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Why is the cynical view not appropriate? I'm much more suspicious of the idea that something was implemented with everyone's best interests in mind if there isn

Why is the cynical view not appropriate? I'm much more suspicious of the idea that something was implemented with everyone's best interests in mind if there isn't strong evidence pointing there. > To be successful in pretty much anything requires discipline and some level of regimented behaviour. There's no evidence to confirm this statement, even though it may sound like common sense. And this post reads odd. The current school model is very old. If schools exist to instill discipline, and discipline is required for success, I'd expect everyone to be super successful right now.

AmericanChopper 8y ago
There is overwhelming evidence to confirm that statement. Conscientiousness is the greatest predictor of lifetime success besides intelligence, and discipline is a core element of consciousness. You’re postulating that the entire education system is conspiring together to teach children a sense of self-discipline as part of some oppressive conditioning scheme. Any form of achievement in life requires discipline. It’s completely irrational to suggest otherwise.
- jokoon 8y ago
  What kind of evidence? How do you define success? Society and civilization are built around discipline and order, but it doesn't mean you require those qualities to have success. The role of school is to teach people to fit into a civilized world. It is not oppressive, it's not always conditioning, but it's a mean to give people a chance to live a comfortable life inside the frame of civilization. Success is a different thing.
  - AmericanChopper 8y ago
    >What kind of evidence? How do you define success? Scientific evidence, and in every possibly way you could define success. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3498890/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3498890/ >This article investigates how personality and cognitive ability relate to measures of objective success (income and wealth) and subjective success (life satisfaction, positive affect, and lack of negative affect) in a representative sample of 9,646 American adults. In cross-sectional analyses controlling for demographic covariates, cognitive ability, and other Big Five traits, conscientiousness demonstrated beneficial associations of small-to-medium magnitude with all success outcomes. This is only one example, these results are replicated in many, many other studies. >Society and civilization are built around discipline and order, but it doesn't mean you require those qualities to have success. Conforming to societies expectations really has nothing to do with this. No matter what it is you want to achieve in life, and no matter how passionate you might be about it, any worthwhile archievement in life requires discipline. Relationships, art, sports, philosophy, career... Achievement in any of those areas requires discipline. Even if society was in a total state of disorder, you’d still need discipline to get what you want from life.
    - jokoon 8y ago
      I have a hard time with psychology as a science, it was showed many studies were not reproducible. I like psychology, but studying success and finding that discipline=success really seems like using some layman vocabulary to tell people the source of why they're unsuccessful in life, which reminds me of motivational speaking, which I despise with passion. Diagnosing people with lack of discipline is more a questions of morals, ideology of life and philosophy than science. It's not something you can do or do with results, and often it will just be about motivational speaking, which is often scamming. Conscientious people also often are conformists, which to me is not a good thing. "Big Five personality traits" and the HEXACO models seems like pseudo science to me, because I don't think you can precisely define those things with a study of behavior, and come with relevant and applicable notions of those metrics. We are in an age of the study of AI, and psychology sounds like it's the alchemy of the study of the brain. It might work in some places, but I don't think we can rely on it. Worse, I hardly think you can use psychology in a thoughtful process of helping people without sounding like a madman.
- projektir 8y ago
  I think me and you have very different requirements for "overwhelming evidence" when it comes making a sociological claim. These are extremely difficult claims to prove and get overtuned pretty frequently. If it's a claim that seems to change every 5 years and is highly reliant on the society it was based on, the evidence for it was probably never overwhelming. I'm not sure if there's much to conscientousness besides the associated correlation with obedience to authority making it easier to get benefits from said authority. > You’re postulating that the entire education system is conspiring together... I'm not really postulating that, it's rather unnecessary. Lots of bad things are done to humans and bought as cargo cult without anyone singularly conspiring for it. It's sufficient a general philosophical belief set to have been present long enough to influence some system or structure, and then you can get stuck with it for a few hundred years. This happens all the time to everything from parenting models to gender stereotypes. It's much more insidious than some people conspiring because it lives much longer than any given person. > Any form of achievement in life requires discipline. It’s completely irrational to suggest otherwise. Given that there are carefree goofballs getting what they want and extremely hardworking, dilligent single mothers working three jobs... I think such a strong belief in discipline is much more irrational. It's rather self-focused, if you think about it. You think you're more powerful than the world.
  - AmericanChopper 8y ago
    Without trying to be rude, you’re talking from a position of complete ignorance on this topic. For starters, this is about psychology not sociology. The big five and intelligence are the only measurable qualities that been used consistently and over time to make predictions. This isn’t some flash in the pan pop-science, out of everything the field has produced, the big five is one of the only things you could point to and say “that’s definently science”, and out of them conscientiousness makes the strongest predictions of all. You also don’t seem to even know what conscientiousness is. >Conscientiousness is the personality trait of a person who shows an awareness of the impact that their own behavior has on those around them. Conscientious people are generally more goal-oriented in their motives, ambitious in their academic efforts and at work, and feel more comfortable when they are well-prepared and organized. It can be broken down further into subcategories if orderliness and industriousness. Neither of those qualities are related to “obedience to authority”. Agreeableness is, but agreeableness is an entirely different personality trait. Industrious people are often very disagreeable.

AmericanChopper 8y ago

There is overwhelming evidence to confirm that statement. Conscientiousness is the greatest predictor of lifetime success besides intelligence, and discipline is a core element of consciousness. You’re postulating that the entire education system is conspiring together to teach children a sense of self-discipline as part of some oppressive conditioning scheme. Any form of achievement in life requires discipline. It’s completely irrational to suggest otherwise.

jokoon 8y ago
What kind of evidence? How do you define success? Society and civilization are built around discipline and order, but it doesn't mean you require those qualities to have success. The role of school is to teach people to fit into a civilized world. It is not oppressive, it's not always conditioning, but it's a mean to give people a chance to live a comfortable life inside the frame of civilization. Success is a different thing.
- AmericanChopper 8y ago
  >What kind of evidence? How do you define success? Scientific evidence, and in every possibly way you could define success. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3498890/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3498890/ >This article investigates how personality and cognitive ability relate to measures of objective success (income and wealth) and subjective success (life satisfaction, positive affect, and lack of negative affect) in a representative sample of 9,646 American adults. In cross-sectional analyses controlling for demographic covariates, cognitive ability, and other Big Five traits, conscientiousness demonstrated beneficial associations of small-to-medium magnitude with all success outcomes. This is only one example, these results are replicated in many, many other studies. >Society and civilization are built around discipline and order, but it doesn't mean you require those qualities to have success. Conforming to societies expectations really has nothing to do with this. No matter what it is you want to achieve in life, and no matter how passionate you might be about it, any worthwhile archievement in life requires discipline. Relationships, art, sports, philosophy, career... Achievement in any of those areas requires discipline. Even if society was in a total state of disorder, you’d still need discipline to get what you want from life.
  - jokoon 8y ago
    I have a hard time with psychology as a science, it was showed many studies were not reproducible. I like psychology, but studying success and finding that discipline=success really seems like using some layman vocabulary to tell people the source of why they're unsuccessful in life, which reminds me of motivational speaking, which I despise with passion. Diagnosing people with lack of discipline is more a questions of morals, ideology of life and philosophy than science. It's not something you can do or do with results, and often it will just be about motivational speaking, which is often scamming. Conscientious people also often are conformists, which to me is not a good thing. "Big Five personality traits" and the HEXACO models seems like pseudo science to me, because I don't think you can precisely define those things with a study of behavior, and come with relevant and applicable notions of those metrics. We are in an age of the study of AI, and psychology sounds like it's the alchemy of the study of the brain. It might work in some places, but I don't think we can rely on it. Worse, I hardly think you can use psychology in a thoughtful process of helping people without sounding like a madman.
projektir 8y ago
I think me and you have very different requirements for "overwhelming evidence" when it comes making a sociological claim. These are extremely difficult claims to prove and get overtuned pretty frequently. If it's a claim that seems to change every 5 years and is highly reliant on the society it was based on, the evidence for it was probably never overwhelming. I'm not sure if there's much to conscientousness besides the associated correlation with obedience to authority making it easier to get benefits from said authority. > You’re postulating that the entire education system is conspiring together... I'm not really postulating that, it's rather unnecessary. Lots of bad things are done to humans and bought as cargo cult without anyone singularly conspiring for it. It's sufficient a general philosophical belief set to have been present long enough to influence some system or structure, and then you can get stuck with it for a few hundred years. This happens all the time to everything from parenting models to gender stereotypes. It's much more insidious than some people conspiring because it lives much longer than any given person. > Any form of achievement in life requires discipline. It’s completely irrational to suggest otherwise. Given that there are carefree goofballs getting what they want and extremely hardworking, dilligent single mothers working three jobs... I think such a strong belief in discipline is much more irrational. It's rather self-focused, if you think about it. You think you're more powerful than the world.
- AmericanChopper 8y ago
  Without trying to be rude, you’re talking from a position of complete ignorance on this topic. For starters, this is about psychology not sociology. The big five and intelligence are the only measurable qualities that been used consistently and over time to make predictions. This isn’t some flash in the pan pop-science, out of everything the field has produced, the big five is one of the only things you could point to and say “that’s definently science”, and out of them conscientiousness makes the strongest predictions of all. You also don’t seem to even know what conscientiousness is. >Conscientiousness is the personality trait of a person who shows an awareness of the impact that their own behavior has on those around them. Conscientious people are generally more goal-oriented in their motives, ambitious in their academic efforts and at work, and feel more comfortable when they are well-prepared and organized. It can be broken down further into subcategories if orderliness and industriousness. Neither of those qualities are related to “obedience to authority”. Agreeableness is, but agreeableness is an entirely different personality trait. Industrious people are often very disagreeable.