“Turned out alright” is different from “turned out optimally.”
I definitely think a case could be made (and in fact it would be my default hypothesis) that the way things have been run since the beginning of time are largely suboptimal, specifically in that they cause vast amounts of unnecessary suffering. This seems like a perfectly good definition of abuse to me. It is also the case that almost everyone raised before, say 1900 was malnourished and subject to significant child labor and often physical abuse. These are unquestionably abuse by today’s standards, but a lot of people managed to “turn out alright” despite all that.
It is and should be the case that as time progresses, things get better. The sexual permissiveness of our current age is (I believe likely to be) one facet of that.
I definitely think a case could be made (and in fact it would be my default hypothesis) that the way things have been run since the beginning of time are largely suboptimal, specifically in that they cause vast amounts of unnecessary suffering.
Really? My default assumption is that if something has been around forever it’s at least a local optimum, since otherwise it would have been changed a long time ago. Seriously what are the odds that you’ve noticed an actually improvement that nobody else in it’s history has noticed. To quote Chesterton
There are reformers who get over this difficulty by assuming that all their fathers were fools; but if that be so, we can only say that folly appears to be a hereditary disease.
My default assumption is that if something has been around forever it’s at least a local optimum, since otherwise it would have been changed a long time ago.
A local equilibrium is different from a local optimum. It’s not that nobody has noticed it, it’s that the Nash equilibrium is to worry more about signalling than improving. The traditions are doing something right; they’re enforcing a meme which is successful in the ancestral environment. That’s just not what I want them to be doing. I can’t make a Cadillac a better luxury car, but I can make it much better at catching rain water.
I agree that my claims could use citations, and the date of 1900 was certainly arbitrary; I don’t have good references off hand per se but the fact that nutritional science is STILL so controversial and unsettled suggests to me that people have not been properly nourished and will continue not to be until someone figures out what proper nourishment is. I would also guess that it is the case that most people today in Africa, India, and much of China are malnourished, though again I don’t have citations offhand. I will try to find some tomorrow when I have more time if you like.
This is not obviously a bad thing. See this essay by Paul Graham for a good discussion for why our modern school system is arguably worse.
I don’t think that I actually disagree with you very much here. The modern school system is awful in a great many ways. On the other hand, some people (myself included) have good experiences which I don’t think would be possible working ten hours a day at a factory, for instance. I also think that people get vastly more access to knowledge at a public school than working on a farm. The system sucks terribly but I think “worse” is a bit of a stretch.
Are you conflating spanking with abuse here? If so, we really need to taboo the word “abuse”.
I would say that much if not most of the time spanking causes significant and unnecessary suffering, so yes that counts as abuse in my book.
I suspect that we have wildly different moral intuitions here, but my basic premise is that significant and unnecessary suffering is bad, and should be avoided, and has happened a lot to most people. This hasn’t necessarily caused them to be worse people, but it hasn’t helped them be better people so I’d say it is bad.
I hope that I have sufficiently taboo’d abuse; I have tried to use it only when I explicitly define it, and in my previous post only to reference things which I believe would fit the legal definition.
A local equilibrium is different from a local optimum. It’s not that nobody has noticed it, it’s that the Nash equilibrium is to worry more about signalling than improving.
Keep in mind that unilaterally deviating from a Nash equilibrium doesn’t work. Furthermore, even if you successfully convince other people to also deviate unless the new state is also a Nash equilibrium, you’ll ultimately wind up loosing to the defectors. In any case, I tend to find the “modern” approaches are frequently much heavier on signalling than the traditional ones.
[Spanking] hasn’t necessarily caused them to be worse people, but it hasn’t helped them be better people so I’d say it is bad.
I don’t really agree with the last point. Furthermore, the modern solution to misbehaving children appears to be to drug them with Prozac or something similar which almost certainly does more harm then spanking.
I agree that finding Nash equilibria is important to society, but I think there is great benefit, especially among LWers, to individuals who sacrifice status for values like honesty and truth. Creating ways for these to be Nash equilibria is the only way to make the world more rational, but not the only way to make oneself more rational.
Suggesting a specific alternative method for dealing with misbehaving children does not make the option you first presented better. Not being a parent or a developmental psychologist, I do not know what the best methods would be, but I do sincerely doubt that either spanking or Prozac are among them with rare exceptions.
It seems to me, especially with your specific comparison of Prozac versus spanking (in which you misinterpret my final sentence, which was intended to be a general statement about suffering not a specific statement about spanking), that you have specific political ideas wrapped up in this discussion, entirely separate from the factual issue of whether or not people are better off raised in a sexually repressive or permissive environment. I suspect that continuing this conversation will not be very productive.
“Turned out alright” is different from “turned out optimally.”
I definitely think a case could be made (and in fact it would be my default hypothesis) that the way things have been run since the beginning of time are largely suboptimal, specifically in that they cause vast amounts of unnecessary suffering. This seems like a perfectly good definition of abuse to me. It is also the case that almost everyone raised before, say 1900 was malnourished and subject to significant child labor and often physical abuse. These are unquestionably abuse by today’s standards, but a lot of people managed to “turn out alright” despite all that.
It is and should be the case that as time progresses, things get better. The sexual permissiveness of our current age is (I believe likely to be) one facet of that.
Really? My default assumption is that if something has been around forever it’s at least a local optimum, since otherwise it would have been changed a long time ago. Seriously what are the odds that you’ve noticed an actually improvement that nobody else in it’s history has noticed. To quote Chesterton
Seriously, the fact that a tradition has survived a long time is evidence that it is doing something right.
[citation please]
This is not obviously a bad thing. See this essay by Paul Graham for a good discussion for why our modern school system is arguably worse.
Are you conflating spanking with abuse here? If so, we really need to taboo the word “abuse”.
A local equilibrium is different from a local optimum. It’s not that nobody has noticed it, it’s that the Nash equilibrium is to worry more about signalling than improving. The traditions are doing something right; they’re enforcing a meme which is successful in the ancestral environment. That’s just not what I want them to be doing. I can’t make a Cadillac a better luxury car, but I can make it much better at catching rain water.
I agree that my claims could use citations, and the date of 1900 was certainly arbitrary; I don’t have good references off hand per se but the fact that nutritional science is STILL so controversial and unsettled suggests to me that people have not been properly nourished and will continue not to be until someone figures out what proper nourishment is. I would also guess that it is the case that most people today in Africa, India, and much of China are malnourished, though again I don’t have citations offhand. I will try to find some tomorrow when I have more time if you like.
I don’t think that I actually disagree with you very much here. The modern school system is awful in a great many ways. On the other hand, some people (myself included) have good experiences which I don’t think would be possible working ten hours a day at a factory, for instance. I also think that people get vastly more access to knowledge at a public school than working on a farm. The system sucks terribly but I think “worse” is a bit of a stretch.
I would say that much if not most of the time spanking causes significant and unnecessary suffering, so yes that counts as abuse in my book.
I suspect that we have wildly different moral intuitions here, but my basic premise is that significant and unnecessary suffering is bad, and should be avoided, and has happened a lot to most people. This hasn’t necessarily caused them to be worse people, but it hasn’t helped them be better people so I’d say it is bad.
I hope that I have sufficiently taboo’d abuse; I have tried to use it only when I explicitly define it, and in my previous post only to reference things which I believe would fit the legal definition.
Keep in mind that unilaterally deviating from a Nash equilibrium doesn’t work. Furthermore, even if you successfully convince other people to also deviate unless the new state is also a Nash equilibrium, you’ll ultimately wind up loosing to the defectors. In any case, I tend to find the “modern” approaches are frequently much heavier on signalling than the traditional ones.
I don’t really agree with the last point. Furthermore, the modern solution to misbehaving children appears to be to drug them with Prozac or something similar which almost certainly does more harm then spanking.
I agree that finding Nash equilibria is important to society, but I think there is great benefit, especially among LWers, to individuals who sacrifice status for values like honesty and truth. Creating ways for these to be Nash equilibria is the only way to make the world more rational, but not the only way to make oneself more rational.
Suggesting a specific alternative method for dealing with misbehaving children does not make the option you first presented better. Not being a parent or a developmental psychologist, I do not know what the best methods would be, but I do sincerely doubt that either spanking or Prozac are among them with rare exceptions.
It seems to me, especially with your specific comparison of Prozac versus spanking (in which you misinterpret my final sentence, which was intended to be a general statement about suffering not a specific statement about spanking), that you have specific political ideas wrapped up in this discussion, entirely separate from the factual issue of whether or not people are better off raised in a sexually repressive or permissive environment. I suspect that continuing this conversation will not be very productive.