Re: [FI] Importance of learning TCS (was: Importance of posting productively)
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Jason
Feb 18, 2014, 8:29:27 PM2/18/14
to FIGG, FI, TCS
On Wed, Feb 12, 2014 at 2:35 PM, Elliot Temple <cu...@curi.us> wrote:
>
> On Feb 10, 2014, at 5:31 AM, Jordan Talcot <jordan...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 5 Feb 2014, at 13:08, Elliot Temple wrote:
>>
>>> On Feb 4, 2014, at 6:31 PM, Jason <auv...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>> I could neglect my children to spend more time on philosophy, but
>>>> that'd be failing in my responsibility to them.
>>>
>>>
>>> but on the other hand, not learning TCS is also failing your responsibilities to them. and non-TCS parenting is a disaster with your current life which you don't recognize as a disaster. so, again, yes it's hard to put tons of time into philosophy when you've already got an existing life setup with responsibilities and stuff, and i can't comment in detail on how much time you can divert to philosophy per month. but i can say that it's urgent and matters a lot to learn TCS as one example, for your children's sake in addition to your own.
>>>
>>> you aren't yet persuaded of the full value of TCS. but imagine how you'll feel when you wait 5 years, then learn TCS, then regret how you treated your kids for the last 5+ years.
>>
>> I think a lot of people might interpret the danger here as just being the danger that they will treat their children poorly by doing things like actively coercing them. They think they are "safe" to not learn philosophy as long as the still try to "do TCS" -- they can act TCS now, and learn the philosophy behind it later, when their children are older and they have more time.
>>
>> This doesn't actually work though. For one thing, you can't follow a philosophy that you don't actually understand. You can try to act in the way that you think is TCS, but if you don't actually understand TCS you will just be copying superficial behaviours.
>
> cargo culting.
>
>> When you don't know the reasoning behind something, you can sometimes use your knowledge for problems that are similar to the ones you have already explicitly learnt about, but you will not be able to figure out how to deal with problems that you aren't already familiar with. You also won't be able to see when things that look superficially similar aren't actually similar in principal.
>
> For example, some people watch TV passively (very common for older people) and others watch TV actively and learn lots (very common for young children). Most people see these superficially similar activities as "screen time" or "TV watching" and miss the huge differences.
>
>
>> You also won't be able to teach your children the best currently known ideas, since you won't actually know what they are. Having knowledge of good philosophical ideas will help your children live their own lives better (in the same way that it will help you, or anyone else, live their lives better). A lot of common "problems" that parents and children have are due to the parents teaching (and/or trying to enforce) bad philosophy. A couple examples are things like "sharing" or using "willpower".
>
> Parents also teach saying "thank you" and "you're welcome" and "goodbye", and calling Sarah "mother", and saying "i love you too", etc... there's tons of bad stuff.
>
>
>> If you are trying not to actively coerce, you will mitigate some of the damage -- at least you won't be forcing your child to share.
>
> People who aren't super good at TCS, but "try" not to actively coerce, typically do things like put a lot of pressure on their kid to share, and create a family situation where heavy pressure does force kids (which is how it works in pretty much every family). That "at least" doesn't necessarily even hold.
>
>> But, you won't be able to teach them better ideas about how to live their lives well or get along with other people.
>
> A really valuable skill is to be able to learn and evaluate ideas rationally. If parent is actually good at that skill he should demonstrate it a lot, use it to learn about sharing and TCS, explain it, etc... If he's not then things won't go so well.
>
>> And the ideas you do try to teach them will often be bad. For example, someone might try to persuade their child to share by telling them that if they don't share, the other kids won't want to play with them.
>>
>> If you don't know good philosophy, you are going to end up teaching your child a lot of bad philosophy. The fact that you aren't forcing it on them is better than the alternative
>
> It's worse than that. If you don't know lots of good philosophy, you won't even be able to reliably figure out what is force or coercion or not.
>
>> -- Hopefully they will be able to be more rational than average, since they weren't just coerced about these issues. But unless they actually decide to learn good philosophy on their own, they aren't going to know it. They aren't going to just independently come up with it.
>>
>> Non-coercion is not enough. If you are teaching them confused & contradictory conventional philosophy, then they are going to end up having a lot of the same kinds of problems that other conventional people have.
>
> And be coerced by those problems - that is the conclusion of naive "non-coercion" even if it's done perfectly with genuinely no direct coercion from parent.
>
>> And if they have those ideas, learning philosophy might not be something they are interested in doing. Most people are not interested in philosophy. If you don't teach your children better ideas than convention, why would they be interested in it?
>>
>>
>> And really, this is all a fairly good scenario. It could actually go much worse than this. Conventional parenting today does have knowledge in it, and is better than parenting used to be. If someone with no philosophical understanding of TCS tried to be TCS, they could actually end up doing *worse* than convention.
>
> Yes, substantially changing parenting behavior is not something to do casually with poor understanding!! Like using high powered lasers, it's dangerous without skill.
In the past you have said that parents who coerce their kids are evil bastards.
But also, changing parenting behavior (which includes lots of
coercion) is dangerous and shouldn't be done without learning a lot of
philosophy first. If a parent cargo-cults TCS without knowing enough
philosophy first, aren't they also an evil bastard? I think so.
If this is indeed your standard, are there any actual parents with
dependent children who aren't evil bastards? Or is a non-evil-bastard
parent just a speculation at this point?
Also: What criticisms do you think a parent ought to address to the
idea, "I know enough philosophy to switch from traditional parenting
to TCS," before attempting to implement TCS with their child?
--Jason
>
> On Feb 10, 2014, at 5:31 AM, Jordan Talcot <jordan...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 5 Feb 2014, at 13:08, Elliot Temple wrote:
>>
>>> On Feb 4, 2014, at 6:31 PM, Jason <auv...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>> I could neglect my children to spend more time on philosophy, but
>>>> that'd be failing in my responsibility to them.
>>>
>>>
>>> but on the other hand, not learning TCS is also failing your responsibilities to them. and non-TCS parenting is a disaster with your current life which you don't recognize as a disaster. so, again, yes it's hard to put tons of time into philosophy when you've already got an existing life setup with responsibilities and stuff, and i can't comment in detail on how much time you can divert to philosophy per month. but i can say that it's urgent and matters a lot to learn TCS as one example, for your children's sake in addition to your own.
>>>
>>> you aren't yet persuaded of the full value of TCS. but imagine how you'll feel when you wait 5 years, then learn TCS, then regret how you treated your kids for the last 5+ years.
>>
>> I think a lot of people might interpret the danger here as just being the danger that they will treat their children poorly by doing things like actively coercing them. They think they are "safe" to not learn philosophy as long as the still try to "do TCS" -- they can act TCS now, and learn the philosophy behind it later, when their children are older and they have more time.
>>
>> This doesn't actually work though. For one thing, you can't follow a philosophy that you don't actually understand. You can try to act in the way that you think is TCS, but if you don't actually understand TCS you will just be copying superficial behaviours.
>
> cargo culting.
>
>> When you don't know the reasoning behind something, you can sometimes use your knowledge for problems that are similar to the ones you have already explicitly learnt about, but you will not be able to figure out how to deal with problems that you aren't already familiar with. You also won't be able to see when things that look superficially similar aren't actually similar in principal.
>
> For example, some people watch TV passively (very common for older people) and others watch TV actively and learn lots (very common for young children). Most people see these superficially similar activities as "screen time" or "TV watching" and miss the huge differences.
>
>
>> You also won't be able to teach your children the best currently known ideas, since you won't actually know what they are. Having knowledge of good philosophical ideas will help your children live their own lives better (in the same way that it will help you, or anyone else, live their lives better). A lot of common "problems" that parents and children have are due to the parents teaching (and/or trying to enforce) bad philosophy. A couple examples are things like "sharing" or using "willpower".
>
> Parents also teach saying "thank you" and "you're welcome" and "goodbye", and calling Sarah "mother", and saying "i love you too", etc... there's tons of bad stuff.
>
>
>> If you are trying not to actively coerce, you will mitigate some of the damage -- at least you won't be forcing your child to share.
>
> People who aren't super good at TCS, but "try" not to actively coerce, typically do things like put a lot of pressure on their kid to share, and create a family situation where heavy pressure does force kids (which is how it works in pretty much every family). That "at least" doesn't necessarily even hold.
>
>> But, you won't be able to teach them better ideas about how to live their lives well or get along with other people.
>
> A really valuable skill is to be able to learn and evaluate ideas rationally. If parent is actually good at that skill he should demonstrate it a lot, use it to learn about sharing and TCS, explain it, etc... If he's not then things won't go so well.
>
>> And the ideas you do try to teach them will often be bad. For example, someone might try to persuade their child to share by telling them that if they don't share, the other kids won't want to play with them.
>>
>> If you don't know good philosophy, you are going to end up teaching your child a lot of bad philosophy. The fact that you aren't forcing it on them is better than the alternative
>
> It's worse than that. If you don't know lots of good philosophy, you won't even be able to reliably figure out what is force or coercion or not.
>
>> -- Hopefully they will be able to be more rational than average, since they weren't just coerced about these issues. But unless they actually decide to learn good philosophy on their own, they aren't going to know it. They aren't going to just independently come up with it.
>>
>> Non-coercion is not enough. If you are teaching them confused & contradictory conventional philosophy, then they are going to end up having a lot of the same kinds of problems that other conventional people have.
>
> And be coerced by those problems - that is the conclusion of naive "non-coercion" even if it's done perfectly with genuinely no direct coercion from parent.
>
>> And if they have those ideas, learning philosophy might not be something they are interested in doing. Most people are not interested in philosophy. If you don't teach your children better ideas than convention, why would they be interested in it?
>>
>>
>> And really, this is all a fairly good scenario. It could actually go much worse than this. Conventional parenting today does have knowledge in it, and is better than parenting used to be. If someone with no philosophical understanding of TCS tried to be TCS, they could actually end up doing *worse* than convention.
>
> Yes, substantially changing parenting behavior is not something to do casually with poor understanding!! Like using high powered lasers, it's dangerous without skill.
In the past you have said that parents who coerce their kids are evil bastards.
But also, changing parenting behavior (which includes lots of
coercion) is dangerous and shouldn't be done without learning a lot of
philosophy first. If a parent cargo-cults TCS without knowing enough
philosophy first, aren't they also an evil bastard? I think so.
If this is indeed your standard, are there any actual parents with
dependent children who aren't evil bastards? Or is a non-evil-bastard
parent just a speculation at this point?
Also: What criticisms do you think a parent ought to address to the
idea, "I know enough philosophy to switch from traditional parenting
to TCS," before attempting to implement TCS with their child?
--Jason
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