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When your standards are the human race dying out or not, of course they'll be fine, and the survivors of all the other disasters have been too. But as a parent

When your standards are the human race dying out or not, of course they'll be fine, and the survivors of all the other disasters have been too. But as a parent of young kids, my standards are clearly higher than that. As I said before, I want the world to be better for them than it was for the survivors of all those other disasters. On this forum, you're well-known and rightly get a lot of respect. You're a great technologist. If you were to just tell me something about programming language design, I'd generally assume you're right. If you gave rationale and sources, that's a bonus for my education. But on this thread...how do I put this nicely. As far as I know, you're not an expert in early childhood development, you're not a public school teacher, etc. I don't even know if you've been around children going through this. It doesn't comfort me much when you say they'll be fine. You're just some guy on the Internet. I know kids who've gone through this are struggling in many ways. My kids will probably be fine in the long run because I have the resources to help them. That still won't happen without considerable angst and effort on my part, that of their teachers, etc. Many other kids might be fine by your standards but not by mine. I'm not an expert in early childhood development either, but my understanding is there are certain critical years for language and social development that are golden opportunities. If those opportunities are missed, it's hard to fully replace them.

WalterBright 5y ago
> It doesn't comfort me much when you say they'll be fine. As for me, I personally know people who went through WW2. They would not talk about what they went through. But I know, from reading many accounts of WW2, that what millions of people went through is worse than can be imagined. And yes, the children suffered terribly. In Britain, where the children were separated from their parents for the duration of the war, and sent to live with strangers in the countryside. It was much, much, MUCH worse for the children on the continent. And yet they grew up to be, by and large, ordinary, productive citizens. If you did not know their history, you would not see any difference in their behavior from people who did not go through such experiences. I also personally know Vietnam boat people who live in my neighborhood. I also know an Afghanistan person who escaped the collapse last summer and arrived here safely with his whole family. He's doing fine rebuilding his life here. No, you don't have to believe me. I agree, you shouldn't believe some guy on the internet. But there are people all around you who have survived major trauma, and are doing well. You just may not recognize them, because they are doing well. Yes, some people are broken by trauma. Most are not. We live in a time that is so free of trauma that we need to invent trauma. We live in a golden age of security, health, and plenty. But this is, historically speaking, highly abnormal.
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WalterBright 5y ago

> It doesn't comfort me much when you say they'll be fine. As for me, I personally know people who went through WW2. They would not talk about what they went through. But I know, from reading many accounts of WW2, that what millions of people went through is worse than can be imagined. And yes, the children suffered terribly. In Britain, where the children were separated from their parents for the duration of the war, and sent to live with strangers in the countryside. It was much, much, MUCH worse for the children on the continent. And yet they grew up to be, by and large, ordinary, productive citizens. If you did not know their history, you would not see any difference in their behavior from people who did not go through such experiences. I also personally know Vietnam boat people who live in my neighborhood. I also know an Afghanistan person who escaped the collapse last summer and arrived here safely with his whole family. He's doing fine rebuilding his life here. No, you don't have to believe me. I agree, you shouldn't believe some guy on the internet. But there are people all around you who have survived major trauma, and are doing well. You just may not recognize them, because they are doing well. Yes, some people are broken by trauma. Most are not. We live in a time that is so free of trauma that we need to invent trauma. We live in a golden age of security, health, and plenty. But this is, historically speaking, highly abnormal.

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