4 ms·

I often think, and find it amusing, that as adults we think we've grown out of many childish tendencies, but collectively we haven't. Our interactions are just

I often think, and find it amusing, that as adults we think we've grown out of many childish tendencies, but collectively we haven't. Our interactions are just a bit more complex, but fundamentally the same. In this case, it's very obvious: How often do you give your political party the benefit of the doubt, yet anything you hear or see from the one you disagree with, you immediately think of in the worse possible light? Or how often do you see one person at work do one or two stupid things and then ever since you just think they're an idiot and can't provide any value to you? We often decide we don't like some person, and it's very hard to change our views after that. I think we're childlike in other ways too. There was a documentary I saw once which followed some 6 year olds around a school. They got into exactly the same kind of silly drama us grownups do: love triangles, fights, lying, groupthink, etc. Exactly as grownups do. It was hilarious, frightening and enlightening. Sometimes we can break out of these immature tendencies of course, but it definitely requires maturity and mental energy, something I don't think anyone is capable of 100% of the time.

bell-cot 5y ago
At least in my social set, "toddlers and adults are about the same - except the adults mostly have filters [between their feelings and their words/actions] and the toddlers mostly don't" seems to be common wisdom.
lanstin 5y ago
This is why the best thing I ever did for my software career was be a stay at home dad for three years. If you can make your gaggle of kids keep making forward motion towards some arbitrary goal, you can do the same with a gaggle of software engineers. Judging what people aren't saying but are feeling; assessing hunger and irritation that rule out rational conversation for the time being; framing things in a way designed to get "yes," etc. etc. The learnings are infinitely useful. Plus of course, even tho my gaggle has grown up to opinionated young adults, we still seem to enjoy a warm and fulfilling connection which I enjoy quite as much as a refactoring that shrinks the code base. Also you learn the importance of self-mastery, of taking care to keep yourself in your rational side where you can provide the missing pieces, of support, creativity, steadfastness or flexibility, that the group needs for happy outcomes.
- topkai22 5y ago
  I totally relate to this. I didn’t take time off, but I am the stay at home parent/primary care giver. Having children also led me to volunteer teaching ski lessons to 4-5 year olds and occasionally help out in the classroom. The things I’ve learned on how to cajole, incentivize, and motivate my/others children transfers surprisingly well on how to deal with adults. After a brief dip in very early childhood (AKA the sleepless time) it felt like my career took off after children, as I gained a reputation for being a leader people wanted to work with/for. Now correlation is not causation, but I definitely think I gained experiences having and raising kids that made me more capable as a leader.
  - earleybird 5y ago
    As another point of anecdata - kids did help when working with direct reports, and, flipping the arrow categorically, there came a time when leading a team helped with my children as young adults.
- hinkley 5y ago
  I think the last episode of The Rookie has a scene where a lady is trying to talk to one of the main characters while they're trying to wrangle a daylight drunk individual. The lady intervenes and gets the drunk to sit quietly on the curb. Then announces, "I teach fourth graders," by way of explaining how that worked.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
  My mother has an associate degree from a community college in early childhood psychology, and was a kindergarten teacher for a couple decades. Eventually it got physically tiring, so she left to take a grunt-level desk job at our local ISP. She immediately rocketed up the corporate ladder. Even as a middle-aged woman with zero relevant experience and no bachelor's degree, she was put in charge of ~100 people within a few short years. She said the same thing as you: many of her learnings about how to manage a classroom of young children also happened to apply to managing a team of full-grown adults. (She was also killer at speaking in front a group because she'd been doing it for decades in the front of a classroom.)
fumeux_fume 5y ago
I strongly agree. Reading books about parenting like "The Kazdin Method for Parenting the Defiant Child: With No Pills, No Therapy, No Contest of Wills" has done wonders for dealing with adults in my personal life and at work.
tarsinge 5y ago
Thinking we should grow out of morality because it's childish is a good excuse though.
soheil 5y ago
Not sure why you keep emphasizing the immaturity aspect. If you look at animals they pretty much do all the above too. It's a deep part of who we are and something much more fundamental than simply not being mature enough. It's like saying humans need water at an early age, but as they grow older they can sometimes resist that temptation. Therefore thirst is a sign of immaturity. There could be very valid game-theoretical reasons for why we evolved the way we did.
globular-toast 5y ago
I find it funny that we teach children to share, while us adults design and participate in insanely complex systems to make sure we don't have to.
guerrilla 5y ago
What was that documentary called?
mbrodersen 5y ago
I would love to see that documentary. Can you remember the title or director or narrator?
watwut 5y ago
Why do you think love triangle or fight or lying is silly drama?
- DrammBA 5y ago
  Is it not?
- _jal 5y ago
  Whether it is 'silly', 'tragic', 'horrible' or something else usually depends on the stakes, not the activity. It is certainly drama, and at least by volume, I'd say all of the above are usually silly.
Quarrelsome 5y ago
I would argue these tendencies are not all necessarily childish. From the OP the very act of judging someone based on your interaction is akin to the lesson: If someone fucks with you then don't take their shit. Which is good life advice for anyone.
runnerup 5y ago
I would argue the same thing, but rephrased for "our species" as compared to other "social mammals" like cats/dogs/cows/pigs/squirrels/otters/etc. I think people greatly underestimate how much of our brains are still from the millions of years of mammalian evolution prior to tool-use. I think we all have mainly the same feelings and motivations, although obviously each species, and each line of each species, have varying proportions and defaults. The primary difference, I think, is that we can use complex speech to communicate these feelings, and use complex tools to manifest what we are motivated towards. I think this book about training dogs has a huge wealth of actionable knowledge needed to interact with humans...because while we do have other additional complexities layered on top of this, we also still have everything in this book. And the base layers (which we share with dogs) are potentially more "powerful" and fundamental to who we are than the final complex (and fragile) layers that we've evolved only very recently. 0: http://libgen.rs/search.php?req=perfect+Sophia+yin http://libgen.rs/search.php?req=perfect+Sophia+yin (view in the excellent SumatraPDF or your favorite .epub reader)
- clairity 5y ago
  > "...training dogs has a huge wealth of actionable knowledge needed to interact with humans..." yah, i couch this as 'dogs are first-order humans', feeling many of the same emotions (joy, pleasure, contentment, anger, fear, hurt, etc.) but more plainly and openly, without language (standing in for our more developed frontal lobes) as an indirection layer. that (indirectly) leads to the notion that in the best of circumstances, you don't train (or own) a dog, you develop trust (and a relationship) with them, for which they're willing to cede their independence to your judgement, much like humans and leadership. the leader has to prove their worth to the group, not the other way around.

bell-cot 5y ago

At least in my social set, "toddlers and adults are about the same - except the adults mostly have filters [between their feelings and their words/actions] and the toddlers mostly don't" seems to be common wisdom.

lanstin 5y ago

This is why the best thing I ever did for my software career was be a stay at home dad for three years. If you can make your gaggle of kids keep making forward motion towards some arbitrary goal, you can do the same with a gaggle of software engineers. Judging what people aren't saying but are feeling; assessing hunger and irritation that rule out rational conversation for the time being; framing things in a way designed to get "yes," etc. etc. The learnings are infinitely useful. Plus of course, even tho my gaggle has grown up to opinionated young adults, we still seem to enjoy a warm and fulfilling connection which I enjoy quite as much as a refactoring that shrinks the code base. Also you learn the importance of self-mastery, of taking care to keep yourself in your rational side where you can provide the missing pieces, of support, creativity, steadfastness or flexibility, that the group needs for happy outcomes.

topkai22 5y ago
I totally relate to this. I didn’t take time off, but I am the stay at home parent/primary care giver. Having children also led me to volunteer teaching ski lessons to 4-5 year olds and occasionally help out in the classroom. The things I’ve learned on how to cajole, incentivize, and motivate my/others children transfers surprisingly well on how to deal with adults. After a brief dip in very early childhood (AKA the sleepless time) it felt like my career took off after children, as I gained a reputation for being a leader people wanted to work with/for. Now correlation is not causation, but I definitely think I gained experiences having and raising kids that made me more capable as a leader.
- earleybird 5y ago
  As another point of anecdata - kids did help when working with direct reports, and, flipping the arrow categorically, there came a time when leading a team helped with my children as young adults.
hinkley 5y ago
I think the last episode of The Rookie has a scene where a lady is trying to talk to one of the main characters while they're trying to wrangle a daylight drunk individual. The lady intervenes and gets the drunk to sit quietly on the curb. Then announces, "I teach fourth graders," by way of explaining how that worked.
rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
My mother has an associate degree from a community college in early childhood psychology, and was a kindergarten teacher for a couple decades. Eventually it got physically tiring, so she left to take a grunt-level desk job at our local ISP. She immediately rocketed up the corporate ladder. Even as a middle-aged woman with zero relevant experience and no bachelor's degree, she was put in charge of ~100 people within a few short years. She said the same thing as you: many of her learnings about how to manage a classroom of young children also happened to apply to managing a team of full-grown adults. (She was also killer at speaking in front a group because she'd been doing it for decades in the front of a classroom.)

fumeux_fume 5y ago

I strongly agree. Reading books about parenting like "The Kazdin Method for Parenting the Defiant Child: With No Pills, No Therapy, No Contest of Wills" has done wonders for dealing with adults in my personal life and at work.

tarsinge 5y ago

Thinking we should grow out of morality because it's childish is a good excuse though.

soheil 5y ago

Not sure why you keep emphasizing the immaturity aspect. If you look at animals they pretty much do all the above too. It's a deep part of who we are and something much more fundamental than simply not being mature enough. It's like saying humans need water at an early age, but as they grow older they can sometimes resist that temptation. Therefore thirst is a sign of immaturity. There could be very valid game-theoretical reasons for why we evolved the way we did.

globular-toast 5y ago

I find it funny that we teach children to share, while us adults design and participate in insanely complex systems to make sure we don't have to.

guerrilla 5y ago

What was that documentary called?

mbrodersen 5y ago

I would love to see that documentary. Can you remember the title or director or narrator?

watwut 5y ago

Why do you think love triangle or fight or lying is silly drama?

DrammBA 5y ago
Is it not?
_jal 5y ago
Whether it is 'silly', 'tragic', 'horrible' or something else usually depends on the stakes, not the activity. It is certainly drama, and at least by volume, I'd say all of the above are usually silly.

Quarrelsome 5y ago

I would argue these tendencies are not all necessarily childish. From the OP the very act of judging someone based on your interaction is akin to the lesson: If someone fucks with you then don't take their shit. Which is good life advice for anyone.

runnerup 5y ago

I would argue the same thing, but rephrased for "our species" as compared to other "social mammals" like cats/dogs/cows/pigs/squirrels/otters/etc. I think people greatly underestimate how much of our brains are still from the millions of years of mammalian evolution prior to tool-use. I think we all have mainly the same feelings and motivations, although obviously each species, and each line of each species, have varying proportions and defaults. The primary difference, I think, is that we can use complex speech to communicate these feelings, and use complex tools to manifest what we are motivated towards. I think this book about training dogs has a huge wealth of actionable knowledge needed to interact with humans...because while we do have other additional complexities layered on top of this, we also still have everything in this book. And the base layers (which we share with dogs) are potentially more "powerful" and fundamental to who we are than the final complex (and fragile) layers that we've evolved only very recently. 0: http://libgen.rs/search.php?req=perfect+Sophia+yin http://libgen.rs/search.php?req=perfect+Sophia+yin (view in the excellent SumatraPDF or your favorite .epub reader)

clairity 5y ago
> "...training dogs has a huge wealth of actionable knowledge needed to interact with humans..." yah, i couch this as 'dogs are first-order humans', feeling many of the same emotions (joy, pleasure, contentment, anger, fear, hurt, etc.) but more plainly and openly, without language (standing in for our more developed frontal lobes) as an indirection layer. that (indirectly) leads to the notion that in the best of circumstances, you don't train (or own) a dog, you develop trust (and a relationship) with them, for which they're willing to cede their independence to your judgement, much like humans and leadership. the leader has to prove their worth to the group, not the other way around.