5 ms·

This seems a good place to point out that the evidence for the harmful effects of corporal punishment is very low quality: https://wyclif.substack.com/p/the-aca

by dash2 5mo ago

This seems a good place to point out that the evidence for the harmful effects of corporal punishment is very low quality: https://wyclif.substack.com/p/the-academic-literature-on-smacking https://wyclif.substack.com/p/the-academic-literature-on-sma...

InsideOutSanta 5mo ago
That's an interesting article, but I find the conclusion peculiar. So there's no good scientific evidence that corporal punishment helps children in the long run, and the best available evidence links it to worse outcomes rather than better ones, but because we can't do stuff like double-blinded studies with control groups, "bans on smacking have got far ahead of the evidence, and should be actively opposed until the science is much more solid"? That's not the conclusion I'd draw from that body of evidence.
- rlonn 5mo ago
  Seems there actually is a fair amount of research pointing to prohibiting corporal punishment for kids leads to better mental health, lower suicide rate, etc. and it does seem like a no-brainer to me that less violence leads to more stable individuals, and a more stable and happy society in general. In medieval times there was a lot of physical punishment, and society was violent, dangerous and unhappy compared to now. Singapore may be modern in many respects, but in this area, they're a bit of a backwater.
  - oreally 5mo ago
    Sometimes you don't need to make a study showing some number to act on something. It can be a simple chain of logic saying: % of children try to test their boundaries. Of those children some get away with it, some don't. Of those who get away with it, they carry on doing it, and it has reprecussions down the line. If you look at the problem this way, it's a rational take on caning - to tighten the net against bullying. Posted more context here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48059470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48059470
  - sayamqazi 5mo ago
    I am as asian and I was at the receiving end of pretty severe (trust me you dont wanna know the details) physical abuse as a child. It did leave some lasting damage but surprisingly it didnt affect my academic outcomes and I dont feel like someone who would ever ever consider suicide for anything whatsoever.
    - dash2 5mo ago
      Just to state what I hope is obvious - every serious person, on any side of the smacking debate, agrees that physical abuse of children is wicked and wrong. The disagreement is about smacking; some people think that it is physical abuse by definition. Others may not think that, but believe that smacking is still a bad idea. Those on the other side believe that you can distinguish between reasonable corporal punishment and physical abuse. I'm sorry for what happened to you!
  - dash2 5mo ago
    I've read a lot of this literature. I don't believe there is any research that shows this with a credible research design. But I'm happy to be challenged on this, so go ahead.
  - lostmsu 5mo ago
    > a fair amount of research pointing to prohibiting corporal punishment for kids leads to better mental health, lower suicide rate, etc But is that research of high quality?
    - array_key_first 5mo ago
      Consider: not hitting kids is much easier than hitting kids, and also free. Ergo, if we're gonna be hitting kids, we need really strong research to show that it's effective. Which we don't have. The default should be DENY, not ALLOW, just like good security practice.
      - lostmsu 5mo ago
        > The default should be DENY, not ALLOW, just like good security practice. This argument could be applied to anything. I'm glad it is not. > not hitting kids is much easier than hitting kids These two are not the alternatives in question, so the following conclusion is invalid.
        array_key_first 5mo ago
        You basically didn't address anything I wrote - this is one of the most worthless comments I've written in a while. I will reiterate. If you, or others, want to hit children then that's something you need to justify with cold hard studies. Not me. The default is not hitting people. Acknowledge the reality: if I do these punishments to another adult man, I will: 1. Probably get my ass handed to me. 2. Go to jail and be prosecuted for assault and battery. Given that, why then does it magically become okay to do it to kids? The answer is it doesn't, fucking obviously. So, if you want to do that, justify it. And it better be a good justification backed by science, not some pussy-footing "reasoning" I'm sure you're going to bust out.
        lostmsu 5mo ago
        The default is hitting people. We are afforded the not hitting people personally because law enforcement and therefore hitting people is delegated to the government. Government doesn't do much law enforcement when it comes to children behavior.
- Gareth321 5mo ago
  I interpret their argument differently. We know that bullying leads to harmful outcomes. We know that punishment reduces the frequency of undesirable behaviour. So we know that this policy will lead to an aggregate reduction in harm. The question is whether it could lead to some degree of harm to the bully. In the absence of compelling evidence of that, the policy itself seems merited. For the record, bullying is a complex problem to solve, and no nation or policy or tactic has the silver bullet.
- dash2 5mo ago
  One point is that "the best available evidence" is of very poor quality, with known obvious confounds and mishandling of longitudinal data. (For example, Robert Larzelere argues that by the methods used, grounding children, and giving them therapy, also harms them: (https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1186/1471-2431-10-10.pdf https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1186/1471-2431-10-1...) Another point is that parents may be well placed to know what is best for their children - better than "experts".
baobabKoodaa 5mo ago
Some things can be good/bad in and of themself, rather than just a means to an end. I would argue that "violence against children" is bad in and of itself, and outlawing it is good in and of itself. If you want to argue that you see violence against children as a useful means to an end, why stop there? Let's also put the children to work. The children yearn for the mine.
- dash2 5mo ago
  Right, but if you smack your child on the wrist, is it violence? You can't really answer these things by throwing definitions around. (Imprisoning children is wrong, I'm sure we can agree. So, if you ground your child, is that imprisonment?)
  - baobabKoodaa 5mo ago
    I don't really get what point you're trying to make, but I'll answer your questions: 1. Yes, smacking your child on any part of their body, including the wrist, is violence. You're trying to make some kind of "a lot of violence might be wrong but just a little bit of violence can be useful" point? I don't get it. 2. No, I don't agree that "imprisoning children is wrong". Sometimes children commit horrible crimes, like murder, and they need to be imprisoned. If you want to say that grounding your child is also a form of imprisonment, it feels like a stretch, but sure, we can call that imprisonment too. I don't get what the point is, though.
    - dash2 5mo ago
      If you define absolutely anything as violence in that way, you’re completely within your rights to do that, but then you can’t claim it’s intuitively obvious that we should never use violence against children. Instead you will need actual evidence, which leads us back to where we started - the evidence base is weak. Or you can say what I think many people throughout history would have seen as common sense (rightly or wrongly): violence against children is wrong, but spanking them doesn’t count as “violence”. My imprisonment analogy was meant to point out that it is not valid to take a common intuition that X is wrong, apply a very extended concept of X (even if you think that the extended concept is the only coherent one), and then expect the intuition to still command universal agreement.
verteu 5mo ago
No, it's about as "controversial" as claiming lead exposure is bad for children's brains. Do we have RCTs for that? Or might we reasonably shape our priors from the hundreds of studies using a dozen different causal methodologies, which all find the same result?
- dash2 5mo ago
  The evidence for lead exposure harming children's brains is extremely solid, I believe. The evidence for spanking is not in the same league. It is not just about a lack of RCTs.

by dash2 5mo ago

InsideOutSanta 5mo ago

That's an interesting article, but I find the conclusion peculiar. So there's no good scientific evidence that corporal punishment helps children in the long run, and the best available evidence links it to worse outcomes rather than better ones, but because we can't do stuff like double-blinded studies with control groups, "bans on smacking have got far ahead of the evidence, and should be actively opposed until the science is much more solid"? That's not the conclusion I'd draw from that body of evidence.

rlonn 5mo ago
Seems there actually is a fair amount of research pointing to prohibiting corporal punishment for kids leads to better mental health, lower suicide rate, etc. and it does seem like a no-brainer to me that less violence leads to more stable individuals, and a more stable and happy society in general. In medieval times there was a lot of physical punishment, and society was violent, dangerous and unhappy compared to now. Singapore may be modern in many respects, but in this area, they're a bit of a backwater.
- oreally 5mo ago
  Sometimes you don't need to make a study showing some number to act on something. It can be a simple chain of logic saying: % of children try to test their boundaries. Of those children some get away with it, some don't. Of those who get away with it, they carry on doing it, and it has reprecussions down the line. If you look at the problem this way, it's a rational take on caning - to tighten the net against bullying. Posted more context here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48059470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48059470
- sayamqazi 5mo ago
  I am as asian and I was at the receiving end of pretty severe (trust me you dont wanna know the details) physical abuse as a child. It did leave some lasting damage but surprisingly it didnt affect my academic outcomes and I dont feel like someone who would ever ever consider suicide for anything whatsoever.
  - dash2 5mo ago
    Just to state what I hope is obvious - every serious person, on any side of the smacking debate, agrees that physical abuse of children is wicked and wrong. The disagreement is about smacking; some people think that it is physical abuse by definition. Others may not think that, but believe that smacking is still a bad idea. Those on the other side believe that you can distinguish between reasonable corporal punishment and physical abuse. I'm sorry for what happened to you!
- dash2 5mo ago
  I've read a lot of this literature. I don't believe there is any research that shows this with a credible research design. But I'm happy to be challenged on this, so go ahead.
- lostmsu 5mo ago
  > a fair amount of research pointing to prohibiting corporal punishment for kids leads to better mental health, lower suicide rate, etc But is that research of high quality?
  - array_key_first 5mo ago
    Consider: not hitting kids is much easier than hitting kids, and also free. Ergo, if we're gonna be hitting kids, we need really strong research to show that it's effective. Which we don't have. The default should be DENY, not ALLOW, just like good security practice.
    - lostmsu 5mo ago
      > The default should be DENY, not ALLOW, just like good security practice. This argument could be applied to anything. I'm glad it is not. > not hitting kids is much easier than hitting kids These two are not the alternatives in question, so the following conclusion is invalid.
      - array_key_first 5mo ago
        You basically didn't address anything I wrote - this is one of the most worthless comments I've written in a while. I will reiterate. If you, or others, want to hit children then that's something you need to justify with cold hard studies. Not me. The default is not hitting people. Acknowledge the reality: if I do these punishments to another adult man, I will: 1. Probably get my ass handed to me. 2. Go to jail and be prosecuted for assault and battery. Given that, why then does it magically become okay to do it to kids? The answer is it doesn't, fucking obviously. So, if you want to do that, justify it. And it better be a good justification backed by science, not some pussy-footing "reasoning" I'm sure you're going to bust out.
        lostmsu 5mo ago
        The default is hitting people. We are afforded the not hitting people personally because law enforcement and therefore hitting people is delegated to the government. Government doesn't do much law enforcement when it comes to children behavior.
Gareth321 5mo ago
I interpret their argument differently. We know that bullying leads to harmful outcomes. We know that punishment reduces the frequency of undesirable behaviour. So we know that this policy will lead to an aggregate reduction in harm. The question is whether it could lead to some degree of harm to the bully. In the absence of compelling evidence of that, the policy itself seems merited. For the record, bullying is a complex problem to solve, and no nation or policy or tactic has the silver bullet.
dash2 5mo ago
One point is that "the best available evidence" is of very poor quality, with known obvious confounds and mishandling of longitudinal data. (For example, Robert Larzelere argues that by the methods used, grounding children, and giving them therapy, also harms them: (https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1186/1471-2431-10-10.pdf https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1186/1471-2431-10-1...) Another point is that parents may be well placed to know what is best for their children - better than "experts".

baobabKoodaa 5mo ago

Some things can be good/bad in and of themself, rather than just a means to an end. I would argue that "violence against children" is bad in and of itself, and outlawing it is good in and of itself. If you want to argue that you see violence against children as a useful means to an end, why stop there? Let's also put the children to work. The children yearn for the mine.

dash2 5mo ago
Right, but if you smack your child on the wrist, is it violence? You can't really answer these things by throwing definitions around. (Imprisoning children is wrong, I'm sure we can agree. So, if you ground your child, is that imprisonment?)
- baobabKoodaa 5mo ago
  I don't really get what point you're trying to make, but I'll answer your questions: 1. Yes, smacking your child on any part of their body, including the wrist, is violence. You're trying to make some kind of "a lot of violence might be wrong but just a little bit of violence can be useful" point? I don't get it. 2. No, I don't agree that "imprisoning children is wrong". Sometimes children commit horrible crimes, like murder, and they need to be imprisoned. If you want to say that grounding your child is also a form of imprisonment, it feels like a stretch, but sure, we can call that imprisonment too. I don't get what the point is, though.
  - dash2 5mo ago
    If you define absolutely anything as violence in that way, you’re completely within your rights to do that, but then you can’t claim it’s intuitively obvious that we should never use violence against children. Instead you will need actual evidence, which leads us back to where we started - the evidence base is weak. Or you can say what I think many people throughout history would have seen as common sense (rightly or wrongly): violence against children is wrong, but spanking them doesn’t count as “violence”. My imprisonment analogy was meant to point out that it is not valid to take a common intuition that X is wrong, apply a very extended concept of X (even if you think that the extended concept is the only coherent one), and then expect the intuition to still command universal agreement.

verteu 5mo ago

No, it's about as "controversial" as claiming lead exposure is bad for children's brains. Do we have RCTs for that? Or might we reasonably shape our priors from the hundreds of studies using a dozen different causal methodologies, which all find the same result?

dash2 5mo ago
The evidence for lead exposure harming children's brains is extremely solid, I believe. The evidence for spanking is not in the same league. It is not just about a lack of RCTs.