Elon Musk on Parenting and Nature/Nurture
Elliot Temple
> ELON MUSK:
>
> It would infuriate my parents.
>
> INTERVIEWER:
>
> That you would think differently about things, or, what?
>
> ELON MUSK:
>
> That I wouldn't just believe them when they said something 'cause I'd ask them why. And then I'd consider whether that response made sense given everything else I knew.
Why parents find rationality infuriating is an important question with implications and reach.
> ELON MUSK:
>
> Yeah well, you know, inheritability of traits is much greater than I thought. I mean, I'd assume that in the nature versus nurture, there's much more nurture. But having had five kids, I think its much more nature. I mean, what are you? You're hardware and software, right?
>
> So the difference between one person and the next must either be a hardware difference or a software difference. And why are kids that may have the exact same background or same school, same everything, get those widely different capabilities. Yet, they have the same input experiences. Well, then it must be the hardware that's different.
This mistake was refuted by William Godwin back in 1793. It just isn't true that people growing up in the same house and attending the same school have the "exact same background, same everything". They actually have different lives and experiences. Tons of stuff is different, which takes away the entire argument and motivation for his conclusion.
In Godwin's words:
> It is not unusual to hear persons dwell with emphasis on the wide difference of the results in two young persons who have been educated together; and this has been produced as a decisive argument in favour of the essential differences we are supposed to bring into the world with us. But this could scarcely have happened but from extreme inattention in the persons who have so argued. Innumerable ideas, or changes in the state of the percipient being, probably occur in every moment of time. How many of these enter into the plan of the preceptor? Two children walk out together. One busies himself in plucking flowers or running after butterflies, the other walks in the hand of their conductor. Two men view a picture. They never see it from the same point of view, and therefore strictly speaking never see the same picture. If they sit down to hear a lecture or any piece of instruction, they never sit down with the same degree of attention, seriousness or good humour. The previous state of mind is different, and therefore the impression received cannot be the same. It has been found in the history of several eminent men, and probably would have been found much oftener had their juvenile adventures been more accurately recorded, that the most trivial circumstance has sometimes furnished the original occasion of awakening the ardour of their minds and determining the bent of their studies.
The entire chapter provides compelling arguments on the nature/nurture topic with modern relevance.
PS Note that Godwin anticipates Popper in saying that all observation involves interpretation according to ideas people already have. Popper independently reinvented this idea and sadly never knew that Godwin had published it already. He would have liked to know about this because it's a part of the history of his favored type of ideas, and because he could have learned from reading Godwin.
-- Elliot Temple
http://beginningofinfinity.com/
Justin Mallone
On Aug 20, 2011, at 11:23 AM, Elliot Temple wrote:
> http://www.oninnovation.com/videos/detail.aspx?video=1251
>
>> ELON MUSK:
>>
>> It would infuriate my parents.
>>
>> INTERVIEWER:
>>
>> That you would think differently about things, or, what?
>>
>> ELON MUSK:
>>
>> That I wouldn't just believe them when they said something 'cause I'd ask them why. And then I'd consider whether that response made sense given everything else I knew.
>
> Why parents find rationality infuriating is an important question with implications and reach.
>
This sort of parental attitude leads to life-long anti-rational attitudes, at least in the people who take the attitude onboard. For instance, when trying to engage in rational discussion, people will accuse you of "being childish" if you ask too many why's (i think the limit is like 4). As if that's an argument. I guess that's an example of its reach.
What do you think some of the other implications are / reach is?
And what are effective arguments for criticizing this sort of anti-rational approach?
Like, if you are friends with parents who are dismissive of their kids "Why" questions, what do you say?
If they don't have a respect for the intellectual curiosity of their children, and don't think that's an important and good thing and part of their job as parents to address, and that addressing it (by offering their kids good explanations / ways of getting at good explanations) should be *fun* to them, what *can* you say?
Elliot Temple
On Aug 21, 2011, at 1:47 PM, Justin Mallone wrote:
>
> On Aug 20, 2011, at 11:23 AM, Elliot Temple wrote:
>
>> http://www.oninnovation.com/videos/detail.aspx?video=1251
>>
>>> ELON MUSK:
>>>
>>> It would infuriate my parents.
>>>
>>> INTERVIEWER:
>>>
>>> That you would think differently about things, or, what?
>>>
>>> ELON MUSK:
>>>
>>> That I wouldn't just believe them when they said something 'cause I'd ask them why. And then I'd consider whether that response made sense given everything else I knew.
>>
>> Why parents find rationality infuriating is an important question with implications and reach.
>>
>
> This sort of parental attitude leads to life-long anti-rational attitudes, at least in the people who take the attitude onboard.
This is an assumption. We do not know which parental behaviors are important to passing on anti-rational memes.
In general, there is no particular reason to assume that acting badly towards someone would cause a person to act badly themselves in the same way. Demonstrations of bad lifestyles could *show people what not to do*. Many people dislike their parents and consciously attempt not to act like their parents.
And then they usually, in many respects, end up acting like their parents anyway. Whatever makes them do that is not the example their parents set. It could be those same behaviors, but at least not in their role as parenting examples to intentionally copy.
We do not know (specifically) what leads to life-long anti-rational attitudes. One thing that I suspect is that coercion plays an important role, for at least some of them.
That's not "coercion" meaning "force" but this "coercion":
http://fallibleideas.com/coercion
Coercion is an epistemological concept which is the cause of all psychological suffering.
If parents never made their children feel bad about anything, how would they get children to obey, conform, "listen", etc? They'd try to transfer memes and at least sometimes get ignored.
You could trick your kids, but after a while they'd just stop trusting you even if they don't know what the trick is this time.
> For instance, when trying to engage in rational discussion, people will accuse you of "being childish" if you ask too many why's (i think the limit is like 4). As if that's an argument. I guess that's an example of its reach.
>
> What do you think some of the other implications are / reach is?
>
> And what are effective arguments for criticizing this sort of anti-rational approach?
> Like, if you are friends with parents who are dismissive of their kids "Why" questions, what do you say?
You could say, "Why did you have children if you do not wish to put effort into educating them?"
This would serve multiple purposes. It could help them learn about their mistake. But if they are closed minded, then perhaps *you* could learn from their response about whether you should be friends with them.
> If they don't have a respect for the intellectual curiosity of their children, and don't think that's an important and good thing and part of their job as parents to address, and that addressing it (by offering their kids good explanations / ways of getting at good explanations) should be *fun* to them, what *can* you say?
"Goodbye".
Or:
Or:
Or ask them about whatever you're curious about.
You want something to persuade them. But I don't think you can persuade all anti-rational people in on general purpose way. It takes a personalized approach which uses the unique resources available in their individual lives. So I can't tell you something specific to say that you can actually expect to persuade them.
-- Elliot Temple
http://beginningofinfinity.com/interview
Jason
On Aug 20, 2011, at 11:23 AM, Elliot Temple wrote:
> >> That I wouldn't just believe them when they said something 'cause I'd ask them why. And then I'd consider whether that response made sense given everything else I knew.
>
> > Why parents find rationality infuriating is an important question with implications and reach.
whole TCS approach. But in this aspect I think I am in basic agreement
with it and I have been since my children first learned the word
"why?", long before I'd ever heard of Rand or TCS or Popper. What *I*
find infuriating are the statements (from extended family or other
parents) that children shouldn't ask so many questions, and the
responses "Because I said so," and its cleverly disguised equivalent,
"Because that's the way God made it."
Also it's not just parents that do this. I get plenty of guff from non-
parents who get mad at my wife and I for not inculcating respect for
authority / respect for elders / etc. into our kids, causing them to
ask too many questions.
I see far less of this in the homeschool community than in the general
population, though it is by no means completely absent. Of course,
homeschoolers are a self-selected group of people that are more likely
to be interested in trying to answer childrens' questions. But it
makes for a bit of a culture shock for both us and our kids when we
interact with non-homeschoolers.
On Aug 21, 1:47 pm, Justin Mallone <justin...@gmail.com> wrote:
> For instance, when trying to engage in rational discussion, people will accuse you of "being childish" if you ask too many why's (i think the limit is like 4). As if that's an argument. I guess that's an example of its reach.
questions or discussing certain ideas) - even among a local group of
people whose express purposes include the promotion of reason and
science!
So I think the relevant question is: Why do some people [irrespective
of parenthood] find rationality infuriating [in either children or
adults]?
Perhaps part of it is they don't explicitly know that rationality is a
process of explanation and error correction. I'm not sure of this
though, since my own attitude toward "why" questions was in place
before my explicit understanding of rationality was.
> What do you think some of the other implications are / reach is?
less capable of applying rationality to their own ideas.
> And what are effective arguments for criticizing this sort of anti-rational approach?
> Like, if you are friends with parents who are dismissive of their kids "Why" questions, what do you say?
>
> If they don't have a respect for the intellectual curiosity of their children, and don't think that's an important and good thing and part of their job as parents to address, and that addressing it (by offering their kids good explanations / ways of getting at good explanations) should be *fun* to them, what *can* you say?
the parents get infuriated with me. :-)
--Jason
Elliot Temple
On Aug 22, 2011, at 8:35 AM, Jason wrote:
>
> On Aug 20, 2011, at 11:23 AM, Elliot Temple wrote:
>>>> That I wouldn't just believe them when they said something 'cause I'd ask them why. And then I'd consider whether that response made sense given everything else I knew.
>>
>>> Why parents find rationality infuriating is an important question with implications and reach.
>
> Not all parents do. As some may know, I am not in agreement with the
> whole TCS approach. But in this aspect I think I am in basic agreement
> with it and I have been since my children first learned the word
> "why?", long before I'd ever heard of Rand or TCS or Popper. What *I*
> find infuriating are the statements (from extended family or other
> parents) that children shouldn't ask so many questions, and the
> responses "Because I said so," and its cleverly disguised equivalent,
> "Because that's the way God made it."
I don't think that's a clever disguise ;-P
> Also it's not just parents that do this. I get plenty of guff from non-
> parents who get mad at my wife and I for not inculcating respect for
> authority / respect for elders / etc. into our kids, causing them to
> ask too many questions.
Right: many people put pressure on parents (such as you and your wife, as well as other parents they meet) to conform to particular parenting practices (which have attributes like cultural endorsement and being part of anti-rational memes).
So this, like the above, is an instance of people wanting rationality and parenting not to mix.
Except, "people wanting" may be the wrong concept. It's more like "memes controlling" with no emotions or preferences involved, nor any human choice. But that can be misleading too. Part of the way anti-rational memes control people is by causing emotions and preferences in their hosts, as well as by controlling human choices.
> On Aug 21, 1:47 pm, Justin Mallone <justin...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> For instance, when trying to engage in rational discussion, people will accuse you of "being childish" if you ask too many why's (i think the limit is like 4). As if that's an argument. I guess that's an example of its reach.
>
> I have experienced this as well (being called "childish" for asking
> questions or discussing certain ideas) - even among a local group of
> people whose express purposes include the promotion of reason and
> science!
Another common result of asking questions (as an adult) is that many people *often silently* look down on you. They (maybe unconsciously) take the questions as a sign of weakness and ignorance (or childishness). They regard you as lacking authority and your ideas as less important. They have a hard time ever thinking of you as impressive if you had to ask questions (Especially if it's recent. If the questions are old they might think or feel that you've since grown up).
This is perhaps one of the reasons that many (certainly not all) email list posters avoid asking questions as a general policy, preferring to stick to confident (even if unargued) assertions.
> So I think the relevant question is: Why do some people [irrespective
> of parenthood] find rationality infuriating [in either children or
> adults]?
That change to the question actually ruins the original intent of it.
The original question was meant to be about anti-rational memes, which I think are important. Anti-rational memes spread from *older* to *younger* people but not, as a general rule, vice versa. Why not? Because all the selection pressure on memes is to get into younger people.
Spreading to younger people is a requirement for memes to last. Spreading to older people does not make memes last (though it can help some if those older people then help spread it to younger people).
And parenting in particular is the most important thing in control of "memetic bandwidth" -- the information being transmitted to the next generation of younger people. So parenthood is extremely relevant to memes.
So it's not a coincidence or over-specialization (causing lack of available generality) that it was talking about parents in particular.
How does this theory match up with practice? Parents commonly find rationality in their children infuriating. Adults in our society often encourage or pressure parents to conform to finding it infuriating. All this goes towards spreading anti-rational memes to children.
But the other way around -- children finding the *rationality* of their parents (or even other adults) infuriating -- is rare. Much more common is children finding the *irrationality* of their parents infuriating (and other adults, especially those with coercive power over them like teachers).
Memes are not age neutral and these problems about people disliking rationality are not symmetric and the same across differing groups like parents, non-parents, children, adults.
> Perhaps part of it is they don't explicitly know that rationality is a
> process of explanation and error correction. I'm not sure of this
> though, since my own attitude toward "why" questions was in place
> before my explicit understanding of rationality was.
>
>> What do you think some of the other implications are / reach is?
>
> People who are infuriated by rationality in others also seem to be
> less capable of applying rationality to their own ideas.
Yes, knowledge of reason has reach.
However, what this suggests is not always what we observe. It's also common for a person who is normally exceptionally rational to act quite irrational in his role as parent. He makes exceptions and has blindnesses when it comes to parenting in particular. This is because the anti-rational meme selection pressure made them evolve to have precise control over the *relevant* things to controlling memetic bandwidth, especially parenting behavior, but not so much the (approximately, directly) irrelevant things such as his rationality when working on his profession.
BTW the second most important area to these memes may be courtship behaviors and "romance" and marriage which control who becomes to be a parent with who, and under what circumstances.
That's why "lovers are blind" (a clearer version of "love is blind"). My slightly changed version is actually true to the original:
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/love-is-blind.html
Shakespeare wrote:
> But love is blind and lovers cannot see
So he meant that love and lovers are both blind and specifically mentioned lovers.
That page also says:
> Modern-day research supports the view that the blindness of love is not just a figurative matter. A research study in 2004 by University College London found that feelings of love suppressed the activity of the areas of the brain that control critical thought.
This is gross scientism of the type BoI criticized. It's just as bad as the heritability twin studies, the bogus neuroscience for "mental illness" (such as "depression"), and so on. But, as happens the minority of the time, this is scientism being used to advocate something that happens to be true.
When dealing with believers in scientism, one can point them to some of the scientistic studies which have reached true and moral conclusions which they disagree with. Then they'll have to accept that not all scientistic studies are true on principle and methods of judging them must be used. That's a good start.
Another example of scientism is those studies "scientifically proving" that video games are bad for people (or sometimes just bad for children). But occasionally studies come out (which are no less scientistic) "proving" video games are educational and good for people.
The conclusions of scientism are easy to vary.
-- Elliot Temple
http://elliottemple.com/