All well and good. I agree with the sentiment, but why are we asking for permission? Does this not strongly demonstrate the inherent corruption of institutions?
I see this clearly at kids birthday parties whenever there is a piñata. Adults hate them. All they see is the goal and the incredibly inefficient path the kids are taking towards it.
But the kids love it, they don’t care when they miss, they are just enjoying hitting something with a stick. And every miss heightens the excitement for the eventual lolly scramble.
Runrig's song "Fichead Bliadhna", too, but that's more kind of a protest song:
Ruith sa mhonadh, ruith nam beann
’S mar sin dhan sgoil aig deireadh samhraidh
Nar clann aig còig bliadhna dh’aois
’S gun facal Beurla nar ceann
translated:
Freedom of the moor, freedom of the hills (Ruith is literally "running" though)
And off to school at summer's end
As children of five years old
And not a word of English in our heads
Particularly resonant with me as my 6-year-old cycles off to school for the second month of Primary 2. Quite a wrench to have to deal with sitting still and listening to the teacher when it's 20° outside and sunny and there are bikes and toy cars and mud and sticks.
At least some twenty years later by the late 70s when I was that age they actually were teaching Gaelic in schools again instead of literally beating it out of people, and now my son is in a Gaelic-medium class in school making it one of the three languages he speaks.
I was talking to an American yesterday who couldn't understand the concept of the Highlands yesterday. I tried to get over to him all the history of suppression, eviction, lack of economic development etc... but the big one is cultural. If the Highlands lose their culture (and they already have largely) then they are indistinguishable from anywhere else.
What?!?!? Piñatas are awesome! And as people who emigrated from California it’s usually a fun novelty for the local Dutchies to see (though I see them in local stores now too!)
is play not an indirect method of practicing the physiological mechanisms designed for violence ? baby lions are both happy to play with other animals, and to eat them ... which inevitably progresses to predation only ... and humans are the apex predator ...
This is only tangentially directed at your reply, but this is the kind of statement that I'll sometimes hear other parents say, and it makes me think that they've completely forgotten what childhood was actually like. Like, the idea that normal, fun activities and sports are bad because they bear some abstract resemblance to adult violence feels very contrived and misses what childhood play is about.
It's not really that abstract. You smash the shit out of a cardboard box and candy comes out. Breaking things is not fun. I also hate youtube videos of people breaking stuff for fun.
I don't know. I broke a lot of things when I was a kid, mostly because I was excited to see how they work, but have no knowledge of their value or how to safely disassemble them. I don't do it as an adult because I now have that knowledge. So don't judge a kid as an adult.
I tried reading the English Wikipedia article "Piñata" but it is a mess of cringe information, especially the 16th century background. It seems that original piñatas were clay pots, before papier-mâché came into vogue.
I was going to say, that around the American Southwest, you can find piñatas for sale that are not only abstract, but also plenty of Spongebob and Disney and MCU characters, as well as "political figures that are not particularly well-liked" by Chicanos.
Yeah I'm not saying it's bad for the children, but it's unpleasant for me. It seems violence is a concept that gets deeper and uglier as you grow. For young children it's often abstract and maybe harmless. I just read a book to my child that turned out to have violent scenes that horrified me a bit but he barely thought about it and only in technical terms (like where is that artery ripped by the wolf). Same with people that had fun watching horror movies as teens, then find them unpleasant when they're older.
Maybe they did not forgot what the childhood was like. Instead, they remember their own childhood rather then yours. Moreover, they are not you, your exact copies.
Those who don't lose the fun of hitting things graduate to hitting things with swords and end up in the SCA (not the coffee one).
I see the point about violence but I'm ok with it because it's based on fun and not anger. Olympic archery, javelin, or even fencing have an obvious past in warfare but today they've become sports.
I can only speak for some of the European versions of SCA-like clubs but there's a lot of pride-flag flying strictly-no-fascists fun activity with a dose of pretending to be children again.
I wouldn't say "violence", rather, an opportunity to demolish something on (good) purpose. Same reason children will be glued to the window if workers outside are going at it with jackhammers, or, better yet, an excavator is crushing and scraping off the asphalt. (Yeah, I remember exactly how awesome that was.)
Genuinely, what kind of miserable people are you around when even at a children’s birthday there is this kind of obsessive fixation going on?
You really may want to think about if you are around people who are genuinely good for you and your children.
I’m not surprised though, over the years I have noticed a notable shift towards the controlling and narcissistic spectrums of parents. I’m not totally sure why that is, but it seems to be definitely happening and it’s also rather clear to me that it’s a rather “American” toxic nature, probably due to the sick and perverse obsession with besting, outdoing, greedily wanting and needing more and shinier things than “the Joneses”, the obsession with celebrity and fame and money. It all contributes to the diseased state of society and “culture”, if you can call obsession with corporate outputs that.
But anyways, just let kids have their moment of fun, people, their identity and soul will be crushed by the “American” indoctrination and propaganda machine soon enough and they will become like the drone adults. Let them be human for at least a couple years of their lives.
I get piñatas, but there is an extreme version of this that I find just too much. Not sure in other places, but in Spain there is a kind of fair stall where children use a plastic fishing rod with a magnet or hook to catch some plastic fish with the corresponding magnet or hook. The fish have some points and give you rewards, but the payoff is terrible - maybe you spend €10 and you get a gift that you could buy for €2 at the neighborhood shops. And the fun part with the fishing lasts like 20 seconds, no more, and it's individual, there isn't even a competition or anything, no time limit, etc. Just catch three fish and see how many points they give you.
My 7-year-old son (who by the way loves math) always wants to go there. I can't help but explain that the payoff is horrendous from any point of view, and he understands and doesn't argue against it, but he still insists. Sometimes I convince him by offering alternatives, but sometimes I have to cave because he seems to like it so much. But man, spending euros on that stings, I have the feeling that the people who run the stall must be laughing at all the suckers who fall into the trap.
My kids love something like this we see every year at the traveling fair. It's the same idea but with rubber duckies floating around and having to catch them with a small pole with a hook attached. It's €20 for 2 kids to have 2 minutes of fun and the payoff is a €1 Aliexpress/Temu pollution generator disguised as a toy. They play with it for a day before it ends up in the trash.
The first few years I hated this for exactly the reasons you mention, but now I'm just happy they are happy. I think I have a few more years left before they don't want to go rubber ducky fishing with their dad no more and I doubt by then €20 gets me 2 minutes of joy with them.
In fact it's the same thing. I said fish by mistake (probably because my mind made an association with the fishing rod and what it's usually used for) but they're ducks. I have edited the comment now.
Don't overthink it, I think you are being a bit cynical. If your kid enjoys it then it's worth the money. If you can't afford that then find other things your kid enjoys.
The reward of a game is playing it, not the 'prize', although that can add to the enjoyment too.
As a parent you should absolutely think about what kind of expectations and behaviours you're setting up for the future if 'if they enjoy it then it's worth the money' is teaching kids. Sure it's not perfectly clear cut but not thinking about value at all does not end well.
Here there's no skill involved either. It's not that you have some time to catch as many ducks as possible and if you're good at it you catch more. It's that the 10 € give you the right to catch e.g. 3 ducks, so you spend the time that you need to catch 3 ducks (typically for a 7-year-old like 20 seconds, smaller kids take some more but still not long) and then you look at the score below the ducks, which is totally random. So yeah, quite similar to the claw machine although at least they don't have the farce that you could win an iPhone (Actually you can buy more ducks to get higher scores, so the prizes need to be linear. I have seen parents spend like €50 for their kid to get a toy that could be at most €10).
I would have killed to play carnival games like that when I was a kid but they were absolutely strictly forbidden, because 1) they are obviously not worth the price and 2) prizes are just junk that we didn't have room in the house for anyways.
You can just say no. I have never played a single one of those types of games in my life because once I was old enough to work I understood my parents. I'm actually thankful for them teaching me these sorts of lessons no matter how much I hated at the time.
Yep, for all the moralizing about sports gambling people on HN do, they sure love to prime their children for it.
It also just helped me understand the value of money, which to say has served me well is a massive understatement. Plus a real understanding of the fact that there's cons dressed up as fun, not everything is as it appears.
Although it uses the same technology as gambling, it's for a different purpose. You aren't hoping to die, you are doing risk management for your family.
Well, your child is spending 0€, getting a bit of fun with a game, and getting a reward afterwards, which is randomized (more dopamine). That seems like an amazing trade.
As an adult, if I went and they said it cost 0€, I think I'd play too.
It sounds like you've got an opportunity to set up something like this at home. You'd feel like you were getting ripped off less, and make the rewards at the fair seem less attractive to "what we have at home". The challenge, of course, is to still make it feel like a special occasion...
Fundamentally, doesn't gambling require a potential payout that is more valuable than the initial input? If you can only ever get less than you put in that's not really a gamble is it?
Have you tried setting up a tub of water at home and gluing some magnets to some rubber ducks? When my son was 7 I would pay him his weekly allowance and he would get distracted and leave it on some random table and walk away. It's likely the act of fishing for ducks is more appealing in this instance than any potential ROI calculation.
We don't have piñatas in this country, but if adults dislike them, surely it's the mess afterwards, the potential for breaking things and injuring the children?
> And every miss heightens the excitement for the eventual lolly scramble.
People under-appreciate (or have forgotten) that a lot of happiness is is related to anticipating as opposed to getting. I think if more people focused on the journey or the process versus the goal there'd be more joy/happiness around.
HeisenShop sounds like a great app idea for shopaholics -- automatically don't buy / cancel random or exceeding-monthly-budget items without telling the user.
I began and ended many hobbies in the novelty phase by endlessly reading about them, shopping, comparing features, etc. that I eventually became bored with them before spending a dollar. I got (almost) the whole novelty phase for free.
I've also found new hobbies sometimes allow cheaper gadget purchases / higher enjoyment-per-dollar than buying more junk for longtime hobbies.
The logical mechanism for me was - a hobby I've done 30 years I have probably upgraded through various classes of equipment such that anything left to buy is expensive. For a new hobby I am back to buying little $100 gizmos again.
Doesn't work for some hobbies that have a higher cost of entry.
Older kids tend to get fewer, more expensive gifts. I recently did the nested boxes gag, but with gift bags. What started out as a 2’x1’x6’ draw string bug turned into two gift cards. It was a lot of fun for a shaggy dog payoff that otherwise would have been an envelope tear and into the next thing.
I have been thinking about just this the past two weeks. I have been trying to recall the excitement, the joy in the most mundane things, and indeed I think it has a lot to do with anticipation. FWIW LSD allowed me to experience this joy, and the curiosity kids have, or I had. :)
Kids have a very poor ability to foresee and choose delayed gratification. The cookie experiment is proof of that. To children, a piñata is an exercice in intense delayed gratification. That and you get to hit things.
Because of circumstances I was involved in running several birthday parties for children these past few years. All of them had pinatas. In my experience:
"C'est le temps que tu as perdu pour ta rose qui fait ta rose si importante" - "It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important"
This reminds me of a video I saw from Alan Watts [1] where he talks about how from childhood it is hammered into our minds that we must work we must do this or do that or we will be punished. And he talks about how you can choose to change your perspective or mindset and see work as a form of play, where you live in the moment.
This is probably harder to do than to say, but this video resonated with me because your mindset is something you do have control over, and choosing not to get stressed about work, and choosing not to take things "seriously" and choosing not to do something for the outcome but just for performing the act, just like you would play music (an example he gave) or to see it as a game is something you can do.
And, as with many things, as soon as you stop forcing yourself past the point of ease and fluency, you somehow both enjoy it more and also are more effective.
I think the argument is not to not work, but to change the mindset that is so ingrained in our society that you must work. You don't want to starve, so you work, but you can do it with mindset that is fundamentally different, where you choose to focus on being in the moment, and don't let yourself get stressed by outcomes you have no control over, just as you would if you are playing a game or playing music.
Changing your mindset is hard, you are fighting against an entire society where your are expected to be "serious" as an adult and identify yourself with your work, but you do have a choice
At least in the USA, due to the lack of social safety nets I have to disagree. It's very much work or starve. Yeah you can try to change your perspective, but unless your in a privileged situation where you have a safety net (i.e. a wealthy family to support you if things go wrong) then it's difficult to stop thinking about it.
There are substances to let you debug/rewire your brain, but they are usually illegal because if enough people used them, it might threaten those who prefer things to stay they way they are.
You do have control over it, but the external pressure to be “normal” is enormous and insurmountable for a majority of people. There’d be no such thing as “normal” otherwise.
I look at my cohort who I schooled with, and they are all so terrifyingly sober and adult, and take themselves so very seriously. They toil, they spin, they die.
Me… I don’t really know what happened. As a child, the more I was told to be normal, the more I dug my heels in, not out of contrarianism but out of a still indefatigable conviction that all of these people were wrong.
And the proof lies in the pudding. I am in my 40s, still a child, still stop to explore incessantly, still enjoy poking things with a stick, still finding joy, still being told to just for the love of god be normal, when will you get a proper job, settle down and become a banker or a lawyer or a doctor, and all that jazz.
Maybe it’s just the (until recently undiagnosed) ADHD talking - maybe I have been graced with a surfeit of good luck - but I’m pretty content with how being a cast iron weirdo panned out.
On the remembrance of childhood, much of it is clear to me - and now that I have a toddler of my own, I so often find her doing X or Y and going “good god, I remember being that kid”. Her other doesn’t remember her childhood at all, and struggles to relate - whereas I’ll gleefully fill my pockets with sand and run around hooting Yankee Doodle at full blast. It’s fun. People don’t have enough fun.
> I look at my cohort who I schooled with, and they are all so terrifyingly sober and adult, and take themselves so very seriously. They toil, they spin, they die.
Ah, this is the problem, I work with people who take themselves so terribly seriously all the time.
But they do not take what they do seriously.
I don't take myself seriously at all, which really seems to irritate some people - but I take what I do very seriously indeed.
And then the people paying the wages don't seem to understand why my time is *so* *bloody* *expensive*. Yeah, it's not expensive, it's just a lot of money.
> And he talks about how you can choose to change your perspective or mindset and see work as a form of play, where you live in the moment.
I think it's hilarious that they just let me play with a £150k Nexus 9000 stack at work, like it's fucking Roblox or something.
"Here you go EB, figure that one out, all it's doing is connecting our core network with our VM servers and SAN, no pressure! Documentation? Naaah, we never had any of that..."
I remember reading once about how Astrid Lindgren's children's books were supreme exactly because she - contrary to many others - remembers what it is like to be a child. Not just what you did or thought when you were a child - how it felt. The endless curiosity and appreciation for what in an adult's eyes is trivial is really a special thing I hope most people carry throughout their lives. On the other hand, children also understand more than one would normally think, essentially a Moravec's paradox but in relation to adults.
Speaking of Dostoevsky Prince Myshkin in 'The Idiot' is a fine portrayal of this archetype. In fact I believe at one point it is mentioned that most adults dislike him while children are drawn to him or something to that effect.
In Firefox, all text outside the headline post, including the name and username that begin the headline post, appears to be in some kind of shrunken state which ruins its appearance. Zooming in solves the problem and causes the letters to appear correct rather than grotesquely malformed.
I don't know how the site was allowed into production like this.
you are right, it seems to be more zoom issue than font issue (or combo since I don't really experience this elsewhere, which is why I mentioned it), if I zoom out to 90% it becomes normally readable, but at default 100% zoom it is malformed unreadable (btw. I use 225% Windows 10 scaling at 2560x1440)
There isn't anything preventing people from being curious
People don't forget to be curious, they just are expected to be smarter then children... hence the teaching kids infinity if they play around with 'what's the largest number'
For the pinata, it's fun as a new experience, if you grab an adult that's never tried that he'll have fun for a while.
I think Tao correctly sees the problem with AI. It’s not that it is ineffective or has weaknesses. It’s that it’s not human.
Like, it ought to be enough to say that the problem with AI is that it’s not human. Unfortunately, we live in a world where many (most?) people have willingly put away the childish things, so as to achieve some goal.
The problem is that the point of life is to explore and have fun and have human to human experiences. I think math is probably fun because you’re working on hard problems with your collaborators.
It should be obvious to everyone, as it is to children, that the point of life isn’t the goal, the point is the experience one has of living. They say that when you die the only thing you lose is the current moment. The problem with AI is that it doesn’t have a current moment to live in or to lose, it’s an inanimate thing. So, it should be obvious to everyone that the problem with the AI is that it’s not human. Alas.
I think everyone wants the experience of living, but it's not a great one without money, and money commonly requires full-time work until financial freedom. But that point usually comes at 65.
So it's not that only children appreciate life, it's just that adults have to deal with that whole money problem, while children don't.
I take a 8 hour work day over being subjected to more or less random weirdness from "adults" every day. IOW, not everyone has this rose-tinted view of their childhood. I still remember adults saying "you will once look back at your childhood and miss the times". Turns out that was totally and utterly wrong. I even have bad dreams about my school/childhood time every few months. I am sooooo glad that time of being subjected to the will of others is over.
I think the problem is that some people do genuinely have a great childhood, or another phase of life (university is another one), while others have a terrible childhood or another phase of life, and people who have one fail to understand those who have the other.
To add to that I think people can have a rose-tinted view and deny what they felt at the time.
To be human is like being the training so much more than the execution. Like the parallel post's game where the speed of light is 5km/h, we always try to but never reach true "perfection" (setting aside the discourse what that even would be). Some overfit, some stop short of being good...
Isn't the problem that without exploration we won't actually get new goals e.g. can AI come up with new math conjectures instead of "just" solving existing ones.
Yeah - I think he’s worried that we have a tool that’s almost an oracle that can just get straight to the heart of a given problem.
The problems aren’t always that interesting in their own right. But the quest to solve them is often what drives the invention of new techniques.
We ultimately got the Langlands program and a large amount of algebraic number theory out of attempts to solve fermat’s last theorem. A “clever” approach using techniques from the 1800s wouldn’t have been anywhere near as fruitful for mathematics as a discipline.
> the point of life is to explore and have fun and have human to human experiences
Not really. The point of life is successful reproduction. Because without it, we cease to exist. It wasn't that long ago when humans spent their entire lives struggling to live and protect their children.
"The problem with dogs is that they're not human."
You can make this case for pretty much anything? Are cars human? Are excavators human? The universe does not exist to cater to the human experience, it just is. Not everything we do in it has to be for the greater enlightenment or whatnot, sometimes you just need to get something done.
These affairs remind me of A Timbered Choir by Wendell Berry, and your comment strikes a similar chord.
Excerpts:
Even while I dreamed I prayed that what I saw was only fear and no foretelling,
for I saw the last known landscape destroyed for the sake
of the objective, the soil bludgeoned, the rock blasted.
Those who had wanted to go home would never get there now.
...
The races and the sexes now intermingled perfectly in pursuit of the objective.
the once-enslaved, the once-oppressed were now free
to sell themselves to the highest bidder
and to enter the best paying prisons
in pursuit of the objective, which was the destruction of all enemies,
which was the destruction of all obstacles, which was the destruction of all objects,
which was to clear the way to victory, which was to clear the way to promotion, to salvation, to progress,
to the completed sale, to the signature
on the contract, which was to clear the way
to self-realization, to self-creation, from which nobody who ever wanted to go home
would ever get there now, for every remembered place
had been displaced; the signposts had been bent to the ground and covered over.
Every place had been displaced, every love
unloved, every vow unsworn, every word unmeant
to make way for the passage of the crowd
of the individuated, the autonomous, the self-actuated, the homeless
with their many eyes opened toward the objective
which they did not yet perceive in the far distance,
having never known where they were going,
having never known where they came from
> But modern AI tools, when directed without such expert supervision, can now be aimed all too easily at the ostensible goals of the field, without any incentive to take the slow, whimsical path.
IMHO, that's the whole point of AI: automate the fun, to leave people with more drudgery. Worker! Spend less (ideally no) time doing creative things like coding, spend your time instead doing code review!
classic, now I can have AIs make my games for me while I still have to cook and wash the dishes! Maybe AI can soon start playing the games for me, can't wait.
I am not a Tao hater but also not a fanboy but this is spot on! He is right, I don't love AI in many states and feel it is used for pointless task, however the beauty of that helping hand supporting you do tasks that you have no idea how to do is the magic in it. As a child we all asked questions regularly of what if we did this instead of this, why do we do things this way, why not try something else. Work and adult life gets us stuck in a rut, so anything that gets us out of a rut is welcome.
A lot of it's just "been there, done that". As I've already been a child and watched endless cartoons, why would I want to watch more?
First time I ever went to a big outdoor music festival was completely overwhelming in a good way. Second time was pretty good. Third was alright. Fourth was boring. Maybe that wasn't the exact progression but you get the picture.
We'd call it the "hedonic treadmill" when it comes to music festivals but we don't really use that term for cartoons.
While his concerns expressed here aren't new, it looks like the recent cases of scientific misconduct were enough to push for urgency:
> But in the immediate term, the most pressing issue is for the entire mathematical community to unite around our core values and objectives, and reject irresponsible and unsustainable usages of AI technology that only serve to advance nominal goals rather than the true underlying goals of the field.
I've been pretty disappointed with those mathematicians who I once respected so acutely, embrace the leopards. Now, they are complaining that even mathematicians' faces are getting eaten. They chose to ignore the claims of rampant plagiarism laundering through training for several years by visual artists and open source developers. And here we are: Tao is finally concerned about the future of the people sharing a cage with this once-cute kitten.
This relates almost not at all to the actual linked words, but I feel it relates to the sentiment of the title.
As a parent of two, now pretty much independent grown, children, I came to the conclusion a while ago that my childhood was for my parents enjoyment and my children's childhoods were for my enjoyment.
I fucking loved being able to guide them on their early ride through life. I think I re-lived my childhood vicariously through them, so I assume my parents did the same, and my kids will do the same with theirs. fingers firmly crossed
It feels as if this is how it should be. When you're a child going through childhood you don't have the awareness that, well, that's what's happening, you're just doing your thing without any knowledge yet of what your thing is; very little to compare it to, not a lot of real choice.
As an adult you're aware of the a lot of the badness in the world and the place you've ended up occupying in the innumerable spectrums of all the things. As an adult trying to guide kids into the world, the mad freedom of being a child is a wonder to behold.
For those of you who haven't had kids yet, or have young ones, record their madness. My home videos of my kids being entirely unbridled children are probably my favourite possessions in the whole world. My kids even go back and watch themselves, to their own endless amusement.
I often try to retain my 'wonder', and every now and then make sure to do something a bit mad. It makes the worthwhile people smile (and my kids cringe these days, but I sense there's an appreciation underneath it).
Math from Three to Seven by Alexander Zvonkin is a great read and example of this. It recounts experiences running a math circle for preschoolers and really highlights the value of play, curiosity, and open exploration.
From personal experience, and as noted here, this approach is valuable for everyone regardless of age. In the short term it's far more efficient to learn by having the right way 'pushed' to you. However, by taking the time to fail, repeatedly, and eventually 'pulling' that knowledge the tacit understanding you build has a depth that's hard to shortcut.
I can remember a lot from being a child. Mostly a sense of frustration and powerlessness.
But also the way in which things seemed more interesting than they do now. Like I could be fascinated by watching a tree sway in the wind in a way which wouldn't happen now - at least, not without conscious, meditation style effort. I remember when an hour seemed like an almost intolerably long stretch of time.
I also remember loads of events in visual detail, though I'm terrible at remembering when they happened.
I'm pretty sure if you just sit down on the sofa, do not stare at any screen, and do not read any book, and just start counting. Suddenly an hour will be back to an intolerably long stretch of time.
This is something I've noticed and wondered about since a long time
Maybe we should stop "belittling" children into "acting like grown ups" as if the former was something to be ashamed of and the latter something proud to aspire to.
Your approach helps expand our children's imaginations to such an extent that they learn to think outside the box even at the preschool age, which will enable them to make better decisions in their lives.
I mostly remember how it felt to be a child and it's extremely important to me that I continue to do so as I get older. The best days of my life are when I can capture the perfect nostalgia, or deja vu, of the past when I was much younger. Sometimes only for a split second, sometimes longer. Increasingly I believe it's one of the few things in life that truly matters on an existential level: how children feel, and how we feel about (ourselves as) children.
Would appreciate recommendations for reading material about this.
Wouldn't it be much better to capture the same feeling with new stuff rather than nostalgia?
As a child I played RuneScape and I recently got into Oldschool RuneScape. It's clearly the same engine and it's a lot of the same content but it's very much not exactly the same, as they've rebalanced everything, added new content, and shifted all the metas. But it has the same feeling to it (unlike RuneScape 3).
Or how about this - I used to play with Lego Technic, but now I can build full-scale things by screwing together metal extrusions and wooden planks and beams and other parts.
Learning Go felt a bit like learning BASIC again - I just banged out code and the computer just did what I wanted (although I wouldn't recommend it as a first language because of all the "if err")
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[ 0.22 ms ] story [ 7.8 ms ] threadI wonder if it's true that people don't remember. People maybe remember but don't want to talk about it. It is such a cognitive dissonance.
Ruith sa mhonadh, ruith nam beann
’S mar sin dhan sgoil aig deireadh samhraidh
Nar clann aig còig bliadhna dh’aois
’S gun facal Beurla nar ceann
translated:
Freedom of the moor, freedom of the hills (Ruith is literally "running" though)
And off to school at summer's end
As children of five years old
And not a word of English in our heads
Particularly resonant with me as my 6-year-old cycles off to school for the second month of Primary 2. Quite a wrench to have to deal with sitting still and listening to the teacher when it's 20° outside and sunny and there are bikes and toy cars and mud and sticks.
At least some twenty years later by the late 70s when I was that age they actually were teaching Gaelic in schools again instead of literally beating it out of people, and now my son is in a Gaelic-medium class in school making it one of the three languages he speaks.
And like that to school at summer's end
Us being children of five years of age
Without a word of English in our heads
That's my literal translation anyway.
I was talking to an American yesterday who couldn't understand the concept of the Highlands yesterday. I tried to get over to him all the history of suppression, eviction, lack of economic development etc... but the big one is cultural. If the Highlands lose their culture (and they already have largely) then they are indistinguishable from anywhere else.
And, ideally, go and visit a cleared township.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/nc8uhBogrBCjgjYs9
I used to walk out there most weekends when I was at school. Until about 175 years ago, those were homes. Families lived there.
The white dots you see are sheep, which is of course why families don't live there now.
Good Gaelic, incidentally, where did you speak it?
I don't know. I broke a lot of things when I was a kid, mostly because I was excited to see how they work, but have no knowledge of their value or how to safely disassemble them. I don't do it as an adult because I now have that knowledge. So don't judge a kid as an adult.
Piñatas are made and designed explicitly to be smashed open to get the treats inside.
We’re not buying brand new iPhones and smashing them, or buying food and making stupid “recipes” for rage bait.
I was going to say, that around the American Southwest, you can find piñatas for sale that are not only abstract, but also plenty of Spongebob and Disney and MCU characters, as well as "political figures that are not particularly well-liked" by Chicanos.
However, the article also linked out to revisit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ti%C3%B3_de_Nadal (Merry Christmas, Catalonia!)
And not to mention: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_Judas (Burning Man, Easter edition!)
I see the point about violence but I'm ok with it because it's based on fun and not anger. Olympic archery, javelin, or even fencing have an obvious past in warfare but today they've become sports.
I can only speak for some of the European versions of SCA-like clubs but there's a lot of pride-flag flying strictly-no-fascists fun activity with a dose of pretending to be children again.
(Buhurt is a bit more complicated.)
There is no more violence in hitting a nail with a hammer.
You really may want to think about if you are around people who are genuinely good for you and your children.
I’m not surprised though, over the years I have noticed a notable shift towards the controlling and narcissistic spectrums of parents. I’m not totally sure why that is, but it seems to be definitely happening and it’s also rather clear to me that it’s a rather “American” toxic nature, probably due to the sick and perverse obsession with besting, outdoing, greedily wanting and needing more and shinier things than “the Joneses”, the obsession with celebrity and fame and money. It all contributes to the diseased state of society and “culture”, if you can call obsession with corporate outputs that.
But anyways, just let kids have their moment of fun, people, their identity and soul will be crushed by the “American” indoctrination and propaganda machine soon enough and they will become like the drone adults. Let them be human for at least a couple years of their lives.
My 7-year-old son (who by the way loves math) always wants to go there. I can't help but explain that the payoff is horrendous from any point of view, and he understands and doesn't argue against it, but he still insists. Sometimes I convince him by offering alternatives, but sometimes I have to cave because he seems to like it so much. But man, spending euros on that stings, I have the feeling that the people who run the stall must be laughing at all the suckers who fall into the trap.
The first few years I hated this for exactly the reasons you mention, but now I'm just happy they are happy. I think I have a few more years left before they don't want to go rubber ducky fishing with their dad no more and I doubt by then €20 gets me 2 minutes of joy with them.
Seems to me it's €20 for a day (8h? 16h?) of fun. That's not bad value: how much does a movie ticket cost for 2-3 hours?
Heck they could run their own carnie games at home with Temu toys. Invite the kid's friends and it would be just as fun.
The fact that the item was won as a prize imparts on it an (psychological) 'aura' that simply buying it does not. Related:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endowment_effect
The reward of a game is playing it, not the 'prize', although that can add to the enjoyment too.
Oh yes, I got it, they are like the claw machines that have fake bills and iPhones with them (at least that's what I saw too).
But the point of having fun, you know it's a rigged game.
You can just say no. I have never played a single one of those types of games in my life because once I was old enough to work I understood my parents. I'm actually thankful for them teaching me these sorts of lessons no matter how much I hated at the time.
which lesson is it exactly?
2.) Something being fun but expensive is skippable and it is good to be able to say "no" to expensive fun.
It also just helped me understand the value of money, which to say has served me well is a massive understatement. Plus a real understanding of the fact that there's cons dressed up as fun, not everything is as it appears.
Can't get through life without gambling at least a little bit.
Even taking out a life insurance policy is making a bet you're going to die before it expires
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hook-a-duck
As an adult, if I went and they said it cost 0€, I think I'd play too.
It's like video game arcades. When you had to pay to play for 2 minutes, it was way more exciting than now playing in an emulator
It's banal to you as an adult, because it's not rare or new.
Adults do the same thing in more exotic and expensive contexts.
That consideration > prize isn't part of this common definition.
People don't pay to get the crap, they pay to have a fun experience and get a memento of it.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SE6Y3_EEXys&t=39s
People under-appreciate (or have forgotten) that a lot of happiness is is related to anticipating as opposed to getting. I think if more people focused on the journey or the process versus the goal there'd be more joy/happiness around.
Shoppers & hobbyists who spend too much time browsing gear are well aware of this though generally don't like to admit it to themselves...
There was (I believe) a Korean app for people to fake shop so they get all the dopamine of the hunt without the cost of actually buying anything.
The logical mechanism for me was - a hobby I've done 30 years I have probably upgraded through various classes of equipment such that anything left to buy is expensive. For a new hobby I am back to buying little $100 gizmos again.
Doesn't work for some hobbies that have a higher cost of entry.
* E.g., https://foodnevercomes.com
* https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/fake-shopping-website-ap...
This is truly one of life's under-appreciated little pleasures!
> Adults hate them
This is absolutely not the case.
This is probably harder to do than to say, but this video resonated with me because your mindset is something you do have control over, and choosing not to get stressed about work, and choosing not to take things "seriously" and choosing not to do something for the outcome but just for performing the act, just like you would play music (an example he gave) or to see it as a game is something you can do.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9BXvBJ2dWo
Changing your mindset is hard, you are fighting against an entire society where your are expected to be "serious" as an adult and identify yourself with your work, but you do have a choice
I look at my cohort who I schooled with, and they are all so terrifyingly sober and adult, and take themselves so very seriously. They toil, they spin, they die.
Me… I don’t really know what happened. As a child, the more I was told to be normal, the more I dug my heels in, not out of contrarianism but out of a still indefatigable conviction that all of these people were wrong.
And the proof lies in the pudding. I am in my 40s, still a child, still stop to explore incessantly, still enjoy poking things with a stick, still finding joy, still being told to just for the love of god be normal, when will you get a proper job, settle down and become a banker or a lawyer or a doctor, and all that jazz.
Maybe it’s just the (until recently undiagnosed) ADHD talking - maybe I have been graced with a surfeit of good luck - but I’m pretty content with how being a cast iron weirdo panned out.
On the remembrance of childhood, much of it is clear to me - and now that I have a toddler of my own, I so often find her doing X or Y and going “good god, I remember being that kid”. Her other doesn’t remember her childhood at all, and struggles to relate - whereas I’ll gleefully fill my pockets with sand and run around hooting Yankee Doodle at full blast. It’s fun. People don’t have enough fun.
Ah, this is the problem, I work with people who take themselves so terribly seriously all the time.
But they do not take what they do seriously.
I don't take myself seriously at all, which really seems to irritate some people - but I take what I do very seriously indeed.
And then the people paying the wages don't seem to understand why my time is *so* *bloody* *expensive*. Yeah, it's not expensive, it's just a lot of money.
I think it's hilarious that they just let me play with a £150k Nexus 9000 stack at work, like it's fucking Roblox or something.
"Here you go EB, figure that one out, all it's doing is connecting our core network with our VM servers and SAN, no pressure! Documentation? Naaah, we never had any of that..."
"Children heal the soul" - Dostoevsky
I don't know how the site was allowed into production like this.
People don't forget to be curious, they just are expected to be smarter then children... hence the teaching kids infinity if they play around with 'what's the largest number'
For the pinata, it's fun as a new experience, if you grab an adult that's never tried that he'll have fun for a while.
Like, it ought to be enough to say that the problem with AI is that it’s not human. Unfortunately, we live in a world where many (most?) people have willingly put away the childish things, so as to achieve some goal.
The problem is that the point of life is to explore and have fun and have human to human experiences. I think math is probably fun because you’re working on hard problems with your collaborators.
It should be obvious to everyone, as it is to children, that the point of life isn’t the goal, the point is the experience one has of living. They say that when you die the only thing you lose is the current moment. The problem with AI is that it doesn’t have a current moment to live in or to lose, it’s an inanimate thing. So, it should be obvious to everyone that the problem with the AI is that it’s not human. Alas.
To do all those things, I need money.
what lifestyle do you think you need or deserve?
evolution doesn't remember those who lived well, only those who carried forth
So it's not that only children appreciate life, it's just that adults have to deal with that whole money problem, while children don't.
To add to that I think people can have a rose-tinted view and deny what they felt at the time.
I mean, I am absolutely glad about that.
I'm not so glad that I'm now subjected to the will of others on a far longer time horizon.
The problems aren’t always that interesting in their own right. But the quest to solve them is often what drives the invention of new techniques.
We ultimately got the Langlands program and a large amount of algebraic number theory out of attempts to solve fermat’s last theorem. A “clever” approach using techniques from the 1800s wouldn’t have been anywhere near as fruitful for mathematics as a discipline.
Not really. The point of life is successful reproduction. Because without it, we cease to exist. It wasn't that long ago when humans spent their entire lives struggling to live and protect their children.
You can make this case for pretty much anything? Are cars human? Are excavators human? The universe does not exist to cater to the human experience, it just is. Not everything we do in it has to be for the greater enlightenment or whatnot, sometimes you just need to get something done.
Excerpts:
Even while I dreamed I prayed that what I saw was only fear and no foretelling, for I saw the last known landscape destroyed for the sake of the objective, the soil bludgeoned, the rock blasted. Those who had wanted to go home would never get there now.
...
The races and the sexes now intermingled perfectly in pursuit of the objective. the once-enslaved, the once-oppressed were now free to sell themselves to the highest bidder and to enter the best paying prisons in pursuit of the objective, which was the destruction of all enemies, which was the destruction of all obstacles, which was the destruction of all objects, which was to clear the way to victory, which was to clear the way to promotion, to salvation, to progress, to the completed sale, to the signature on the contract, which was to clear the way to self-realization, to self-creation, from which nobody who ever wanted to go home would ever get there now, for every remembered place had been displaced; the signposts had been bent to the ground and covered over.
Every place had been displaced, every love unloved, every vow unsworn, every word unmeant to make way for the passage of the crowd of the individuated, the autonomous, the self-actuated, the homeless with their many eyes opened toward the objective which they did not yet perceive in the far distance, having never known where they were going, having never known where they came from
IMHO, that's the whole point of AI: automate the fun, to leave people with more drudgery. Worker! Spend less (ideally no) time doing creative things like coding, spend your time instead doing code review!
> Father: "Ugh, how do kids enjoy this garbage?" [...]
First time I ever went to a big outdoor music festival was completely overwhelming in a good way. Second time was pretty good. Third was alright. Fourth was boring. Maybe that wasn't the exact progression but you get the picture.
We'd call it the "hedonic treadmill" when it comes to music festivals but we don't really use that term for cartoons.
While his concerns expressed here aren't new, it looks like the recent cases of scientific misconduct were enough to push for urgency:
> But in the immediate term, the most pressing issue is for the entire mathematical community to unite around our core values and objectives, and reject irresponsible and unsustainable usages of AI technology that only serve to advance nominal goals rather than the true underlying goals of the field.
(summary: AI as a metaphor for optimising the fun out of play)
As a parent of two, now pretty much independent grown, children, I came to the conclusion a while ago that my childhood was for my parents enjoyment and my children's childhoods were for my enjoyment.
I fucking loved being able to guide them on their early ride through life. I think I re-lived my childhood vicariously through them, so I assume my parents did the same, and my kids will do the same with theirs. fingers firmly crossed
It feels as if this is how it should be. When you're a child going through childhood you don't have the awareness that, well, that's what's happening, you're just doing your thing without any knowledge yet of what your thing is; very little to compare it to, not a lot of real choice.
As an adult you're aware of the a lot of the badness in the world and the place you've ended up occupying in the innumerable spectrums of all the things. As an adult trying to guide kids into the world, the mad freedom of being a child is a wonder to behold.
For those of you who haven't had kids yet, or have young ones, record their madness. My home videos of my kids being entirely unbridled children are probably my favourite possessions in the whole world. My kids even go back and watch themselves, to their own endless amusement.
I often try to retain my 'wonder', and every now and then make sure to do something a bit mad. It makes the worthwhile people smile (and my kids cringe these days, but I sense there's an appreciation underneath it).
From personal experience, and as noted here, this approach is valuable for everyone regardless of age. In the short term it's far more efficient to learn by having the right way 'pushed' to you. However, by taking the time to fail, repeatedly, and eventually 'pulling' that knowledge the tacit understanding you build has a depth that's hard to shortcut.
But also the way in which things seemed more interesting than they do now. Like I could be fascinated by watching a tree sway in the wind in a way which wouldn't happen now - at least, not without conscious, meditation style effort. I remember when an hour seemed like an almost intolerably long stretch of time.
I also remember loads of events in visual detail, though I'm terrible at remembering when they happened.
Maybe we should stop "belittling" children into "acting like grown ups" as if the former was something to be ashamed of and the latter something proud to aspire to.
Would appreciate recommendations for reading material about this.
As a child I played RuneScape and I recently got into Oldschool RuneScape. It's clearly the same engine and it's a lot of the same content but it's very much not exactly the same, as they've rebalanced everything, added new content, and shifted all the metas. But it has the same feeling to it (unlike RuneScape 3).
Or how about this - I used to play with Lego Technic, but now I can build full-scale things by screwing together metal extrusions and wooden planks and beams and other parts.
Learning Go felt a bit like learning BASIC again - I just banged out code and the computer just did what I wanted (although I wouldn't recommend it as a first language because of all the "if err")
Just observe aggressively and you will notice a lot of childhood patterns at work in adult life around you.
————-
William Wordsworth 1770 – 1850
My heart leaps up when I behold
So was it when my life began;So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
The Child is father of the Man;And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural