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Ask HN: Is it feasible to have children wear “worldview protectors” in school?

8 points by amichail ↗ HN
The idea is that parents could require their children to wear "worldview protectors" in school that automatically censor the teacher's speech whenever it conflicts with their parents' worldview.

22 comments

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CamTin
I don't think it's feasible, but that's a great premise for a scifi story.
toomuchtodo
As someone who just saw a theatrical performance of "1984" in London the other day, this Ask HN makes me queasy.
dhagz
The whole world should make you queasy. We're entering an era where the constant surveillance is becoming more and more possible and more penetrating.
klez
Maybe I'm just short-sighted, but unless the device can catch non-verbal signs that someone is about to say something that conflicts with your worldview, it would be hard to censor stuff on-the-fly.

Also, are we really at a point where we want to protect children from opinions?

Thasc
Rather than censoring it on the fly, the device could mutter 'he's lying, he's lying, it's not true' into the child's ear in a respectable, commanding voice. 'Your mummy will be so angry if you think he's right.'

Since we're already assuming solid AI to understand what the speaker is saying, it might as well have enough capacity to whisper counter-arguments to the child until it detects that the child's convictions have been sufficiently reinforced. Automated conditioning!

6d0debc071
If we're being evil about it, you don't even need counter arguments. Hook it up to a taser colar and have it give the child a good zap whenever it hears phrases the parents don't like. The child will come to avoid 'bad' opinions all by themselves soon enough.
[dead] paperrr1
trigger warning trigger warning trigger warning
rwallace
Not feasible without AI that can understand natural language, which is a long way off. Bad idea even if it were feasible. If you are afraid teachers will teach your children falsehoods - which could happen, granted - then teach them how to be sceptical of falsehoods.
dragonwriter
It might be remotely possible if you have, you know, artificial general intelligence with a high reaction speed, and comprehensive knowledge of the parents worldview. Even then it would be very confusing, since it would have to cut in late into sentences or larger presentations when the conflict was detected.

Even if it works, it seems likely mostly to adversely affect the children's performance in school (and not just on the specific worldview issues -- the distraction and stress from all the incomplete thoughts would probably be a general drag on their attention and performance), and their ability to interact with those there.

jjp
At what point would you pass control over to the child so that they can automatically censor any speech from the parent that conflicts with the childs' worldview?
JakDrako
That's built in the child. It's called "the teenage years."
esnible3
No. It was recently revealed that even a much simpler problem, detecting genitals in on-line worlds, was so difficult that the world was shut down. It might be possible to detect certain words with speech recognition, but the teacher will just use different words. http://fusion.net/story/143218/lego-universe-had-a-huge-dong...

Twenty years ago we learned that even censoring specific bad words in online chat rooms is impossible. http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1995-12-02/features/1995336...

brachi
I'm not sure if you're asking as a business idea of to apply it to your own kids, but the explicit use of this method to controlling children's mind and hoping to mold them according to the parent's world view is a little scary IMO. I don't want to criticize how parents want to educate their children, but what's next, a hidden recording device to listen to all their conversation, transcribe them and spot conflicting opinions? Why treat kids as the parent's property? Could a child become a healthy critical-thinking adult after such a controlled and oppressed childhood?
drdeca
I think they are speaking from a devils advocate -like perspective, rather than sincerely promoting the idea.

Alternatively, they are questioning whether they need to be concerned about others implementing the idea.

Alternatively they are planning on writing a satire, and they want to see if something is technologically feasible.

I don't think they are promoting the idea in a totally sincere way.

brachi
I thought the same at first, but then I remembered that many parents home-school their children among many -IMO- valid reasons, to 'protect' them from things that schools teach like sex ed. and evolution theory.
joshuaheard
it is called a "school voucher". With it, parents can send their kids to a school that conforms to their world view.
toss1
Enter Socrates, just asking questions.....

(remember that the charges for which he was put to death started with 'corrupting the youth of Athens').

This is both a horribly bad idea for a wide variety of reasons, and to top it off, it won't work, not even in principle.

mdpm
1) Ostracisation. 2) Parental hatred 3) _You_ couldn't perform that function, were you standing behind them with blinkers and earmuffs at the ready 4) Other children. Will talk. Should we censor them too? 5) Rationalising the views we have _in the face of conflicting opinion_ is what allows us to cement our own views 6) Guiding our children in how to accept / interpret / evaluate the plethora of opinions out there is the largest influence we have. Your choices of media, internet access, social groups, extra-murals, etc. are there to perform this function.

I really don't want to see the psychological damage this could cause, even if possible (I do believe AR and augmentation and weak AI will enable versions of this). Filter bubbles are dangerous, limiting, and foster intolerance. I don't think we need any more intolerance.

insoluble
Next you are going to be asking whether it would be feasible to have Internet filters (browser plugins) that augmented the social media pages of other children from households with differing views. It could even, for example, replace words like "Jesus" with "Big Brother" (or Allah, Jehovah, et al). Then, of course, the child would need to wear augmented vision that made other children from disagreeable families or backgrounds look really ugly (or scary). Perhaps the system would simply detect the identity of each person (based on face) and use keyword profiling from social media and related to classify each.
MalcolmDiggs
You can try helicopter-parenting; be that weird parent standing up in the back of the class yelling at the teacher. That might work.