died. But yet 3,000 people die EVERY MONTH on American roads, men, women and children, and I never hear about a $1trillion war on traffic fatalities.