5 ms·

Extra-ordinary claims require extra-ordinary evidence. I'm not seeing any. Here's a quick counterpoint that speaks to the "norm": Almost to a man, every sports

Extra-ordinary claims require extra-ordinary evidence. I'm not seeing any. Here's a quick counterpoint that speaks to the "norm": Almost to a man, every sports icon I can think of cites the influence of parents in their lives. (I'm talking real icons here, not T.O. types that happen to be gifted.) I'm not ready to accept this theory without significant evidence.

xenophanes 18y ago
Why do you think that sports icons know anything about what influenced their lives?
- run4yourlives 18y ago
  Why do you think they don't? They are at the top of their game. The effect of years of passion, skill and above all, hard work. Pretty much exactly like an entrepreneur. One would think that along the way they have been able to surmise and account for many of the things that got them there. I've yet to see one that doesn't have extremely dedicated and supportive parents, notably fathers.
  - xenophanes 18y ago
    I suspect they usually don't because human psychology is non-obvious, and most of them don't spend much time learning about psychology. I think you will agree with me that even many experts make large mistakes in their views on human psychology, as the linked guy has done.
frossie 18y ago
She is certainly not presenting extraordinary evidence. For example she claims that modern child rearing methods have no effect because there are still the same number of violent people in society - as if everybody is being raised according to the latest child rearing methods! I live in a rural area with a lot of poverty and trust me - what I see in the playground as far as parent-kid interaction is not what Dr Sears has in mind. She is also terribly inconsistent. She says "The belief that parents have a great deal of power to determine how their children will turn out is actually a rather new idea" and then goes on to say in the old days, kids used to be beaten not praised. Well I have news for her - parents used to beat kids because they though they were affecting the way the kids would turn out! It was the same idea, just different methods. The idea that the parent (or whichever adult is in loco parentis - culturally not always the biological parent) goes back millenenia. Why were Spartan children taken away from their mothers, if their mothers were not thought to have influence on their upbringing? As to the issue of adopted children not being "like" their parents - maybe not in personality, but I am willing to bet that a child adopted out of a primitive tribe by a pair of geeks will learn how to use a computer pretty damn fast. Is that of no effect on the child's life? Obviously by now it is generally accepted that children come out the way they do through a combination of pre-desposition (genetics), adult influence (eg. parenting and teaching) and peer/social influence. But saying parents don't matter at all seems to be a step backwards.
giardini 18y ago
Her two books, "The Nurture Assumption" and "No Two Alike", make eminently clear _exactly_ what she means and doesn't mean. Then she analyzes previous studies, really digging into the statistics. Her writings are excellent demonstrations of proper and improper use of statistics. Reading her books, I was astonished to see some of psychology's long-cherished ideas so thoroughly disproven.

xenophanes 18y ago

Why do you think that sports icons know anything about what influenced their lives?

run4yourlives 18y ago
Why do you think they don't? They are at the top of their game. The effect of years of passion, skill and above all, hard work. Pretty much exactly like an entrepreneur. One would think that along the way they have been able to surmise and account for many of the things that got them there. I've yet to see one that doesn't have extremely dedicated and supportive parents, notably fathers.
- xenophanes 18y ago
  I suspect they usually don't because human psychology is non-obvious, and most of them don't spend much time learning about psychology. I think you will agree with me that even many experts make large mistakes in their views on human psychology, as the linked guy has done.

frossie 18y ago

She is certainly not presenting extraordinary evidence. For example she claims that modern child rearing methods have no effect because there are still the same number of violent people in society - as if everybody is being raised according to the latest child rearing methods! I live in a rural area with a lot of poverty and trust me - what I see in the playground as far as parent-kid interaction is not what Dr Sears has in mind. She is also terribly inconsistent. She says "The belief that parents have a great deal of power to determine how their children will turn out is actually a rather new idea" and then goes on to say in the old days, kids used to be beaten not praised. Well I have news for her - parents used to beat kids because they though they were affecting the way the kids would turn out! It was the same idea, just different methods. The idea that the parent (or whichever adult is in loco parentis - culturally not always the biological parent) goes back millenenia. Why were Spartan children taken away from their mothers, if their mothers were not thought to have influence on their upbringing? As to the issue of adopted children not being "like" their parents - maybe not in personality, but I am willing to bet that a child adopted out of a primitive tribe by a pair of geeks will learn how to use a computer pretty damn fast. Is that of no effect on the child's life? Obviously by now it is generally accepted that children come out the way they do through a combination of pre-desposition (genetics), adult influence (eg. parenting and teaching) and peer/social influence. But saying parents don't matter at all seems to be a step backwards.

giardini 18y ago

Her two books, "The Nurture Assumption" and "No Two Alike", make eminently clear _exactly_ what she means and doesn't mean. Then she analyzes previous studies, really digging into the statistics. Her writings are excellent demonstrations of proper and improper use of statistics. Reading her books, I was astonished to see some of psychology's long-cherished ideas so thoroughly disproven.