> I really wish we could leave these types of decisions up to parents and parents only.
I am strongly sympathetic of this point. But, also, children with shitty parents deserve as much safety and support as they can get too.
This is an extremely difficult balancing act. Various laws and organizations get it wrong all the time, but it does require balance because there is no simple solution here that just works. There is a fundamental, unsolvable tension between:
* In a just society, your opportunity in life should not depend on being lucky with who your parents are.
* In a free society, parents should be able to support their children as they see fit.
(Stephen Pinker was the first one I've seen to point out this problem.)
To be clear, I made no mention of the state or responsibility.
All I said was a statement of moral values: that all children deserve the best opportunity we as a species can provide for them.
There are many possible mechanisms and social institutions that can participate in that process. Parents are one, the state is another, but there are certainly many more.
Right now governments in western societies are pouring more money and resources than ever into support programs, and yet we still have record high levels of mental health, unemployment, poverty, waiting times for doctors and support staff etc etc.
Government intervention and welfare is proven not to solve the things it tries to.
See here for much information about how spending has increased in these sectors in the UK, yet simultaneously seeing increasingly higher percentage levels of people requiring support in our societies.
So I'll tell you right now that I don't have proof or evidence for my claims, but my impression is that:
- Agreed that the solution will not be just blindly pouring more money into community resources. But I am not convinced that these organizations getting money really understand how to help people. It's sort of like the D.A.R.E. program in college. These people are so out of touch with what college students will listen to. But I'm sure donors of these programs will pat themselves on their back when they reiterate their mission statements.
- There is probably some correlation between bad parenting and income. If you need to work more to pay the bills, its difficult to spend your time and attention toward your kids. Obviously, "economy" is not an easy problem to solve haha.
- Information asymmetry/overload I feel is a big issue. Look at how any mainstream news media on the left or right will trivialize any issue, or distract you from more important things. Or look at websites relying on dark patterns to lure users.
- So many solutions require longer time periods to fully realize. If we say "improving education will help solve our problems", then we will probably need to wait longer than a US president's two terms to see if those solutions works.
Ultimately, we don't need "more" solutions, we need "better" solutions. We need things like leaders who understand system dynamics, education systems that teach emotional intelligence, and a culture around science that isn't driven by monetary incentives.
I am personally very inspired by Sanya Nishtar's efforts in Pakistan to spend her time and money investigating how focusing on solutions at the scale of individual communities and utilizing modern technological solutions - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCBkavI3jxY
Really trying to assume good faith here, but it's hard ...
We have record high levels of people needing support at the same time we have record high levels of spending on that support? What an outrage! Obviously nothing is working and government bad!
Of course the spending on support services goes up as more people need that support. We're supposed to assume that's some sort of failure?
> Government intervention and welfare is proven not to solve the things it tries to.
If by "proven" you mean "kinda maybe arguable if you intentionally misrepresent correlational studies", sure.
It's a complex fantasy humanity has made up, where our current generational burnout is instead given names like autism and ADHD - so that we can pretend that we have something to "fix".
The irony is that the goal of the fix is to "get these outliers back into society, (so that humanity can be as collectively productive as we should be)".
Even more ironic are the next cries : "They're not getting fixed. Take away their money."
These statistics don't necessarily imply that the programs don't improve the situation, only that mental health outcomes are worsening faster than programs are improving them. The existence of support programs could also encourage more measurement of mental health issues, which says nothing about the ground truth.
Given an effective sample size, parents have a much higher success rate ensuring children do not grow up as hazards to the society than publicly-funded programs do.
I don't think it's an either or situation. We are on the precipice of a paradigm that's barely comprehensible to the average populace. There needs to be a conversation first before anything is decided. Everyone is too quick on the trigger.
Whatever it is it should at least try to be data driven. And have a strong connection with harms and dysfunction. None of this 2% non-reproducible study BS.
More than 50% of boys admit to intentionally viewing poor, and most of them weekly.
Many think this is a slam dunk for a nanny state to step in. But surely we would have hard causal data on the need for it if that was the case? And I’m pretty sure we don’t.
Parents that do things that are bad for their kids wellbeing.
> Should the state do nothing about children not being sent to school?
Yes it should do nothing
> Should they go hungry when not fed?
Yes they should
> Should we just throw the kids in jail instead of programs that provide support?
These days modern jails are rehabilitation centres so its a moot point, but yes we should.
I know this is not popular, you can choose to downvote me if you like. But in my opinion if we try and make life comfortable and easy for everybody, it will break the rest of society to try and achieve it. IMO perfect is the enemy of good here.
I'm not sure "make sure kids have food" rises to the level of "perfection" when it comes to measuring society.
But in my opinion if we try and make life comfortable and easy for everybody, it will break the rest of society to try and achieve it.
I think many would argue that a society unwilling to feed or educate children is pretty "broken".
Is willing to make sure kids are fed bad, but making sure that kids aren't physically or sexually abused fine? Or is that also off the table because we don't want to make life too easy for everyone?
Your defiant and cock-sure "Yes it should do nothing" seems myopic, lacking in empathy, and just not very well thought out. Can you explain why you believe this is a good idea?
Because it seems that you're suggesting that thousands (and perhaps two orders of magnitude more than that) should just...grow up malnourished, underfed, lacking the warm comfort of security that is critical for healthy adulthood free from anxiety, depression, repressed rage, emotional dysregulation?
This is a ridiculous and incoherent belief. Ensuring children have enough food to survive isn't making life "too comfortable". Letting millions of children starve and/or never get an education because you don't like the vibes of it is sociopathic and is what will actually break society. We should not tolerate child abuse just because you think intervening makes society too soft.
I'm sure you wouldn't feel the same way if you were that starving child or grew up with imperfect parents or in an environment that had actual hardships. This lack of basic empathy and introspection can only occur from someone who has been completely isolated from much of the real world their entire life. You are not arguing against perfect being the enemy of good, you are arguing against having any sort of good in the world at all, and it's obviously coming from a place of extreme comfort and luxury.
There's no chance you'd be saying anything like this if you had ever experienced anything close to poverty and starvation. Ironically, it appears having an upbringing that is too comfortable is what causes these beliefs in the first place.
Yeah I agree - it is a very difficult balancing act for sure. Perhaps I have a strong belief that manifests as bias when it comes to access to information - the right to read.
LLM's are an isomorphic distillation of human expression. Writing and knowledge compressed into probability curves. In my view, an LLM is similar to a public library. Public libraries DO have children's sections. But many children also gain knowledge and understanding from the other sections of the library as well. I believe this to be an important part of a well-rounded up-bringing - access to knowledge and the freedom to explore one's own curiosity and interests.
Of course there exists knowledge and information that is age-inappropriate. That's why my parents cared about preventing me from seeing too much violence in movies when I was young! But they certainly weren't ever required to prove that the TV was being used by a minor by submitting their driver's license to the cable company, and if they failed to comply, the service would be cut-off with no explanation at any moment. As far as the balancing act goes - that feels a bit off in my opinion.
I'm tired of giving up privacy in the name of children. Children are were and will be fine even without my access to internet being gated by a gov issued ID thank you very much
> * In a just society, your opportunity in life should not depend on being lucky with who your parents are.
The vast majority of people are raised by their birth parents which means 0 luck was involved. You are here due to their actions and are who you are due to their combined genes and situation.
This is a very cogent observation that I'm afraid is going to go over many heads. Children and parents are intrinsically suited to each other by genetics, shared environment, and other empirical factors. Societal and legal reasoning that asserts a child as a Platonic form cannot in fact benefit the singular development of that child.
If luck = something you didn’t choose or had no control over, sure.
If luck = it could have gone otherwise, that’s nonsensical; if you had different parents you wouldn’t exist to begin with, as you are literally a specific fusion of your biological parents. Similarly, if we take luck to mean something probabilistic, or something coincidental? Also meaningless in this case.
If luck = how your situation compares to others, I would argue “fortunate” is the better word here.
And of course there’s a parallel spiritual debate if you believe that identity to be separate (were you “assigned” to parents, was it deliberate or random, etc)
I am strongly sympathetic of this point. But, also, children with shitty parents deserve as much safety and support as they can get too.
This is an extremely difficult balancing act. Various laws and organizations get it wrong all the time, but it does require balance because there is no simple solution here that just works. There is a fundamental, unsolvable tension between:
* In a just society, your opportunity in life should not depend on being lucky with who your parents are.
* In a free society, parents should be able to support their children as they see fit.
(Stephen Pinker was the first one I've seen to point out this problem.)