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Anyone with kids knows the immediate answer to this is no. Depending on how jaded you are with the adults you interact with on a daily basis, you may think oth

• InsideOutSanta 2y ago
  Give a laser to a kid and to an adult and then measure the time between them receiving the laser, and them going blind. The delta between the two measurements is what a fully developed brain does for a person.
  • tombert 2y ago
    I hear this all the time, but I actually am a walking counterexample. I had a laser pointer when I was eight years old, my parents made it pretty clear not to point it into my eyes or anyone else's, and I managed to not blind anyone.
    • leptons 2y ago
      I was gifted a powerful blue laser pointer from a laser enthusiast friend of mine, when I was in my 40s. It was powerful enough to light things on fire. It was far too dangerous. If that thing reflected off anything and hit my eye, I'd be at least partially blind. I also lived near an airport, so if it got pointed towards the sky, I'd be asking for trouble. I gave the laser pointer back to my friend. I kind of doubt the laser pointer you had was capable of blinding anyone, most laser pointers years ago were very low power. I just bought a couple hundred red diode lasers (around 5mw, or less) and they won't blind anyone. But today there are also extremely powerful laser pointers available to anyone that will blind someone in an instant.
      • tombert 2y ago
        Yeah, I have one of those things too, and they're terrifying. I wear special goggles when I use it to pop balloons or light matches. That's fair enough, this was a pretty typical "office" laser pointer you could buy in the late 90s, not terribly bright.
        • leptons 2y ago
          Point is (pertaining to the article) that 8-year old me would have kept that thing and I would be blind in at least one eye by now, but 40 year old me made a reasoned decision and gave it back.
          • tombert 2y ago
            Meh, I'm not actually sure I agree. My laser pointer wasn't too lethal, but I did have a basic woodworking kit as well, I even had some a hand-me-down circular saw from my grandfather. My parents forced me to wear safety goggles, and I managed to avoid chopping off any of my fingers.
            • leptons 2y ago
              Circular saws and lasers are vastly different in terms of safety. You don't have to worry about the reflection of a table saw in a mirror chopping your finger off, you just need to worry about the actual physical spinning blade, which makes a lot of noise and seems very dangerous - it makes you more cautious just by its nature. A high-power laser pointer (that is available today, not when you were a kid) is very dangerous, in that it operates silently, it's so compact it fits in your shirt pocket, and if it reflects off a surface and hits someone in the eye - which is easy to do - it can cause irreparable damage and the damage may not even be immediately realized. In the worst cases blindness is instant. There's no re-attaching a fingertip, there's no stopping the bleeding. Your eye is just forever damaged.
          • deleted 2y ago
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  • goatlover 2y ago
    Somehow I manage not to blind myself or my cats with a laser pointer.
    • leptons 2y ago
      Maybe you don't realize not all laser pointers are the same? Some can light things on fire, and you definitely don't want your cats to be playing with one of those. Some laser pointers won't blind you even if you point it directly at your eye, and that's likely the kind that you have.
    • bluGill 2y ago
      laser pointers are supposed to be low power such that they cannot blind anyone. Maybe yours was one of those. Though plenty exist that are too powerful and can blind people so be careful.
• ranger_danger 2y ago
  I would argue "jaded" is saying (and believing) such dogmatic answers.
  • goatlover 2y ago
    That human brains develop and change as you age? Wouldn't that be a medical fact?
    • ranger_danger 2y ago
      I was never arguing that, but I think you are correct about it
  • JPKab 2y ago
    "Dogmatic": A fully developed pre-frontal cortex is not a question of "dogma". It's something that can be clearly seen from an MRI scan of a living brain. Observations of large groups of humans of various ages have shown that the vast majority of humans under 18 don't have it and that the vast majority of humans over 25 do have it.
• tiahura 2y ago
  For most, having kids crystalizes the transformation.
  • tonyedgecombe 2y ago
    Except I know plenty of adults who don’t have kids and they seemed to make the transition without difficulty.
• steve_adams_86 2y ago
  I have kids and I agree to an extent, but also believe the inverse as well. I can see that my life has led to me maturing sufficiently to care for kids. I have the experiences, self awareness, instinctual impetus, and so on required in order to keep my kids alive (so far). And yet I have arguments with my wife that make no sense. We disagree about things, and although we like to believe we're relatively competent, reasonable, well-meaning people, we are sometimes the opposite. We're not as much unlike our kids as social norms want to imply we should be. We grow through these things as well, it gets better, we learn some lessons, but these mishaps continue to occur. We forget to start dinner early enough, the kids get to sleep a bit late. I forget to charge my watch, miss its alarm, and wake late so the morning is rushed. All these little mistakes, and all you'd generally expect from a child (and possibly even reprimand them for). At times my status as "mature adult" seems tenuous. I might tell my kids not to eat to many Christmas treats, then find myself eating several as I do the dishes. Whoops? I have to be careful that I don't convince myself I'm all that different from them, frankly. Yeah I've managed to keep things going so far (with the help of my wife), but some days it is a bit of a marvel that it all works. Not to be too self-deprecating, and I am joking slightly. I'm also increasingly aware that the state of being anything at all—what it's like to be me—is eerily similar to how it felt decades ago. I have more resources to draw upon, which is very useful, but the mode of being hasn't shifted much in longer than I can remember (literally). I can only imagine that my kids are the same. The way they exist, how they feel moment to moment, the way they perceive the world, is not at all unlike it was for me and still is today. I'm also constantly impressed with how intelligent my kids are, from early on. It isn't that they're super kids or anything. Given the right opportunities and resources though, kids are smart. They get stuff. They're constantly crunching through information and synthesizing things and making sense of the world. They're incapable of some decision-making and reasoning, without a doubt, but they deserve a lot of credit. Perhaps the bottom line is: don't take being an adult too seriously. We aren't entirely different from our kids. We are still the kids we were, too. Just hardened by a bit of experience, shaped by countless mistakes, and well-rehearsed in making stuff up as we go. If the kids are happy and healthy, all is well.
• deleted 2y ago
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• taeric 2y ago
  And many with their older parents around will tell you that the answer isn't nearly as clear cut? I swear, having our parents over is basically just another form of child in the house. Lack of impulse control when paired with older age is tough to deal with.
• Fire-Dragon-DoL 2y ago
  I mean, child no, they try to kill themselves constantly. But a teenager? The answer is not clearcut. Also as you do things as an adult, you can infer how your behavior came to be based on some experience as a child