homeopathy

step 1: take a homeopathic remedy

step 2a: condition improves

step 3a: declare it worked

step 2b: condition gets worse

step 3b: declare it's not all powerful, it probably helped a little, not even official doctor medicine can cure everything instantly

Elliot Temple | Permalink | Messages (0)

Warcraft III Poems

The Life of a HU

Fighting UD demonstrates a HU's lack of power
you just lose if you don't mass tower
Fighting orc your casters will shine
do a sky push and he's sure to whine
When elf comes your way
an xpo will save the day
When you face a fellow HU
don't feel blue
tech and harass
can beat caster mass

The Life of an Orc

Stack that imba blade
and you'll have it made
They'll spam dust
because they must
but it's no use
don't call a truce
Just sell your tp
circlet is gg

The Life of an Elf

Being an elf
is good for your health
No matter how nub
you never can lose
Attack-move for the win
try not to grin

The Life of an UD

Coil nova impale
will never fail
Your units may suck
but who gives a fuck?
Nuke nuke nuke nuke

Elliot Temple | Permalink | Messages (0)

Two Girls

Waiting in line near me were two girls, age 4, and their mothers, who were talking. The girls entertained themselves.

The girls left, and returned holding a glass bottle containing red liquid. The bottle was large compared to their height. One held it, in two hands, cradling it protectively, and vigilantly attending to its safety. The other stayed close, watching too, in case the first failed in her duty.

They were instructed to put the bottle back, because they already had one at home. As they left, the second mother said, "Don't drop it." Hearing this, the first mother was spurred to action and said, "Be careful, it's glass." Satisfied, the parents resumed talking without a further glance to their daughters.

As the girls walked away, the bottle carrier replied, "I know."

In general, it is unreasonable to give advice to someone when you know less about the situation than he does, and have no reason to think the advice will be useful. We can infer that the children had heard this advice many times previously. This is noticeable in the casual way the mothers said it, the overly-careful behavior of the girls, and the "I know" reply.

A good parent would think about what his child wants, and use questions and observations to help him understand, and then find ways to be helpful. These parents gave advice tailored to any child of that age and never, in all the times they've repeated it, watched to see if the children were careful or not. They simply assumed their children did not listen to them, or that all young children are careless. And they gave the advice anyway, with no reasonable expectation that it would help anyone.

Elliot Temple | Permalink | Messages (0)

New Font

i was looking for a replacement font for Monaco 14pt for programming, b/c the italic version makes apostrophes invisible (at least in textmate)

after a while i found the perfect replacement:

Monaco 13pt

for whatever reason, the italic algorithm manages to slant apostrophes for 13pt without them disappearing.

Elliot Temple | Permalink | Messages (0)

Spam Email

I thought of a use for email spam. Get a list of the most common passwords, then send out random emails saying, "Your password is '(random password)', please change it." A few people will get freaked out and change to a better password. It's a public service.

Elliot Temple | Permalink | Messages (0)

Lowest Common Denominator?

Tabloids appeal to the lowest common denominator.
The highest common divisor makes more sense. That way, I prefer a number compatible with me first, and a higher one second, and the highest common divisor is the highest number compatible with everyone.

Elliot Temple | Permalink | Messages (0)

Old TCS Posts 6

"Wow, you put all your laundry away all by yourself. I'm glad because now we have time for an extra story."

This is one reason I *loathed* the *How to talk so kids will listen* books. Quite simply, the statement quoted here is a *lie*. This is horrible manipulation.
That's Sarah talking. I agree with her point. But she is rather hostile. This raises an interesting question: How did TCS grow when the majority of posters were hostile to the core ideas, and the most active founder was hostile to people who who express relatively normal parenting ideas? Sarah goes on to take apart this person's statement in detail and explain what he "*really* means" and how it is coercive.
"You sure got dressed quickly this morning. Now you have time to paint before lunch."

Well in that case, the child would have *even more* time if she did not bother dressing at all, wouldn't she? But that would not fit in with the behaviourist plans of the authors of that book at all (despite its undoubted practicality for such a messy activity).
Well, it's true. But it's Sarah being hostile again.

There is a second unquestioned assumption which I'd like to point out. It is the fixed lunch time. You don't have less time to accomplish things if you wake up later in the day, and move lunch correspondingly. When you have lunch, and how much is done before it, actually has nothing to do with how much you can get done in a day. Lunch takes the same portion of your waking hours regardless.

Oh damn, there's only this one Sarah post this month. It was hard to tell from context, but she might be less hostile than it seems. Maybe someone asked if the type of statements quoted are good ideas instead of actually advocating them. I guess I'll find out later.
My children have so many choice - they wear what they want, they control their own learning (they don't go to school and don't do any schoolwork) etc., but in somethings there can be no choice.
What things? As usual, no details are given of specifically when and why a child must be coerced. But despite not being able to think of a single strong example, this poster is very attached to defending the principle that coercion is sometimes justified. Presumably it will help him feel better about those times he hurts his child.
In our case, our noncoercive philosophy is easy to follow when it comes to clothes, hair, education, bedtime and yes, even toothbrushing, but I don't start the car unless everyone has a seatbelt on, I don't let kids smash private property and I don't let them hurt each other.
This is a later post by the same author, and gives genuine examples! Coercion is justified over seat belts, vandalism of others' property, and sibling violence.

Well, maybe. He doesn't start the car until people buckle up. Prima facie, that sounds helpful, not coercive. It keeps his children safe even if they are forgetful. Wouldn't they appreciate this concern? So why does he think it's coercive? Do his children want him to start the car and drive around with their seat belts unfastened? If so, then they'd be in a state of coercion if this is refused to them, and they still want it. This sounds fairly unlikely. I wonder if the real issue is that the children don't want to go on the car ride at all.

But let's take it at face value for a moment. Events take this form all the time. Any time a child forms any preference at all, and his parent does not immediately comply, we have a situation like this. But coercion is usually avoided. How? Sometimes the child comes to agree with the parent. Sometimes they discuss it and find a new point of view they both agree with. Or they discuss it, and then the child gets what he wanted once some kind of understanding is reached -- the parent gives some safety advice, or just realized he was mistaken. There is no reason for a disagreement to end in force or coercion. It can be resolved amicably.

So even in the interpretation of the seat belt scenario where the child initially wants something which the parent initially refuses, coercion is still far from assured. We have yet to depart from normal life. The same thing happens among friends all the time. The only reason this situation would reliably result in coercion is if one or both parties had an entrenched irrationality.

What about vandalism? Or violence against another child? Well, what about it? What if my child wants to assassinate the President? Prima facie, all these problems are extremely easy to solve. They are much easier than the seat belt problem. The reason is that the case against doing each of these things is extremely strong. The case for brushing teeth may be hard to make, but the case against violence and criminal actions is easy to make! They are very bad and easy to argue against. Easy to show downsides for. Easy to suggest better alternatives to. As in the seat belt case, the only reason these would present a chronic problem is if there is an entrenched irrationality involved. And if there is, the solution has nothing to do with the ostensible problem. The problem is about the irrationality, and the details of how it works and the how the other parts of the person's personality can help get rid of it or circumvent it. It isn't vandalism that is hard to deal with, it's irrational theories and behaviors that contain mechanisms to sabotage rational criticism and prevent changing to better ideas.

Children are not born with entrenched, irrationalities. Parents, at the time of the birth of their children, already have many entrenched, irrational theories. So the theory that the irrationality is "probably in the child" is ridiculous.
It is all distilled into what I tell squealers who try to tattle tale to me - Unless someone is hurting or being hurt, is endangering themselves or others or is destroying someone's property, I don't want to hear about it.
Squealers who tattle tale? Why does this poster think of children in terms of demeaning schoolyard terms?

A "squealer" is usually a child who has a problem with another child, and wants parental help. Or he is a child who is acting obedient to adults, and helping them enforce the rules they say are very important. Or, sometimes, he is trying to use an adult to hurt another child, which is a very unfortunate state to be in deserving of much sympathy. Don't you feel sorry for someone who doesn't know how to be happy and is so desperate that he would hurt someone else in a futile attempt to improve his life? What have his parents been doing? He needs help!

And why doesn't this adult want to hear about it? Apparently the child considers it important! There is a problem of some sort. Or if there is no problem, then the child has a misconception that there is a problem, and this misconception is itself a problem which could be solved. So instead of "not wanting to hear about it" the poster should listen carefully and try to help. Ignoring child who reach out to adults is hugely irresponsible.
Next, I disagree with your premise that survival consists of taking actions that fend off immediate death. Survival and hygene properly consist of pursuit of a optimal state of health, not just staving off death.
LOL. This is pretty funny. First he says coercion is justified if the child would die otherwise. Coercion for the sake of survival is justified. Then he goes on to explain how survival actually means maintaining an optimal health state complete with tooth brushing (it is a thread about tooth brushing and this was specified in the surrounding text), eating vegetables, daily exercise, staying on top of current medical advice, becoming rich and funding life extension research, and so on. So, for example, your child can't become an artist because that doesn't usually pay very well. I know children should only be forced when necessary, but that extra income will pay for better medical care, so it's justified. It's a matter of life or death!
Why is it, in your view, that initiation of force is wrong? In my view, it is because that force overrides the judgement of the victim - and that judgment is a human being's means of survival. For an act to be coersion, it must be overriding a capacity that the victim actually has. In the case of children, if you're forcing a 16 yr. old to brush his teeth, its coersion, but if you're forcing a 2 year old, it is not - since the two year does not have the capacity to understand tooth decay or the relationship with brushing preventing it. I'm not talking about strapping the child down
Of course not. Why would you strap a child down? They are small and easy to control without straps :)

Seriously though, parents today usually use threats instead of a whip. They threaten to withhold love, withhold approval, be upset, act grumpy and unhelpful, withhold stories and various kinds of help. Or they use emotional blackmail. These are ways of coercing children too. They are ways of making children do something while not wanting to do it.

Force prevents rational discussion. When force is used, it means that the stronger person gets his way, independent of the merit of his ideas. This is bad because it more often implements bad ideas than a rational approach. It's also bad because it hurts people.

The poster has used an ad hoc reasoning for why initiating force is wrong specifically designed to give him an excuse for forcing children. He has gone out of his way to fit in a clause about whether the victim is capable of judgment, so he can exclude children as possible victims. And anyway, choosing to move a brush back and forth, or not, is a capacity a two-year-old has. The whole point of coercing children is not that they are unable to make a choice, but that they have made one the parent does not like. Anyway, imagine you didn't have the capacity to understand something, say quantum physics. And you had to make an important decision that depended on details of quantum physics. And imagine your father is a world class expert in the field. What would you do? Of course you would want to recognize your ignorance, and to ask for advice. Children have it even easier than that. Their parents tell them about their ignorance, and volunteer the dental information, and any other relevant, helpful information. If they go wrong, it isn't due to a lack of capacity for understanding long term dental consequences. Those are not relevant -- the child can make a rational decision without understanding them. Just like you can make a rational decision about the quantum physics issue without learning about it. You can ask your father, and make a judgment about whether he is an expert, and whether what he says seems to fall within his expertise, and makes sense as far as you can tell. Similarly, a child can make a judgment about whether his parents' advice has generally seemed to help him or hurt him, and act accordingly. This is, in fact, what children frequently do. The only problem is their parents already have a history of hurting them. Then they take the refusal of the child to trust them as proof children are stupid, and so they start claiming force and violence are justified to overcome the inborn stupidity of children.

Have you ever watched a parent with a baby? You will see things like the parent hardly paying attention, and then when the baby reaches for something, for half the items in the area, the parent will move it out of reach because he doesn't want the baby to have that. Why did he put it in reach, then thwart the baby when the baby reached for it? Why doesn't he watch his baby and look for a way to help him? Why doesn't he form theories of what his baby is interested in, and think of new ways to explore it? This sort of parenting is common place. And fully explains why some parents cannot seem to reliably get their children to take their advice. As well as, you know, the fact parents commonly give bad advice. How many parents actually read scientific studies carefully before giving their children health advice? Instead they read a magazine article which summarizes a summary of a study, and they have no idea if the study is valid or not. They read some guy, who might be an expert but they don't really know, misquoted by a journalist who definitely isn't an expert and wants an exciting sounding article, and they then insist they know an important truth.
You have said age isn't a factor. This is puzzling to me because it seems fairly obvious that children do not have the same capacities as adults. How do you take this into account?
By taking into account ability, skill, and ignorance directly, when they are relevant, instead of using a one-size-fits-all judgment based solely on age.

Elliot Temple | Permalink | Messages (0)

Old TCS Posts 5

Here are some quotes I like:
There may well be times when being non-coercive is inconvenient -- but not necessarily more inconvenient than being coercive. A child who hasn't been coerced has no reason to see adults as adversaries.
some parents go to enormous lengths to do what they think will benefit their children. If they did believe that non-coercion was best for their children, many parents would be willing to accept some inconvenience to that end (in addition to the effort required to break away from what they learned from *their* parents).
Do you mean that knowing someone's age makes it possible to completely exclude from consideration any evidence or argument to the effect that they could make rational decisions?
Explaining to the child that (s)he will need to pay for future dental work because (s)he did not practice adequate hygene means nothing to a four year old who can have but a limited grasp of finances.

Then that is not a very good explanation to give a four-year-old.
when coercion is used, it really doesn't *matter* whether your reasons make sense, or whether the task is the right thing to do. *They have to do it regardless*. It's as easy to make a habit of wrong things as right things. Coercion doesn't call for children to reason; indeed it calls for them *not* to reason, or risk punishment for reasoning to a different conclusion than the adult.
Those were all by the same person. Unfortunately, that's the end of his posts in this monthly archive, so I guess it's back to quoting bad ideas.
Yes, we coerce our children and, in reality, we're proud of it. But it's not arbitrary. We take special care to explain to them the reasons behind our actions.
The implication is that explaining the reasons makes the coercion non-arbitrary. But if the child agrees with the reasons then coercion is pointless. The only case where coercion would be used is if the parents explain their reasons, and the child considers those to be bad reasons. So, coercion takes place in exactly the cases when child considers parent to have a misconception. This policy of, from the child's point of view, using force when mistaken, certainly is not a very effective way of demonstrating to children that you care about reasoned discussion and wouldn't act arbitrarily.
This does not mean that we allow them no choices. Choices of taste [...] are left to them (within certain limits of practicality [...] and safety (no, that uninsulated demin jacket is not going to be adequate as a winter coat in Iowa)
Children have to be forced to wear warm clothing? If they don't, they won't notice anything is amiss and will die? Or what?

And consider a parent so bad at explaining things to their children that they can't even convince child that wearing enough clothing not to be dangerously cold is wise. He takes his own lack of ability to explain even very simple things as proof that children are irrational creatures who must be coerced. That's ridiculous. No wonder he can't persuade child to brush his teeth or anything else. Even the negative consequences of being painfully freezing cold are beyond his ability to communicate.
In the case of watching television and videos, again, it is not simply that he should have the right to choose to watch televsion whenever he wants. When the television is on I have to be willing to have that sound in the house in which I exist also. (We live in a small house, in which I spend a fair amount of time in the living room where the TV is.)

In short, if the decision affects only him, then he has the right to make whatever decision he wants. Fine. But, if that decision affects other people, then the rights of the other people come into the situation as well. There is an expression that says: "Your right to swing your arms ends at my face." Yes, children should have equal rights with adults, but not rights which take away from my rights
Children want to watch TV as a way to metaphorically punch their parents in the face. If a child wants to do something that doesn't effect anyone else, that's fine, but if it requires the parent's involvement in any way, or uses the parent's resources, then he needs permission. So, for example, watching the TV also causes wear and tear and uses electricity. Children have no right to damage their parent's property, so he needs permission. And what about head phones so the parent doesn't have to listen to the TV while child is watching? (Why didn't they think of that? Are they even trying to find solutions?) Headphones would cost the parent money, which does not belong to the child, so, as with pretty much everything, child needs parental approval. But, the rights of the child are being respected. He has the same rights as anyone else. The difference is only his lack of resources. If he'd just get a job, he could buy his own headphones and then watch TV.

Sigh. Instead of admitting he treats children differently, this poster insists children have equal rights and the fault is their own for not having resources. It's the child's fault he doesn't have his own sound proof room (or headphones) to watch TV in. He doesn't have a right to that if he won't earn it in the free market. Children create their own lack of options by not acting like adults. But it's fair! Really, it is!
A better question for her is clothing... She loves to take off her clothes, regardless of the weather and especially if I just put them on her! She'll try to put them back on, but if she can't she doesn't spend too much time worrying about it... she just goes on about her business. So, is she just warmer-blooded than I or should I make her wear clothes around the house? She doesn't seem to do this when we're away from home.
The child takes the clothes off and doesn't complain or show any kind of upset. And does wear clothes when outdoors where it is colder. And parent is worried she'll freeze? Seriously? Don't children cry when it starts to hurt? You'll have plenty of warning. If you're really that worried, go touch her skin. You'll see it doesn't feel like an ice cube. If you're still worried, take her temperature. You'll notice it's normal. There's plenty of simple ways to find out if she's actually too cold. There's no need to be considering "making her wear clothes" yet! There is no evidence of any sort that child is making a mistake; in fact there is evidence child is discriminating and makes appropriate choices about clothing. And parent's intuition is maybe it's already time to resort to violence.
How do you know when a child is able to handle making different decisions for herself?
Children make decisions from day one. For example, they make choices about what to grab, or what to focus their attention on. The only issue is whether parent forcibly stops child, or not. How do you know when child is ready to not be controlled? That is the wrong attitude. Even if you take the attitude that coercion is sometimes necessary, surely there is no case that it should be the default approach! A better issue is: in what relatively few cases should a parent intervene to try to prevent a harmful mistaken decision? But even that is a mistaken way to look at the situation. Because it sees the primary issue as whether the parent should use force, or not. But that should be a last result, if it's a consideration at all. Considering it from the start is clearly bad. The first issue should be to consider what advice would help child to make a better decision, and what sort of information child would appreciate. Children don't want to ruin their lives with bad decisions. A better attitude is to cooperate with your child and find good decisions with him.
If Mary won't put her laundry away, then I just might not have the time or inclination to read her a story or help her set up an art project. [...]

I don't look at these things as being coercive. I have needs, too. If Mary won't shoulder her responsibility, then I either have to shoulder it or let the work pile up.
So let's see. First, Mary is under threat that if she won't obey about laundry, she will be deprived of stories and art. Then her parent says this isn't coercive. How can that be? Mary apparently wants to do art and hear stories, but not do the laundry. But is unable to get what she wants. Clearly this is coercive behavior by the parent.

The poster goes on to justify this coercion based on his own needs. You see, children have responsibilities, and if they won't pull their weight, they are coercing the parent, and coercion them is purely a defensive measure. But wait, what did the parent's needs have to do with the child's responsibilities? Could it be that the child's responsibility is to do whatever the parent feels he needs the child to do?

PS Aside from Sarah Lawrence (now Fitz-Claridge), names are often changed, especially identifiable names.

Elliot Temple | Permalink | Messages (0)