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Earnest is my favourite word for describing that beautiful part during a child's development where they haven't yet had a negative experience from expressing th
by Quarrelsome 6y ago
Earnest is my favourite word for describing that beautiful part during a child's development where they haven't yet had a negative experience from expressing themselves earnestly. That window of time where if you ask if they know something they would proudly reply "no!" because they have no idea that there might be shame in not knowing something.
I seek to try to make myself more earnest and undo the damage of fear of retribution/shame but I'm always a bit sad when I get in trouble because I was straight forward but adult politics is sadly complex sometimes.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoTwain wrote of this: I was glad to be able to answer promptly. "I don't know!" I said.
- boxed 6y agoOnce in my 20s I hung out with some young teenagers at a summer camp for reasons. One night we were talking and one girl started asking questions and the rest of the group sneered at her "not knowing". She ignored them and kept asking because I was earnest and knowledgeable. Five minutes turned to an hour and I think everyone in that group learned (or at least heard) more about the origins of the universe, stellar evolution, evolution, chemistry, physics, etc, than they had learned in school up to that point. I sometimes wonder what happened to those people. I suspect the girl who asked questions ended up way more knowledgeable than the other 10 combined.
- warent 6y agoThe sentence you opened this up with comes across kind of concerning and gross. For reasons?
- bluntfang 6y agoI'm with you here buddy. seems like he was doing something shady the way he expressed it. probably lonely and providing alcohol/drugs for minors in order to have company.
- Quarrelsome 6y ago> it sounds shady so it probably was c'mon catch people a break. Maybe they were a former alchy giving AA advice to troubled kids, maybe they don't like talking about their religion online
- dang 6y agoThat crosses into personal attack, which is not allowed here, so please don't. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- bluntfang 6y agomaybe GP was baiting for this to get a response from you, have you considered contacting them? something like "consider not making posts that make it look like you're doing something bad with children"
- gabereiser 6y agoI’m glad I wasn’t the only one who shuttered at that sentence. A better one would have been “as a camp mentor in my 20s”...
- ignoramous 6y ago> I seek to try to make myself more earnest and undo the damage of fear of retribution/shame but I'm always a bit sad when I get in trouble because I was straight forward but adult politics is sadly complex sometimes. You might enjoy reading these two posts and discussions: "The power of ignorance" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23041281 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23041281 "Asking questions" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22729028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22729028
- swyx 6y agoI've also written about this effect, called Lampshading: https://www.swyx.io/lampshading/ https://www.swyx.io/lampshading/ asking the "stupid question" is a strength when done in taste.
- pjc50 6y agoOne of the most powerful things you can do as a senior engineer for juniors is to show by example that it's OK to ask questions and to not know all the answers. Especially if you can see that someone else isn't sure but dares not ask that question.
- lambdatronics 6y agoThanks for introducing me to that term! Right up there with 'bikeshedding' as my top new word this year. I lampshade frequently. My typical use-case: senior dev says something I think is mistaken, but nobody else questions it. How do I know whether they're just humoring him, or if they are all mentally translating between what he said & what he meant? (Btw, people do this translation often -- nobody wants to be a pedant.) Lampshading is a great way of getting people to "pop the 'why' stack" as well. https://mikebroberts.com/2003/07/29/popping-the-why-stack/ https://mikebroberts.com/2003/07/29/popping-the-why-stack/
- boh 6y agoI think you have too much optimism regarding the value of people's earnest expressions. Children are children and so their earnestness is cute and endearing (in most instances)--adults are far less charming and far more petty, self-indulgent, spineless, fickle, fearful. Social media is a cesspool largely due to all this earnestness. Fear of retribution and shame is helpful in mitigating the self-absorption embedded in most people. We'd all like to think there's something special in all of us and that the world will benefit from the light of our creativity if it was set free. Truth be told, very few people are capable of much past mimicking and repeating what already exists. People should appreciate the template of conformity that allows them to find a place in the world and not let advertising, that often leverages the idea of uniqueness to sell things, diminish the value of their mediocrity. No, given the proper "freedom" to be "earnest" you wouldn't be the next Picasso or Steve Jobs. We know because if that's who you were, that's who you'd be. Some people seem to find success in art and innovation operating in the same repressive environment, so maybe the environment is not the problem. Maybe earnestness just isn't your thing and fear/conformity is the better strategy. *grammar edits
- nitrogen 6y agoNo, given the proper "freedom" to be "earnest" you wouldn't be the next Picasso or Steve Jobs. We know because if that's who you were, that's who you'd be. This statement cannot be allowed to stand uncontested. It suggests that everyone is exactly where they ought to be, that all bullying and harassment and isolation that keeps people from reaching their potential is right and just.
- legel 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hear,_hear https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hear,_hear
- boh 6y agoThe only thing I'm suggesting is that freedom doesn't spare you from mediocrity. Real oppression, an experience the US professional middle class is largely spared of, the type experienced by the citizens of Venezuela or the people currently being held in Xinjiang re-education camps, is truly insurmountable and requires large macro shifts to institute change. To suggest individual bullying, harassment and isolation are counted as so insurmountable to a person's theoretical "potential" that the environment must change first to prompt it, is an illustration of the deep self-absorption very few people have the privilege to experience. Nothing is right or just in this context.
- Razengan 6y ago> Earnest is my favourite word for describing that beautiful part during a child's development where they haven't yet had a negative experience from expressing themselves earnestly. ... but adult politics is sadly complex sometimes. And we’re narrowing that window by exposing children to social politics earlier on through likes and upvotes and whatnot.
- maxerickson 6y agoPreschoolers have traditionally been well aware of social politics, carefully choosing what aspects of their home life to reveal to their peers.
- pdonis 6y agoThis is a different definition of "earnest" from the one pg is using in the article, although there probably is a relationship between them: children at the age you describe are interested in things for the sake of the things themselves and not for what the child can get out of them, and "expressing yourself" is one of those things they're interested in for the sake of the thing itself. It's much easier for young children to be like this because all of the stuff that older people think about that basically boils down to "how is this going to affect what other people think of me?" isn't even visible to the children, so it doesn't clutter up their mental processes.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]