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Honestly, I'm less concerned with whether or not a comment is made in good faith, as whether or not it fosters interesting or useful conversation. Questions ma

by yarg 3y ago

Honestly, I'm less concerned with whether or not a comment is made in good faith, as whether or not it fosters interesting or useful conversation. Questions made in bad faith generally get rebutted (and downvoted) but bad faith arguments are really only fundamentally uninteresting if they've already been so thoroughly rebutted that there's no further conversation to have. And the fundamental truth about it is that our society isn't even mature enough to ask the questions - which is why they even work as bad faith rhetorical devices in the first place. But either way, I wouldn't go as far as asked in bad faith - his comment was more snarky or snide. But either way, not uninteresting.

knaik94 3y ago
The reason why I called it bad faith is because I am not seeing the possiblity of a positive follow up to your response to that question. In my experience, it's usually a way for them to make a rebuttal that shows a larger lack of sympathy. More than a few times the follow up to me acknowledging that I was likely difficult to raise was them using that to dismiss or invalidate the seriousness of situation. I am not sure why the default assumption someone would have is that you failed to see the situation from your parent's perspective. But I also recognize that I may just personally be tired of having to respond to that question. If the discussion goes on long enough, one of the more interesting conclusions is the classical ethics question, what kind of net benefit will justify an evil act? Not really on topic for HN though. https://fee.org/articles/why-the-ethics-of-would-you-kill-baby-hitler-are-more-important-than-you-probably-think/ https://fee.org/articles/why-the-ethics-of-would-you-kill-ba...
- yarg 3y ago
  As per the guidelines, anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. The question of why we are the way we are and (even intergenerationally) we seem to be unable to do anything about it seems interesting enough to qualify to me. Might be wrong.
watwut 3y ago
For me, it is that implied assumption in it - if 5 years old (or whatever) is annoying he deserves abuse. Because fact is, even when the kid is difficult, telling them stuff you wrote here makes everything worst. It is not about teaching them better behavior or otherwise working on them. It is adult taking revenge so that adult feels good.
- yarg 3y ago
  It's not that the child deserves abuse, it's that parents are put in a situation that they cannot handle without the tools to deal with it. The situation is never going to change if you refuse to consider the contributing factors - a stubborn child is hard to deal with, especially under resource restricted circumstances. Denying that reality does nothing to improve either the child's or parent's behaviour or the manners in which each responds to the others.
  - watwut 3y ago
    I am parent and one of my kids is stubborn. (One of my friends described her as "prototype of stubbornness", it was really defining temperamental feature, and not just my observation.) Stubborn kid is not what causes abuse, commitment to absolute control over the kid does. There are definitely more difficult issues with kids then stubbornness. And that is the issue with this argument - perfectly normal kids gets treated badly and blamed for perfectly normal behavior. Yes, kids with issues end up being abused more often, but you do not even describe yourself having adhd or autism or some other hard issue. ------------------- When I became parent, I became less tolerant of these "maybe the kid was just too hard". Because, I realized that decision between abuse or not is fairly often conscious choice. Adults say hurtful things to manipulate kids into what they want or to vent their emotions. They know full well what they are doing, they just think they are entitled to do it. Or they genuinely think that the kid is not entitled better treatment and deserves it. It is not always inability to do otherwise in technical sense. It is unwillingness to do so and sense that it is just to hurt the kid. When I became parent, I gained some insight into some of what my mom did. More understanding did not lead to "parents were actually right I see now" nonsense. I became retroactively angry, because I realized how much of "bad stuff" was knowing and intentional. (It was not even abuse, nothing that bad. More of, stuff like insulting me to manipulate me into something. That sort of more minor stuff. But still, conscious.)

by yarg 3y ago

knaik94 3y ago

The reason why I called it bad faith is because I am not seeing the possiblity of a positive follow up to your response to that question. In my experience, it's usually a way for them to make a rebuttal that shows a larger lack of sympathy. More than a few times the follow up to me acknowledging that I was likely difficult to raise was them using that to dismiss or invalidate the seriousness of situation. I am not sure why the default assumption someone would have is that you failed to see the situation from your parent's perspective. But I also recognize that I may just personally be tired of having to respond to that question. If the discussion goes on long enough, one of the more interesting conclusions is the classical ethics question, what kind of net benefit will justify an evil act? Not really on topic for HN though. https://fee.org/articles/why-the-ethics-of-would-you-kill-baby-hitler-are-more-important-than-you-probably-think/ https://fee.org/articles/why-the-ethics-of-would-you-kill-ba...

yarg 3y ago
As per the guidelines, anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. The question of why we are the way we are and (even intergenerationally) we seem to be unable to do anything about it seems interesting enough to qualify to me. Might be wrong.

watwut 3y ago

For me, it is that implied assumption in it - if 5 years old (or whatever) is annoying he deserves abuse. Because fact is, even when the kid is difficult, telling them stuff you wrote here makes everything worst. It is not about teaching them better behavior or otherwise working on them. It is adult taking revenge so that adult feels good.

yarg 3y ago
It's not that the child deserves abuse, it's that parents are put in a situation that they cannot handle without the tools to deal with it. The situation is never going to change if you refuse to consider the contributing factors - a stubborn child is hard to deal with, especially under resource restricted circumstances. Denying that reality does nothing to improve either the child's or parent's behaviour or the manners in which each responds to the others.
- watwut 3y ago
  I am parent and one of my kids is stubborn. (One of my friends described her as "prototype of stubbornness", it was really defining temperamental feature, and not just my observation.) Stubborn kid is not what causes abuse, commitment to absolute control over the kid does. There are definitely more difficult issues with kids then stubbornness. And that is the issue with this argument - perfectly normal kids gets treated badly and blamed for perfectly normal behavior. Yes, kids with issues end up being abused more often, but you do not even describe yourself having adhd or autism or some other hard issue. ------------------- When I became parent, I became less tolerant of these "maybe the kid was just too hard". Because, I realized that decision between abuse or not is fairly often conscious choice. Adults say hurtful things to manipulate kids into what they want or to vent their emotions. They know full well what they are doing, they just think they are entitled to do it. Or they genuinely think that the kid is not entitled better treatment and deserves it. It is not always inability to do otherwise in technical sense. It is unwillingness to do so and sense that it is just to hurt the kid. When I became parent, I gained some insight into some of what my mom did. More understanding did not lead to "parents were actually right I see now" nonsense. I became retroactively angry, because I realized how much of "bad stuff" was knowing and intentional. (It was not even abuse, nothing that bad. More of, stuff like insulting me to manipulate me into something. That sort of more minor stuff. But still, conscious.)