6 ms·

This event has been written on the walls of the USA since those smart speakers and cel phones first appeared. The average US citizen has been conditioned to bel

This event has been written on the walls of the USA since those smart speakers and cel phones first appeared. The average US citizen has been conditioned to believe the 'regulation' is 'evil government' and not protection from established abusive practices - that's how regulations get created: someone (usually a corporation) abuses a public resource or good so extremely that laws are written to prevent that. Of course, those laws prevent business from exploiting the situations, so of course business educates people that regulation is evil, and the fake to destroyed education system volunteers to educate that lie too. The USA is a destroyed, hollowed out shell that manufacturers morons, on purpose, because they make desperate employees. The fact that almost no Americans can explain themselves without thinking that act is a lead up to a punishment is very telling, and then their explanation cannot be understood by anyone but a career peer because they only speak in non-communicating jargon, a parrot echoes of talking points from media. No self generated thinking, only echoes of media. It's seriously a giant problem. This nation is kaput intellectually.

A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 2y ago
George Carlin said something similar: "Governments don't want a population capable of critical thinking, they want obedient workers, people just smart enough to run the machines and just dumb enough to passively accept their situation." If true, one could argue it is a real issue, because it is not clear that the country's 'management' is intellectually on the high end either.
- influx 2y ago
  So should I be sending my kids to government schools or home schooling?
  - nkrisc 2y ago
    Depends how capable you are as a teacher and instructor. There are brilliant home-schooled kids and home-schooled kids who can barely read. Government run schools are probably better than the education an average home-school parent/guardian can provide.
  - balamatom 2y ago
    False dichotomy. After a certain age you should let them have a voice in their educational goals, and before they are able to express their preferences you should be helping them figure out what those are. You should be creating a family environment where your kids feel like people, and where they feel safe no matter what happens. You should be teaching your children to think critically and stand up for what they believe in, and setting a good example for them in terms of your personal values. If you don't have a self-consistent set of ethical values, and expect everyone else to determine those for you, I hate to break it to you, but you shouldn't have had kids.
    - rapind 2y ago
      > If you don't have a self-consistent set of ethical values, and expect everyone else to determine those for you, I hate to break it to you, but you shouldn't have had kids. Clevon's not listening to this slop and neither should anyone else. Unless you're a total psycho, go ahead and have kids. They are wonderful and life changing. They'll probably make you a better person. You don't need to be a perfect parent. You don't need to read a bunch of heavily marketed books on how to be a good parent. You don't need to listen to internet hero advice. You'll figure it out.
      - balamatom 2y ago
        You demonstrate my point exactly. Did you even notice that you only spoke of the significance of having kids in terms of what it means for "you", i.e. in terms of the parent's experience? You did not move even minimally towards figuring their perspective, i.e. the first-person conscious experience of the kids themselves, into your moral reasoning. At all. You speak as if they are extensions of your being, and not actual completely new individuals. In my book, such lack of theory of mind towards even those who are closest to you, is exactly "total psycho" behavior. Of the disavowed kind, sure. Sorry, but it's not your kids' job to "change your life" or "make you a better person", that's entirely on you. This does not change once certain pre-human hormonal changes and other self-delusion incentives manage to scrub it from your mind. Saying "I've done my job: I've raised a family; what more is there to ask of me?", and passing the responsibility of becoming a non-idiotic human being down the generations is doing your offspring (as well as everyone else on the planet) a disservice verging on the truly monstrous. No surprise that a stochastic parrot can outsmart half of yall, and its yesmen are quite successfully bullying the other half into smiling submission. Also, what the fuck is a "Clevon"? Lemme guess, nobody told you that you could've given your kid a real name instead of not betting their entire identity on a contingent societal norm of mutual acceptance that we now see falling apart in real time?
  - crims0n 2y ago
    My wife and I homeschool because we feel we can provide a better education to our kids than the local public schools can - making this decision after giving them a trial run. If you do decide to homeschool, it is important that you never grow complacent in how much responsibility you are taking on. So many families around us homeschool for religious/dogmatic reasons and the quality of their kids education is a secondary concern. Naturally, they tend to do worse than public school children.
    - pmarreck 2y ago
      > tend to do worse That's a subjective evaluation, no? ;) I'm sure their parents would say they did way better on the religion/dogmatism ruler! > So many families around us homeschool This seems like the "gateway drug" to cult indoctrination and worries me. I'm going in completely the other way- My son (who will be 4 in June) is going to a good public school system here for socialization reasons, and I will supplement that with whatever I can (such as the critical-thinking skills I have acquired which were never taught to me). Additionally, I refuse (despite having a Catholic family) to indoctrinate him into ANY religion before he learns critical thinking first, because I will make an argument that this is no different than "grooming", except for "worldview control" instead of "sexual control".
      - SmellTheGlove 2y ago
        I agree with you. This is exactly how we’re parenting as well.
      - bsenftner 2y ago
        I've met and worked with some of the most startlingly brilliant home schooled people, that are utterly crippled socially. They ended up being unable to work with others, despite on paper they ought to be leaders. People underestimate the critical value of childhood socialization. When a child finds they do not know the giant host of media nonsense other kids know intimately, they cannot participate in a huge amount of their imaginary fun which uses these media products as the foundation for their social set's humor and identity. That creates a very difficult to unseat insecurity.
  - helpfulclippy 2y ago
    It’s more about the whole package. I homeschooled. Thanks to COVID and some ensuing frustrations with the district, my kid has done public, private and homeschool at different times. I’m in a moderately large metropolitan area, for context. If a kid has a good environment at home — safe, fed, loved, healthy, encouraged and given access to do things they’re interested in — they’ll do great. Public schools are mostly in the business of serving kids who have problems with one or more of these things, so if you can provide all of them you are not their target audience. Such families don’t have the problems that the district spends most of its energy thinking about. IMHO, that’s a situation where homeschooling shines if the kid is ok being alone a lot and also has a good social life. (Young kids tend to play with neighbors anyway; older kids move in friend groups, so the game is to get them opportunities to meet other kids until they can break into one of those.) A lot of people get stuck on “can you really teach everything yourself?” No. You can’t. But that’s ok, because it’s a completely different process to school and the skills and resources you and your kid need are different. Your kid will need to self-teach more and more as he or she gets older, and your job is to make sure they have the resources and encouragement to do that. If they’re not independently interested in doing that, it’s probably not a good fit. Alternatively, you can pick a private school. These are costly to families, which can make it seem like they’re rich when in fact they often have less funding per student than a public school. What they DO have is a more tightly focused mission. Private schools also tend to target families who are able to provide that strong home environment, and who don’t have serious learning disabilities or behavioral problems. Thus, they don’t need as high a budget per student, as they can skip many of the most difficult and costly responsibilities a school has. Their governance structures can vary, but in general I think the fact that they’re outside of the normal election process helps them define a more coherent set of principles and consistently apply that over many years. They’re also smaller and so information has fewer layers of bureaucracy to penetrate, and decisions can be made faster. This shows in everything from curriculum and facilities to discipline and staff morale. Some private schools do this better or more nobly than others, but public schools struggle to do it at all due to the realities of electoral politics. Thus, the private schools near me have tended to be no-phones-allowed for many years; the public schools are only now and with great effort able to implement that, and even I think it will be hard to make it stick. Most importantly… it’s about what the kid wants. Do your best to avoid making your kid spend his or her childhood somewhere they don’t want to be, doing stuff they don’t value.
  - acuozzo 2y ago
    Do you live in a wealthy coastal suburb? If so, the public school system there is probably great.
crims0n 2y ago
I think you are vastly underestimating how many of us choose to play the game, whilst simultaneously being aware of how shitty it is.
- balamatom 2y ago
  So what does this awareness gain you, other than a constant background suffering of cognitive dissonance?
  - iugtmkbdfil834 2y ago
    While I have some level of appreciation of what you seem to be trying to do, I can't help but wonder as to what you believe you gain by this exchange. I don't automatically disagree with what you are saying, but you seem intent on riling people up. Is there a larger purpose behind it?
    - balamatom 2y ago
      Yes, thanks for asking! You see, all this combining words in ways that people are taught to have a negative reaction to is actually part of my super secret plan to take over the world. (But don't worry, I promise to not be any better then the extant network of disavowed power relations maintained by recursive Pavlovian conditioning!) Less facetiously (though only a smidgen less so), bold of you to assume that I think I stand to gain anything by such interactions. What I can only be expected to assume are conscious human beings, drag each other through the shit all the time, for absolutely zero actual benefit; what right do I have to expect anything in return for providing this common service? After all, who am I to think I know anything? How can I know better than all others combined? No - I'm of the people, by the people, for the people, through and through; in fact, should the people decide so, they can destroy me within 24 hours, most of which will be taken up by scratching each other's backs for a job well done! Sorry if this wasn't anything like the answer you were looking for, but I hope I've at least managed to answer in a way that makes you reflect on the nature, and possible ethical valence, of your question. Have a pleasant week, and may you gain disproportionately many things from your exchanges!
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
yndoendo 2y ago
A truly strong national security requires an intelligent populous that can apply critical thinking skills. This is why I have never heard any politicians talk about this and only apply a pseudo national security agenda.
merman 2y ago
Parent comment is nearly diametrically opposed to “intellectual curiosity” and is the top comment. the one-sidedness of this site is quite a big problem. Both the community and the mods need to fight against the current here.
- lolinder 2y ago
  It's not even the one-sidedness: HN has historically had either a leftward or a rightward tilt depending on your own politics—that is, everyone on here interacts with people who disagree with them more often than they are used to. What's changed in the last couple months is that the political discussions used to be both more isolated to specific submissions and more intellectually curious. They got intense, but enough people were interested in actually engaging with their opposition that I've had some of the most enlightening political discussions I've ever seen on here. Now the politics is everywhere, and it's straight flame bait with very little curiosity. A comment like the above would have been instantly flagged to death a few months back as both off topic and flame bait. Now it's what users want to see. Edit: looks like either a mod or an algorithm did finally downweight this subthread!
hartator 2y ago
> that's how regulations get created: someone (usually a corporation) abuses a public resource or good so extremely that laws are written to prevent that. You forgot that it’s the usually that very same abusing company that will write these regulations for “ethics” and “protecting the customers”.
- bsenftner 2y ago
  That's the more modern, more cynical manifestation. I remember what it was like before this overwhelming cynicism became normal.

A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 2y ago

George Carlin said something similar: "Governments don't want a population capable of critical thinking, they want obedient workers, people just smart enough to run the machines and just dumb enough to passively accept their situation." If true, one could argue it is a real issue, because it is not clear that the country's 'management' is intellectually on the high end either.

influx 2y ago
So should I be sending my kids to government schools or home schooling?
- nkrisc 2y ago
  Depends how capable you are as a teacher and instructor. There are brilliant home-schooled kids and home-schooled kids who can barely read. Government run schools are probably better than the education an average home-school parent/guardian can provide.
- balamatom 2y ago
  False dichotomy. After a certain age you should let them have a voice in their educational goals, and before they are able to express their preferences you should be helping them figure out what those are. You should be creating a family environment where your kids feel like people, and where they feel safe no matter what happens. You should be teaching your children to think critically and stand up for what they believe in, and setting a good example for them in terms of your personal values. If you don't have a self-consistent set of ethical values, and expect everyone else to determine those for you, I hate to break it to you, but you shouldn't have had kids.
  - rapind 2y ago
    > If you don't have a self-consistent set of ethical values, and expect everyone else to determine those for you, I hate to break it to you, but you shouldn't have had kids. Clevon's not listening to this slop and neither should anyone else. Unless you're a total psycho, go ahead and have kids. They are wonderful and life changing. They'll probably make you a better person. You don't need to be a perfect parent. You don't need to read a bunch of heavily marketed books on how to be a good parent. You don't need to listen to internet hero advice. You'll figure it out.
    - balamatom 2y ago
      You demonstrate my point exactly. Did you even notice that you only spoke of the significance of having kids in terms of what it means for "you", i.e. in terms of the parent's experience? You did not move even minimally towards figuring their perspective, i.e. the first-person conscious experience of the kids themselves, into your moral reasoning. At all. You speak as if they are extensions of your being, and not actual completely new individuals. In my book, such lack of theory of mind towards even those who are closest to you, is exactly "total psycho" behavior. Of the disavowed kind, sure. Sorry, but it's not your kids' job to "change your life" or "make you a better person", that's entirely on you. This does not change once certain pre-human hormonal changes and other self-delusion incentives manage to scrub it from your mind. Saying "I've done my job: I've raised a family; what more is there to ask of me?", and passing the responsibility of becoming a non-idiotic human being down the generations is doing your offspring (as well as everyone else on the planet) a disservice verging on the truly monstrous. No surprise that a stochastic parrot can outsmart half of yall, and its yesmen are quite successfully bullying the other half into smiling submission. Also, what the fuck is a "Clevon"? Lemme guess, nobody told you that you could've given your kid a real name instead of not betting their entire identity on a contingent societal norm of mutual acceptance that we now see falling apart in real time?
- crims0n 2y ago
  My wife and I homeschool because we feel we can provide a better education to our kids than the local public schools can - making this decision after giving them a trial run. If you do decide to homeschool, it is important that you never grow complacent in how much responsibility you are taking on. So many families around us homeschool for religious/dogmatic reasons and the quality of their kids education is a secondary concern. Naturally, they tend to do worse than public school children.
  - pmarreck 2y ago
    > tend to do worse That's a subjective evaluation, no? ;) I'm sure their parents would say they did way better on the religion/dogmatism ruler! > So many families around us homeschool This seems like the "gateway drug" to cult indoctrination and worries me. I'm going in completely the other way- My son (who will be 4 in June) is going to a good public school system here for socialization reasons, and I will supplement that with whatever I can (such as the critical-thinking skills I have acquired which were never taught to me). Additionally, I refuse (despite having a Catholic family) to indoctrinate him into ANY religion before he learns critical thinking first, because I will make an argument that this is no different than "grooming", except for "worldview control" instead of "sexual control".
    - SmellTheGlove 2y ago
      I agree with you. This is exactly how we’re parenting as well.
    - bsenftner 2y ago
      I've met and worked with some of the most startlingly brilliant home schooled people, that are utterly crippled socially. They ended up being unable to work with others, despite on paper they ought to be leaders. People underestimate the critical value of childhood socialization. When a child finds they do not know the giant host of media nonsense other kids know intimately, they cannot participate in a huge amount of their imaginary fun which uses these media products as the foundation for their social set's humor and identity. That creates a very difficult to unseat insecurity.
- helpfulclippy 2y ago
  It’s more about the whole package. I homeschooled. Thanks to COVID and some ensuing frustrations with the district, my kid has done public, private and homeschool at different times. I’m in a moderately large metropolitan area, for context. If a kid has a good environment at home — safe, fed, loved, healthy, encouraged and given access to do things they’re interested in — they’ll do great. Public schools are mostly in the business of serving kids who have problems with one or more of these things, so if you can provide all of them you are not their target audience. Such families don’t have the problems that the district spends most of its energy thinking about. IMHO, that’s a situation where homeschooling shines if the kid is ok being alone a lot and also has a good social life. (Young kids tend to play with neighbors anyway; older kids move in friend groups, so the game is to get them opportunities to meet other kids until they can break into one of those.) A lot of people get stuck on “can you really teach everything yourself?” No. You can’t. But that’s ok, because it’s a completely different process to school and the skills and resources you and your kid need are different. Your kid will need to self-teach more and more as he or she gets older, and your job is to make sure they have the resources and encouragement to do that. If they’re not independently interested in doing that, it’s probably not a good fit. Alternatively, you can pick a private school. These are costly to families, which can make it seem like they’re rich when in fact they often have less funding per student than a public school. What they DO have is a more tightly focused mission. Private schools also tend to target families who are able to provide that strong home environment, and who don’t have serious learning disabilities or behavioral problems. Thus, they don’t need as high a budget per student, as they can skip many of the most difficult and costly responsibilities a school has. Their governance structures can vary, but in general I think the fact that they’re outside of the normal election process helps them define a more coherent set of principles and consistently apply that over many years. They’re also smaller and so information has fewer layers of bureaucracy to penetrate, and decisions can be made faster. This shows in everything from curriculum and facilities to discipline and staff morale. Some private schools do this better or more nobly than others, but public schools struggle to do it at all due to the realities of electoral politics. Thus, the private schools near me have tended to be no-phones-allowed for many years; the public schools are only now and with great effort able to implement that, and even I think it will be hard to make it stick. Most importantly… it’s about what the kid wants. Do your best to avoid making your kid spend his or her childhood somewhere they don’t want to be, doing stuff they don’t value.
- acuozzo 2y ago
  Do you live in a wealthy coastal suburb? If so, the public school system there is probably great.

crims0n 2y ago

I think you are vastly underestimating how many of us choose to play the game, whilst simultaneously being aware of how shitty it is.

balamatom 2y ago
So what does this awareness gain you, other than a constant background suffering of cognitive dissonance?
- iugtmkbdfil834 2y ago
  While I have some level of appreciation of what you seem to be trying to do, I can't help but wonder as to what you believe you gain by this exchange. I don't automatically disagree with what you are saying, but you seem intent on riling people up. Is there a larger purpose behind it?
  - balamatom 2y ago
    Yes, thanks for asking! You see, all this combining words in ways that people are taught to have a negative reaction to is actually part of my super secret plan to take over the world. (But don't worry, I promise to not be any better then the extant network of disavowed power relations maintained by recursive Pavlovian conditioning!) Less facetiously (though only a smidgen less so), bold of you to assume that I think I stand to gain anything by such interactions. What I can only be expected to assume are conscious human beings, drag each other through the shit all the time, for absolutely zero actual benefit; what right do I have to expect anything in return for providing this common service? After all, who am I to think I know anything? How can I know better than all others combined? No - I'm of the people, by the people, for the people, through and through; in fact, should the people decide so, they can destroy me within 24 hours, most of which will be taken up by scratching each other's backs for a job well done! Sorry if this wasn't anything like the answer you were looking for, but I hope I've at least managed to answer in a way that makes you reflect on the nature, and possible ethical valence, of your question. Have a pleasant week, and may you gain disproportionately many things from your exchanges!

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

yndoendo 2y ago

A truly strong national security requires an intelligent populous that can apply critical thinking skills. This is why I have never heard any politicians talk about this and only apply a pseudo national security agenda.

merman 2y ago

Parent comment is nearly diametrically opposed to “intellectual curiosity” and is the top comment. the one-sidedness of this site is quite a big problem. Both the community and the mods need to fight against the current here.

lolinder 2y ago
It's not even the one-sidedness: HN has historically had either a leftward or a rightward tilt depending on your own politics—that is, everyone on here interacts with people who disagree with them more often than they are used to. What's changed in the last couple months is that the political discussions used to be both more isolated to specific submissions and more intellectually curious. They got intense, but enough people were interested in actually engaging with their opposition that I've had some of the most enlightening political discussions I've ever seen on here. Now the politics is everywhere, and it's straight flame bait with very little curiosity. A comment like the above would have been instantly flagged to death a few months back as both off topic and flame bait. Now it's what users want to see. Edit: looks like either a mod or an algorithm did finally downweight this subthread!

hartator 2y ago

> that's how regulations get created: someone (usually a corporation) abuses a public resource or good so extremely that laws are written to prevent that. You forgot that it’s the usually that very same abusing company that will write these regulations for “ethics” and “protecting the customers”.

bsenftner 2y ago
That's the more modern, more cynical manifestation. I remember what it was like before this overwhelming cynicism became normal.