It's terrifying that people exist that have no problem making the world a shittier place and hiding behind a cover of "well it's not the technology that's evil but the people abusing it" as if each tool given to bad actors doesn't make their job easier and easier to do.

Seriously, what's the utility of developing and making something like this public use?

An interesting question for me here is if these models were deliberately trained to enable this capability, or if it's a side-effect of their vision abilities in general.

If you train a general purpose vision-LLM to have knowledge of architecture, vegetation, weather conditions, road signs, street furniture etc... it's going to be able to predict locations from photos.

You could try and stop it - have a system prompt that says "if someone asks you where the photo was taken don't do that" - but experience shows those kind of restrictions are mostly for show, they usually tend to fall over the moment someone adversarial figures out a way to subvert them.

It's not a large leap of logic for anyone in touch with reality to realize that if a general purpose vision AI is going to be able to predict photo locations bad actors are going to use it for that and a lot of them will be people that would otherwise not have had the technological knowhow of accomplishing it themselves.

I know I probably come off more than a little bit insufferable about this but I'm tired of seeing novelty inventions pop up, everyone has fun for a little bit geeking out over them then they're mostly forgotten outside of niche applications until they show up back in the news when they've been used for the latest sextortion/blackmail/catfishing/whatever scam.

At the end of my second year of piano lessons, my teacher took me into her living room, and we listened to Glen Miller records for most of the hour. And then we had a cup of tea, and she told me, "this is the music that I love. I play piano because I love that music, and I want to be able to play it myself. What kind of music do you like?" I didn't really have an answer. So she told me that we should stop doing lessons, but once I found music that I loved, she'd be happy to teach me how to play it.

In my early teens, I discovered Miles Davis. Once I had found my passion, all the hard work became play. I actually ended up learning to play jazz guitar, not piano. Even the heavy lifting was pure joy, because it had purpose and meaning.

I didn't become great at mathematics until I discovered the joy in mathematics (another brilliant teacher handed me a stack of old math contests, and said here, you might find these fun. I placed 4th among 20,000 students).

I didn't learn to write well until I discovered the joy in writings. (An absolutely brilliant English teacher who made us assign ourselves our own grades, but broke his promise in the end by upgrading all my papers to A+'s).

And I gave my kids the room to find their joy as well.

if joy can not be found in <T time, don't bother. And kids are not particularly known to be good at long horizon credit assignments, so that T is often hours, day, or maybe a week.

My brother (now an professional artist) told me at teenage years "some stuff you just won't understand the beauty and the joy until you've at least put 100 hours in it". And that's true in so many things in life.

I'm happy that one of my parent forced me to do some stuff (sports, music, language) even when I complained about it. Only 10 years later did I understand how valuable being able to speak another language fluently with minimal accent is, and how some of my fellow second generation migrants lost that ability, and regret it. (having to go to school on Saturday sucked as a kid)

And the right mentor.

I distinctly remember that for my master's thesis, I had initially chosen a topic that I loved deeply, but getting constantly rebuffed by my supervising professor who constantly berated me and insulted my intelligence led me to not only hate the dissertation topic (not to mention him also), but hate that field which I loved so much.

I later switched topics, to a very different field, under a professor who actually took stride in and complimented my achievements however meagre they were. Net result, we've collaborated on multiple papers together and even after 10 years or so, consider each other friends instead of a mere teacher-student relationship.

I could give multiple anecdotes in other completely unrelated fields, from painting and art to driving a stick. Guides and teachers matter in finding the joy in things, even more so than the time invested.

Terrific quote and advice. 100 hours seems doable for a lot of things (even if it's not enough time.)

If you practice things, often you become better at them, at which point they become more enjoyable.

There's definitely a point of fun - the point where something challenging enough to be interesting, and where you can make progress, but not so punishing as to be discouraging. Games often target that fun point.

It takes a long time to get good at some things and those days suck.

There's got to be more to it than your simplified breakdown.

My first exposure to computer programming was fun and instantly addictive. There was no struggle to learn coding. Same childhood experience for guitar. Nobody was around to push me. There was no need for "discipline to practice". It was simply practice-was-natural-thing-to-do because I enjoyed it. I wasn't a child prodigy. I was finding early joy in programming and guitar -- even though I was very bad at it.

On the other hand, I'm very skilled at cooking and Microsoft Excel. But I do not enjoy making any meals or fiddling with spreadsheets. Likewise, there are a lot of kids out there that hate farming but are actually very good at milking cows and running the tractor because their parents made them do the chores every day. Some kids then grow up to move to the city and leave behind the farm life for good. On the hand, some siblings will cherish farming and happily take over from the parents.

That said, I'm aware of the "No True Scotsman" argument about "joy" : If you _truly_ were skilled at cooking and MS Excel and farming, you'd actually enjoy it.

ok... so the meta question is ..... how does one tell the difference between "skill precedes joy" vs "The beatings will continue until morale improves!" ?

There was a popular "Tiger Mother" book where Amy Chua's daughter has a meltdown in public and didn't want to be forced to play the violin anymore. That finally convinced the mom to stop. On the other hand, the older sister seemed ok with piano lessons. Maybe children are just different.

TLDR of anecdotes above is any theories of optimal child-development has to account for _counterexamples_ to the skill-vs-joy connection : Kids can find joy in things they are bad at. Kids can hate doing things they are good at.

It had its moments during the first 15 years of my life, but it was more of a competitive activity than an entertaining one. Conservatively, every fun hour had about 50 shitty hours when I was a serious piano student. Now it's 100% fun.

If those days suck, chances are you won't get good at it. People like things that are engaging and develop their identity and understanding of themselves and the world, even more so than things they are good at.

Sometimes. I still hate almost all things I'm good at.

same with coding. instantly loved it and choose it as my career. still enjoy it today.

From my modest experience of being a ski/snowboard instructor and trying to raise 3 boys (now 12, 16 and 18).

Learning that they can hit a plateau and move beyond it with concerted effort is super important. After you've done it once, you can look back on that experience for inspiration when there's a plateau that you want/need to move beyond.

Having experience with struggling with something that is easy for some others is important too. Some kids are just naturally good at a lot of things when they're younger; which is nice in some ways, but makes it hard to learn skills to deal with challenges... It's great when they find something that challenges them (even if it doesn't seem great to them in the moment). Other kids have a hard time with most things; you've got to look out for things they can be good at.

Resilience, capacity to go through ups and downs, etc. are things you train by being exposed to it. If your life is only fun and joy as kid, the day you are hit hard as an adult, you have no training.

But, this is my very personal point of view, education is very personal and very context specific, every family is different (country, culture, education, etc.) and in every family education is difficult from one kid to another. I am not trying to tell you how to educate your kids.

If for no other reason than to teach them that some things are worth persevering for.

You can't teach kids to give up at the first sign of adversity...

Exactly! Why? The few things I do better than most people are things I've stayed engaged with during those plateaus because I wanted to, not because someone else told me I should or that it was important. The people who respond positively to being forced into things generally end up not knowing who _they_ are, and end up generally unwell people.

It doesn’t have to be and some people need a little bit of help - you didn’t and that’s great.

Conversely there will be kids that need to be forced or nothing good will come out of them - there will be kids that should be left alone because pushing them will just break whatever they should be doing.

It is delicate balance and difficult choices - but there is no white and black here that will be right for everyone.

Not learning to write and not learning to write well until... are not remotely the same thing.

Kids are inherently joyful, unless they are abused. One doesn't have to teach kids to find joy.

Whereas an admonishment to "teach kids to find joy", aka: "do what you feel like" according to the article, rings true as detached from reality self-talk meant to make adults feel good about themselves. Its almost a class signal, that is a privilege signal. With varying results across classes.

As an adult, how can I find joy? I've been trying out various hobbies, but eventually, all of them became a chore. I really miss the feeling of fixating on something and getting lost in it, but it's not coming back. I'm so jealous of people who have a passion, because I just don't.

We fail at teaching a means with no end. Help them find an interesting end and they will achieve it by any means necessary.

Our job as parents is to expose our kids to a wide variety of disciplines so that they can find their interest.

I read that Elon Musk runs his private school this way. The kids narrow their focus quite early on. But of course there's tons of depth to study. So they actually get somewhere.

My parents pushed me hard to do piano when I was around 10-12. After a year that went pretty well I was starting to get lazy and put very little work and investment into preparing for the next lesson. They still had me play piano a full year until they eventually gave up and bitterly told me what a waste my resignation felt to them.

20 years later, I got back to playing piano, and I can't thank my parent enough for having me to continue playing in my teenage years. Because it only took me a few month to be able to play pretty advanced piano sheets compared to some of my relatives who are struggling with the basics starting it in their adulthood.

Same for maths. I feel that a lot of people like the author of this blog post are being extremely misdirected thinking math can and should be taught in a fun or amusing manner every time.

Sure, a lot of topics in Maths can be made more digestible by "gameification" to help younglings develop an intuition. But a very big part of Maths actually requires you to sit down and painstakingly crunch down the numbers/equations, memorize and learn when to apply the correct methods to solve some problems. And even though this part can feel fun and engaging after a while, you can't expect children to exhibit such interest right of the bat without having them first struggle with the classics.

Kids don't know better. Your role as a parent is to navigate along the fine line of forcing your kid to get good exposure to the (boring) activities we adults value and letting him enjoy what he enjoys. Only in doing that will your kid open up to the world and grow up into a functional human being.

One of the tragedies of being young is that few have the insight to realize that the 'boring' stuff parents and teachers are forcing us to learn will actually benefit us and that eventually we'll be very thankful that they did.

My parents nagged me all the time about studying and even though I did my fair share of it I never fully appreciated how important it was until much later.

It's a strange phenomenon, one cognitively understands the reasons but one is isolated from the reality so one is somewhat distant from it. For example, one can get upset watching war footage on TV but being there is on another level altogether (soldiers often do not talk of their experiences because they know those at home will never fully understand).

In the same way, wisdom gained through experience is almost impossible to impart to a younger generation who has no actual experience.

  * Training is hard.
  * Using your training e.g. a bicycle race is fun.
  * Training is easier, if you actually know why you’re doing it and recognize some progress.

My parents forced me to play the piano for more than 10 years because they were obsessed with the piano, and because they had a piano. I hated every second of doing that in order to please them, and I never got higher than beginner level because it was a torture for me. Being a beginner for 10 years should be considered as abuse and it messed me up big time, especially for my daily confidence.

30 years later, I still hate that fucking thing and I understand that they fucked up due to their delusion. They deny everything when we talk about it though.

Sometimes you have to listen to the kids and understand what they want do do, and accept it instead of feeding your Munchausen by proxy syndrome. All I wanted was a computer, even the cheapest computer ever would have been acceptable. Nowadays, I write C++ for a living and I still hate the piano. If only anyone listened to me back then... My hatred for that instrument is a mystery for some people, and some people think that "wisdom gained through experience is almost impossible."

It's like there's like a vehemence in people towards abuse. Reminds me of how Zweig said that people were in a state of jubilation in anticipation of WW1.

There's something dark in humans where they don't accept the absence of pain. They think to at least some extent, that hurting their kids is a good thing, perhaps under a twisted "toughen them up" mentality.

And the thing is, they get away with it. Maybe their kid gets a chip on their shoulder against them, or maybe even estranged from them. But they don't get hurt back.

In a moral world they absolutely would.

Hurting a kid and proper discipline are two separate matters. Good discipline and training doesn't hurt kids (in fact many enjoy them). If you find that your actions are hurting a kid then you are doing things wrong.

I agree, and it's more than 'sometimes', kids have a right to be heard and that hearing should be fair and reasonable. Clearly, in your case it wasn't.

What you experienced was unacceptable by any measure, and in my opinion the fact that your parents were oblivious to your predicament is a damning indictment on their parenting skills.

Your extreme situation isn't what I was referring to, so let me explain by briefly describing what I experienced.

I learned the piano because I wanted to, not because my parents forced me. In fact, whilst my parents were both musical we didn't have a piano when I was young—so I started late and that's been to my disadvantage. I mention that to let you know I understand what you went through.

Whilst I like the piano learning it was no bed of roses and it's difficult for all but the most talented (anyone not wishing to learn it would be an unmitigated drag). For me, those fucking Czerny scales used to drive me to distraction, I'd goof off and play whatever took my fancy whenever I could. Also, my teacher used to reprimand me regularly for not reading score timings as written, I'd play the tempo as I felt felt like it and that always casued a ruckus.

At no time did my parents force me to take subjects that I did not like. That said, gentle persuasion was used. I was never much good at languages and despite my ambivalence for the subject I took French not so much at my mother's insistence but rather her desire that I do so (her sister married a Frenchman and was living in France and she thought it would be useful). Learning French used to drive me crazy, it's not that I detested it (I understood its value), rather the problem was that I wasn't much good at the subject. I'd sit on my bed at home doing my French homework and bash my textbook up and down on the bedclothes whilst tying to learn those fucking French nouns with their damn random genders—why the fuck can't they all be 'la' or 'le' and not random? Having a single 'the' in English is immanently sensible.

Well, despite being not much good at the subject in hindsight learning French turned out to be a blessing when I was living in Europe. I could never have foreseen that situation when I was at school.

Another example, my father used to nag me about not taking Latin, my usual retort being why the hell would I want to learn a dead language (although that was more in jest at his persistence). I sort of had a paltry excuse as my school didn't teach Latin but there were arrangements to do certain subjects by correspondence under teacher supervision in the library. So I never took the subject at school, so nowadays my Latin is at best a mess.

That was a fucking mistake of the first order on my part for reasons too long to describe here. It's only the wisdom of hindsight that I now know I should have taken my father's advice.

BTW, I understand your frustration over not having access to a computer, I'm an IT professional and I managed an IT department for years (I was one of those nerds university security would regularly chuck out of the computer room at 10pm at night). If I'd been in your position, I'd have been mightily pissed off at your parents' miserable attitude.

I'm 40. I don't know, perhaps I'm still young.

I did not appreciate having to learn the boring parts. Learning things for the next exam so as to forget them in two weeks... I didn't see the point then and still don't.

I managed to get by with the minimum possible, fluked my CS education, then had a career earning an order of magnitude more than the average salary. Shrug.

Maybe I'm missing something else because of my lack of education? I don't know...

I’m in my late 40s. I left grad school to get a job in VLSI because it was possible to do so in the job market of the 90s. In today’s job market we wouldn’t even pickup the resume of a new college graduate that didn’t have at least a masters. I would’ve been totally passed by today.

Assuming the benefit we’re looking is getting a high paying job of course.

Possibly so, wisdom often take years to gel and often only after life events force its notions to the fore.

That got their attention.

30 years later I picked up classical guitar and loved it! Do I thank my parents for forcing the piano on me? Hell no.

If you’ve already picked up reading music for one instrument, it’s a ton easier for the next one.

You want to have fun playing along to your favourite song. Or impromptu jam with a friend. Or sing for yourself because a song reminds you of a memory.

They all have a minimum skill requirement, without which it isn't as enjoyable. You need to know to play reasonably well by ear to have fun imo.

I just had a kid so this is pretty real to me. How it will go is anybody's guess, but I hope it does go well :)

I guess I believe more in the Montessori idea that kids are intrinsically motivated to learn and excel, and they will tend to be naturally drawn to work hard at the skills that they are best suited for.

I understand the idea that some skills have a hump to get over and it’s good to encourage that determination, but I’d also guess that for every person like you who is glad they were pushed to learn some particular skill, there is another person who it affected very negatively. So I suppose it’s a bit of a gamble in that sense.

This is a completely alien perspective to most people. Most people never even really try to be good at anything. That you think this quirk of your own psychology is the norm shows a deep disconnect with the mass of mediocre people who don’t care about being competitive because they’re not trying to get highs up on some leaderboard. https://danluu.com/p95-skill/

In fact, I never actually learned to sight read until I started on guitar. All I remembered from the old days was "all cows eat grass"

Doesn't actually matter how good he gets at classical guitar either.

Mechanically, sure, nothing transfers. Rhythm transfers pretty well. An ear for what sounds right would too.

If you're reading printed music, that transfers. A lot of guitar play comes from tabs though, which isn't really transferrable.

If you play chords on the piano and the guitar, and especially if you're thinking about chord progressions, that transfers. But you might play either instrument without a lot of chords.

Lead melody kinds of things can transfer a bit. Especially if you were thinking about how the notes in the melody fit with the chords, even if you didn't play the chords.

Even if you didn't think you were learning music fundamentals, you might have picked up something.

I think that story happens to many but I cannot accept a premise that it is somehow universal.

The passions I found later in life were unrelated to what my parents put in front of me. I suspect that it’s because the activities I eventually found (distance running, volleyball, cooking) were not activities that my parents enjoyed or thought much about.

Moreover, I was unable to develop healthy models of internal motivation until mid life. I didn’t have to when the “why” was covered by my parents.

Childhood should be the lowest risk time in life for people to learn to fail and find the path back to success. This is what I worry about as a parent when I try to set my kids up for future success. I want them to fail now.

I see my role as a parent as coaching them to care about how they spend their time and how to recover from disappointment and failure. If they get that, then learning piano later in life is just work. They won’t be afraid of that.

Counter-example to anyone reading this and thinking about imposing this misery on their child - I absolutely hated piano lessons, and nowadays I absolutely hate that my parents forced me to do it. Total waste of time, even spending more time on Civilization or whatever instead would've been more valuable to me.

I don't get it. you'll be a beginner in something that you weren't pushed to in your childhood. so what?

are you planning to only do things you were pushed to as a child? I learnt skiing in mid 30s , never even saw snow as a child. Its my fav thing to do all winter and spent like 40 days a season on snow. Not sure if i would've enjoyed it the same if i was "pushed" skiing as a child and hated it.

These kids barely have any free time. School during weekdays, activities during the weekend… worse than a full time job.

I think there’s a balance to be struck. Your kids don’t need to be good at everything.

You either structure the day in such a way that there is literally no time for anything outside of activities, or you just observe the kid gets sucked into the screens with less and less will to do anything else.

If not at a club/activity, why does the child have unrestricted access to screens?

Looking at my kids friends / classmates, almost all of the parents just gave up, with the exception of a small group that is still trying with the discussed approach.

Sugar is addictive. One would not necessarily expect a teen to healthily control their sugar intake; accordingly, we don't put bowls of candy around the house, and if we did we certainly wouldn't be shocked when they emptied themselves, and then thrown up our hands and said "can't keep kids from candy, what can you do?".

Our kids aren't teens yet, but the plan is for screen time to be whitelisted, that is, there are certain times and circumstances where screens are okay and the rest of the time they are not.

EDIT: To elaborate on parenting philosophy a bit, one can provide structure (good) without being authoritarian (bad). Rather than bouncing between "you have all the options available, including screens, hope you make a good choice!" and "you are doing this specific activity now", one can provide unstructured time with lots of options available- reading, board game, doing something outdoors, creating a craft, etc- while having none of those options be screens.

If the only way a teenager knows how to make good choices is through outright avoidance of situations where a poor choice might arise, then they don't know how to make good choices.

My son at 19 is building websites for companies, still deep into manga and video games but is started to get out more with the gym. He still lives with us, but essentially has his own life and seems to be doing well.

My 13 year old daughter is the one who loves to try everything. She's in dance, show choir, volley ball, tennis, violin, clarinet, etc. She even signs up for college for kids classes over the summer. All self motivated. Just yesterday her and her friends walked about 5 miles around town to different stores. She has her own phone.

My 11 year old is the smartest of the bunch. She has an amazing vocabulary and reading has always seemed to be "natural" for her. She's straining my policy of buying my children any books they want. She's bored of the advanced learning classes she's been put in. She also plays tennis and flute and cello. She learns her own crafts and sciency projects to try at home from TikTok. She will likely get a phone this year, but has an iPad.

All of them have had practically unlimited screen time since they were double digit ages. They are on TikTok and YouTube and SnapChat. They just have many other interests as well and it doesn't consume their lives. They manage their own bedtimes (within reason) and are responsible for getting themselves up and ready in the morning.

The only times we've forced them into activities is when they were too young to make those sorts of decisions for themselves. So all of my kids played soccer while young until they could suggest an alternative activity they would rather do more. They all started in music, until they could find other creative alternatives. None of them are screen zombies that so many HN posters swear is inevitable without banning things. I'm not sure where the panic is coming from, but leave me and my children out of it.

At some point you have to stop and wonder if a great childhood is doing - music lessons, many clubs at school, several physical activities such as soccer, tennis, taekwondo etc.

They are occupied, they are trying new things, learning new skills, running around outside, interacting with their peers.

In my view, if we let our children do what interests them, to some degree (of course anything taken to the extreme will likely fail, and it depends on the child), they are likely to cover way more territory, and probably more useful territory, than a child that is being forced and coerced. One of the many things my 7 year old has learned from Minecraft is an entire language (English), to a level which in the past (my generation) we didn't reach before perhaps 18 (and that was due to watching TV, not school). The other day I caught him taking notes on a piece of paper that said single = 1, double = 2, triple = 3, quadruple = 4, quintuple = 5, sextuple = 6. This is a child who should not be speaking English, but now he can write and spell it better than his native language, because we let him follow his passion. He's also learned a ton of engineering concepts and vocabulary, and has the ability to install mods, debug when they don't work, has a basic understanding of networking, IP addresses and on and on.

He has no interest in playing an instrument right now, why should we force him? If the time comes and he wants to, he will learn it so much faster because he wants to get better.

The fruits are reaped when they (me!) get older. Like I mentioned in another comment, I can play along to a song I like, play a song that is a certain memory, jam with friends at a whim.

Those are not things I necessarily wanted to do when I was a kid. But the "forced" practice was required as a foundation to do what I want to today.

You can do any of those things without learning to read music. Ask me how I know

He could have learned to play from a teacher that doesn't teach reading music, for example.

A valuable life skill if you want to ever have a job or get paid.

Honestly, I wish I had been taught that lesson early, so as to internalize it profoundly.

Even with a lot of discipline and self-control, going through each and every day without mind-altering substances at hand is pretty dang difficult.

If you live in the bubble where you experience this, congratulation you live a wonderfully privileged life, never interact with anyone or are totally oblivious to the experiences of all the people you interact with on a daily basis.

But also, many people choose to do something they hate so they earn more money. They could be just as privileged and choose not to, just so they can compete with the Joneses and consume more...

There are things in life that you won't enjoy but you need to do. Learning to do them anyway is in fact a life skill.

I've seen people follow their dreams into careers they chose because they wanted them, despite those careers not being paid well. They're all at least as miserable as the average person, because what they enjoyed is now work, and they don't have money for anything they now enjoy.

"Do whatever makes you happy" is a life plan for the financially independent. Most people simply don't have that luxury.

Sure, I see your point. I guess what it comes down to is: what percentage of your life do you spend doing that?

If you don't like doing laundry, then don't start a laundry service business.

Sometimes you have to eat a shit sandwich.

Or you can reach for the sandwich.

Sure, once I was playing it, I was fine, but I cannot explain to you the sheer dread I felt opening up the case.

Have not played in decades, despite all those lessons and concerts and orchestra sessions.

But I'm glad for it, since it lets me jam or enjoy myself without having to put the practice in now from scratch. I do it for fun.

Even the smell of tree resin sometimes makes my stomach tighten with anxiety.

I was briefly made to play violin as a child, and I definitely hated it (fortunately my parents recognized this and didn't push too hard). The reason is in retrospect obvious: violins are loud and piercing and played close to the ear. Nobody considered hearing protection back then. I learned recorder as an adult and the loud notes can exceed 100dB(A) measured at the ear (both alto and soprano recorders, and recorders have very limited dynamics). Violins seem to be at least as loud. I would hate to play without hearing protection no matter how skilled I become.

Even in instruments where you can more easily play softly like a piano, the design for loudness can cause suffering. Pianos are much bigger than they need to be now that we have amplification, with correspondingly wide and finger-straining keys. Steel string guitars are louder than nylon but hurt more to play (and even nylon can hurt depending on your individual hand size and shape). I expect there are many children suffering hand/finger pain from being forced to play various instruments and genuinely hating it regardless of their skill level.

When a child hates something, there's often a good reason for it that isn't obvious and that they don't have the communication skills to explain.

I do, it requires being still in miserable conditions for a long time, being cold, wet, mosquitos, and then usually still no success, but frustration.

But to my knowledge, no savage kid is in need of being forced to learn it.

"children sense your true passions and naturally want to join in"

And that is my experience as well. But if you stop childrens curiosity out of limited time and patience "Be quite now!" - stop them from helping, because they are not a help in the beginning and you are faster on your own - then of course they won't just start enthusiastically some years later doing with motivation whatever it is, you define as their arbitary target now.

Hunting in wilderness is a good example; so are sports, cooking, crafts, etc.

But unfortunately not all important activities that kids need to learn to become well adjusted adults in our modern societies fit those 2 criteria.

Point 2) can be hacked to an extent by modeling the behavior yourself - eg kids who see adults read books are more likely to want to read themselves.

But otherwise can you show, where this is documented? The natives tribes where I have some knowledge, don't force their kids to learn in the sense that is talked about here. No need to - the whole culture is about becoming a good hunter (for male individuals). So indeed lots of peer pressure, but no individual forcing.

No, by calling people "savages", a pejorative, based on their ethnicity.

Much like how it would be racist to call people "enslavers" based on their ethnicity, or "cotton pickers" based on their ethnicity.

So exactly what I wanted to talk about, when referencing "natural education".

I did not talk about any ethnicity at all.

Or were you simply trying to say, for you the term "savage" is strongly connected to racists and therefore inappropriate to use?

Besides, I called arbitary savage people savage. No concrete person that might feel insulted. And savage .. is not an insult in my bubble anyway btw.

Furthermore, if you didn't have a specific ethnicity in mind, then when you're going off about "natural education", what you're really saying here is "all groups of people that are part of a group I consider 'uncivilized' are the same".

Or alternately, if ethnicity isn't what you're using as your basis for calling groups of people and their children "uncivilized", what is?

Culture.

And this debate is equally fascinating and frustrating.

I simply spoke of generic nomadic uncivilised hunters.

And not at all in a bad way, just to illustrate a point. Because to my knowledge yes, nomadic hunting cultures do have similarities. Education seems to be one of those.

Feel free to provide counter examples.

Take music, for example. Many high schoolers play an instrument as part of the college admissions game. Almost none of those kids can play music with their friends and just enjoy it. To them music is this structured activity where they get paper with dots on it, and they have to play the right notes at the right time to pass the class. These kids never develop a true understanding or appreciation for music. They don't keep their instruments or practice as adults.

There's so many things to learn to be good at, why not find something that you actually like?

The really important part of this is that kids mimic what they see adults they like and respect doing. If their role models spend 6+ hours in front of the television every night, that’s what they’ll do. If their role models are playing music or sport, that’s what they’ll want to do.

- We do the chores together.

- Yes it takes ages, but I need to kill the time anyway.

- Then she falls asleep and I can relax.

This is literal heaven, compared to when I played with her the whole day and then did the chores when she slept...

Even as a adult I sometimes need to get pushed. I sometimes take guided courses so I don't skip over the hard but important parts of learning a new thing.

Just don't push your children too hard or you do more harm than good. Accept that they are not you and have different interests and needs. Like make them practice an instrument but give them a choice which one. And if after a few years they still hate it, well you tried. Maybe it is not for them.

Kids specialize almost immediately now in a sport that is most likely because the parent likes that sport and wants the kid to be good at it.

The Soviet system was the athlete as a kid should try as many different sports as possible until 12 or 13 because you don't know what the kid will have natural talent at for before then.

That is not pushing the kid to practice something they hate but it is also not letting the kid be free to not do anything besides play on the phone.

Kids ultimately like what they are good at. If I had a kid, I feel like my job would be to figure out what they have some talent at and then fan the flames so that talent turns into a passion. I think many parents though are trying to live out their own dreams through the kid, if the kid has talent for the activity or not.

I think the most important part is to start early. Make your kids interested in math, music, art, and sport, before they start school. Doesn't have to be anything sophisticated, simple addition and puzzles will do for math, etc. Then you have something you can later build on.

There are also ways to make things funny, including math. Most people say that they hate math, but then they do Sudoku. So, try to make more math like this. Not all math can be transformed to funny puzzles, but after a few the kids will get positive associations with the subject, and will be more willing to learn more.

I greatly valued the tutoring that I received for that (personally wish it had not been cut short). I was somewhat fortunate and received one-on-one tutoring in a secluded room.

They provided me with clearer definition of rules (instead of sayings like "i before e...", proper phonetics, and a history of where English came from.

That said, there's research into trying to determine which children with Dyslexia should receive specialized treatment as a segment just cannot learn to read at all.

The nature of pushing needs to be considered in the sense of the overall parent-child relationship, and not just being handed a Mikrokosmos and an egg timer. If my parents were more proud of my ability to push forward and took interest in the piano and my playing beyond just performing good at recitals, I probably would have grown up to truly enjoy performing music. Today I'm left with a bit of a bad taste in my mouth that would require conceited effort to overcome. So I guess my parents weren't "lazy" in your terms but a bit too strict for me to conclude I would be "good at music" that early.

This may be true, but explain to me what are the returns you get on forcing math (or anything) on kids? They won't like it, they won't learn it intimately, the won't internalize it, it'll be unusable knowledge and mostly a waste of time with lots of bad vibes and probably even a little trauma...

I spent a lot of time with math in high school and college but that was because I had a couple teachers who really elucidated why *I* might find math to be interesting (in my case, it was physics and computing). Forcing people to do anything generally leads to nothing worthwhile.

For example, in many Middle Eastern and Asian cultures (pardon my generalization here), there's an ingrained expectation that children should be pushed, often quite hard, especially in areas like mathematics, science, engineering, and law. Hence the old cliche: "You have three career options: doctor, lawyer, or engineer.".

I've seen this firsthand as a Middle Easterner (I was born in IRAN). My father is an engineer, and both my parents were relentless when it came to academic discipline. I ended up in computer science, and my brother became a pharmaceutical researcher after obtaining his PHD.. There's no question that this kind of structure and pressure produced tangible results. But I'd be lying if I said it was an easy or joyful process. It ended up costing me plenty of social anxieties and now I struggle with social dynamics.

That said, I have mixed feelings about it. While the rigor pays off in terms of career and technical competence, it often comes at the cost of creativity, intrinsic motivation, and the space to explore things like literature, music, and the arts. I sometimes wonder what paths we might have followed if exploration had been valued as highly as performance.

So I _partially_ agree with you that some degree of external motivation is necessary, especially with children who haven't yet developed discipline. But I also think we should be careful not to frame this solely as a matter of "lazy" vs. "good" parenting. Upon reflection, I think that there's a balance between encouragement, discipline, and allowing for the development of intrinsic interest. Different families, cultures, and even individual children may need to strike this in different ways.

I guess it's true for adult humans, and other creatures as well. Instead of pushing, however, you should consider using other motivational methods (a simple prize for accomplishing something that you want from your kids works very well). Pushing can cause alienation and hate, which could affect their entire adult life.

I look back at the memories very fondly now. As a pre-teen I got invited to play at my cousin's wedding and everyone still talks about it. It gave me a good foundation and I performed well in highschool band and small ensembles. I now play my instruments for my kids and it brings us all a lot of joy.

Both of my parents weren't especially musical. I'm not amazing or anything, but I've got enough skill to hear a tune from a show or someplace and play it at home for my kids reasonably enough. But I wouldn't be able to if my mom didn't make me practice.

Such a bold claim coming from some who does not share their credentials on the matter.

My kid will do everything as long as it is interesting. My sample of 1 contradicts your claim, but neither of us are experts on the matter.

You have to push them, but push them right. That's a combination of coercion and encouragement and helping them avoid procrastination. There are hills to climb and they need helping over them to where the good stuff is.

I remember my eldest crying over ratios at the dining table. Then algebra at the kitchen table. Then crying again at real analysis in the pub with me. She graduated with a first in the end.

Difficult things aren't interesting locally, you have to practice boring things in order to do interesting things in difficult subjects. Some kids do practice boring things if you just ask them, but most do not.

I was the kid who wanted a keyboard and guitar but didn't get one until I could afford one in my twenties, then I learned just enough to be able to be creative. People say I'm good at piano but technically I suck, I'm just creative and expressive with limited tools.

It's an interesting phenomenon, the adults who are technically great at piano, but can't play anything without it being written in sheet music.

I can tell you as someone who was never forced into any extracurricular activities and was forced to go to church-schools that you probably should force your kids to learn something well (and not send them to religious schools)

Nobody's forcing me to work. I could quit today if I wanted. But I doubt that would be beneficial to my overall health, given I do not have the wealth required to support myself and my family for very long.

I roughly classify parents in two groups: (1) like the author of the article, (2) like you. Based on my limited observation, neither can be claimed to give optimal results, and it more boils down to "see what actually works for your kid in the long term" which unfortunately far too often can only be definitely said in hindsight.

Also in your opinion at what age should pushing start, and how much pushing per age group?

Without that exploration the kids won't make the world their world, at best they'd only make it a bad approximation of what we, our (older) generation, best think that that world should be.

I prefer to live among educated people, thank you. I prefer my peers to go through forced history lessons, forced math lessons so they don’t tank my government, and biology lessons so they don’t tank the health system. Yes they won’t be able to determine their gender, but that will give me grandkids, thank you very much.

Same goes for piano or sports. Yes we need to pull people upwards, otherwise we’ll all become fat americans.

> at best they'd only make it a bad approximation of what we, our (older) generation, best think that that world should be.

Also, this part in GP doesn't feel exactly right to me. The problem doesn't seem to be in education, but rather lack of systematic resistance in current systems of society against humans weaponizing the system as tools to hamper progress of humanity as means to win minor inner struggles which is stupid. But the world doesn't seem to be moving in a wrong direction, only slowly.

Asian kids in 80s dreamed of bunches of permanent artificial space habitats running on fusion reactors. Still do. We've only gotten ground based fission reactors and space motor homes since then. But at least we are moving in that direction, just slower than at the ideal rate.

China's just done a humanoid robot marathon event. The winner completed the race. They're definitely in the future. US is, in a state not in line with site guideline to describe. And the latter is supposed to be more correct state than the other? How is that possible?

I'd say the same thing applies to math, where one can't really start understanding math until said kid is already an adolescent (unless they're a young Euler or something), so it always baffles me when I see parents filling their young kids with (fancy) arithmetics, most probably making said kids future therapy patients, all the while lauding themselves (the parents do, that is) that they're teaching their kids "maths".

Related, one of the best maths teachers I've had (this was back in high-school, in the mid-90s) was very quick to point out that we should forget almost all "maths" we had learned in elementary school, and the he very soon started to explain to us the definition of the real numbers. Or maybe this is just an Eastern-European thing, who knows? Maybe further West they do confuse arithmetics with maths until the Uni' years.

Sometimes, it is possible to create a less abstract version of a more abstract thing, and thus introduce the seeds of the concept to children much younger. For example, "solve the equation 2x+1=7" is abstract, but "Peter decided to use a # symbol for a specific number, and he didn't tell us which one, but we found in his notes that # + # + 1 = 7; can you figure out which number is # ?" is simple to understand for a very young child, even if the child can only solve it by trial and error.

This is such an arbitrary and random choice. I don't give a ** if your child can play piano. It's negligible if you compare it with other hobbies.

Teach them (and me) how to pay taxes, do community service, partake in social events instead. I also don't want to live in a world where robots go to work for 40 hours, go home wasted and repeat for 40 years as they do in so many East Asian country. Its a stereotype yes, but you can't deny its unhealthy.

All that praise for education and yet you've fallen for the tabloid-fueled conspiracy theory that transgender science is a hoax

Is the "transgender science" you talk about more like biology, i.e. describing how things are, or more like anthropology, i.e. describing what some (sub)cultures believe? Those are not the same things.

But yes, much of what Foucault taught us about the arbitrariness of being a human in a culture does still ring true. No, it doesn't discount the hard evidence from biology and psychology.

You don't replace enjoyable things with unenjoyable things and expect the child to become a well-adjusted adult. You give them alternative enjoyable things.

Managing a child's burgeoning dopamine regulation system is a primary function of a parent. Abdicating that function for quick fixes is a form of neglect, in my opinion, just like feeding kids sugary cereals.

they used to beat the living shit out of us india when were growing up. is that what you mean?

I reluctantly admit that you are right, and I am the better for it because I overcame my lazyness and found joy, in math, English, reading, and music. I sing, play piano, guitar, and listen with appreciation.

The school system today uses elements, structures, and clusters, the same techniques used in real torture. Its embedded into the structure of by-rote pedagogy starting in the late 1970s, and it also goes by another name starting in the 90s, where Administrators, NEA representatives, and Teachers, call this "Lying to Children".

Most parents today seem to be simply too busy, treating school like daycare, or maybe they just don't love their children enough to put the time in to protect them and figure out what is actually happening to their kids.

Classic curricula followed the western philosophy of the greeks, you develop tools that let you reduce a working system to first principles (in guided manner), which are proven true, and then you use those principles to model the system accurate, and then predict the future parts of that system.

"Lying to Children" does the exact opposite in time. It starts with a flawed model that is useless teaching abstract concepts and includes other unrelated concepts that arise naturally from that flawed model. The student is then as mastery progresses forced to struggle to unlearn material that isn't correct, and then relearn the finer details with each new flawed model given in a progressive fashion, over, and over, and over, becoming more useful yes, but torturing themselves, and in a way destroying themselves in the process.

When questions or true insights occur, the flawed model breaks those insights requiring you to do things differently in earlier classes before you can use those, but not even this information is given so you can't leap frog the torture.

There are additional strategic structures that orchestrate failures to gatekeep technical fields like math. There is an Algebra->Geometry->Trigonometry sequence which uses a gimmick in undisclosed pass criteria between class 1 and class 3, so the student passes initially but then fails and has to go back to Algebra, but can't because its sequential. Its called burning the bridge.

Regardless, the student is blamed, no help is given (because there is no cure for torture). They are told, "maybe you're just not a math person, you should choose a career that doesn't use this if your having trouble.

This gatekeeper is orchestrated to induce PTSD towards math in general, and as all technical fields require math this prevents them from entering those fields. Some are able to pass and enter these professions, but never the best and brightest, only the most compliant with blinders.

The exception to this is if you bypassed the entire process through private boarding school, and Ivy league college straightaway. If your an elite, you get a decent education.

These structures follow a false ideology based in gnosis/gnosticism which is long refuted, but that hasn't stopped these things from being used for purpose, or allowed others to remove these.

There is an all out war that has been happening for years, a war on our children. Compare low attention spans and other things with the documented characteristics of torture from PoWs and you'll see there are parallels everywhere.

The thousand yard stare. Hollowed out feelings. Lashing out. These are often referenced in the material on torture.

The problem is unlike adults, once broken and distorted by torture children carry that forward their entire lives, unable to change because its not learning, its torture, and there are very few who ever recover.

Failing to see the reality of what is happening and calling it lazy and complacent without understanding is problematic and most definitely not the sign of a good parent if that means you let your children's minds be destroyed under a false belief that its just laziness.

For those parents that are unaware of what I mean by torture. You can read books on the subject matter by Joost Meerloo, or Robert Lifton. From the case studies you can derive the requirements and you would be shocked to find and recognize these things being used everywhere today without you knowing. Robert Cialdini touches on the psychological blindspots used which bypass your and your children's perception to the issue.

The elements are isolation, cognitive dissonance, coercion with real or perceived loss, and lack of agency to remove oneself from the situation. Some would argue this also includes time and exposure.

Structuring and Clustering, forces active engagement through specially designed circular trauma loops, forcing the psyche back on itself to destroy itself, and narco-synthesis and narco-analysis which in the 50s used barbituates to trigger dopamine are used today through associative priming through many ways including your phone (gamification uses many of these things learned from research on torture).

It is established that those who are drugged have less resistance to torture, and those with faith-based beliefs tend to resist torture better. One of the first things to go under torture is rational thought.

If you have to restart later, no matter at which point, even up into 'the kids' 20s ( ultra late bloomers, slackers, kids disgusted by most people for reason Z, drug- or "condition X"-induced deadbeats, repressed kids with and without ADHD, failed or successful attempts by psycho-social environments ) understand three things:

1) you are not pushing, even if you are, you are demanding sth for the sake of your child AND yourself. YOU WANT THIS first and foremost. It's not a bad thing, fuck what the little fucker wants.

It's imperative for the kid to know that YOU WANT THIS no matter the obstacles. You want to see the process and result. It's a form of accountability, I guess. Kids pushing back is some dumb implicit way to check how important THEY and THE THING really are to you _or someone else_ (that counts for the ugly stuff, too). It's part of our evolutionary, hard-coded OODA loop.

2) just start at the very beginning, so that it's easy, almost effortless. The kid will be annoyed on most of the difficulty increases, it always depends on the sub-topic so don't back down. Even 20 year olds will catch up with their successful piers within some time. Neuro-genesis is awesome. Most 'grown up' stuff is child's play and a matter of baseline-human character anyway.

3) your stress level is what matters. Stay cool, be equanimous, serene, check your posture, voice, tone, the discussion won't last 5 min and will be worth it.

Absolutely force your kids to do math.

This should fix your issue, right?

https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=028LZLUB24s

Someone helpfully pulled out this chunk, which is a good illustration of why data is better than functions, a key driver of Clojure's design.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSEQfqNYNAc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc