ribuck

That's the effect, but I don't think it's the motivation. I'm sure tamslab's genuine motivation is to avoid his child being physically harmed. How do you know? I'd be interested to hear your arguments for your certainty You're right to call me out on the certainty. I used the words "I'm sure" as a loose figure of speech rather than to represent 100% certainty. Here's why I think it's likely that tasmlab's motivation is to avoid his child being physically harmed, as opposed to teaching the child not to trust its senses and to respect authority. 1. The children look happy and content in tasmlab's profile picture, and the body language suggests a positive parent-child relationship. 2. The safety measures that tasmlab might sometimes impose by force are standard ones that are repeatedly emphasized to parents in parenting classes, books, and in the media. The implied message is that the parents should do whatever it takes to remove these safety threats. The parents who internalise that message are motivated by the perceived wellbeing of the child. 3. I don't see any evidence in tasmlab's other posts that his motivation is to stunt his children emotionally. So let's say I'm 99.9% certain rather than 100% "sure". There's not a huge amount of information given, but the impression I got was that the parent's concern was not just for the safety of the child, but also to maximise the convenience for the parent. That was a surprising thing to say to tasmlab. Churches can be quite good at increasing anxiety.

But why does she cry? She cries because her self-esteem is being squelched. She sees that daddy can fuel the fire, and that the five-year-old can fuel the fire, but she is not considered good enough. The alternative approach is to say "sure, let daddy help you with that". Then the two of you together pick up the oversized log and place it in the fire (with you guiding it, of course, and protecting her). She grins broadly with pride, beams lovingly at you, and the two of you have a lovely bonding moment.

That's the effect, but I don't think it's the motivation. I'm sure tamslab's genuine motivation is to avoid his child being physically harmed. But wow, what hard work it must have been raising his three children if he escalated every safety issue into a conflict! When our kids were toddlers, we let them play with small knives. We gave them some balsa wood so that they could do something constructive with the knives, rather than (for example) slashing the upholstery. If they cut themselves, it teaches them that (a) knives are sharp, and (b) their parents were wise and helpful when telling them that knives can cut skin and it will hurt. It's better for them to learn about dangerous situations, rather than being protected from dangerous situations until they are in control of really dangerous things like guns or cars or explosives. Scissors: Let them play with scissors. Tell them that scissors are sharp and can cut and hurt. Give them stuff to cut. Let them discover that scissors can hurt. Make sure you have an old pair of scissors so that they can try to cut rocks and wood and metal. I don't think either of our two children ever drew blood with scissors of knives (unlike my own childhood; I was always getting cut). Climbing tall walls: Let them climb walls. If you let them start early, they will start with small walls, and will have discovered the consequences of falling before they move on to tall walls. The top of a wall is an empowering place for a child to be. Let them climb trees. Explain how they should keep three out of four limbs in contact with the tree at all times. Explain how they must work out how they are going to get down, before they go up. I did need to rescue my 4-year-old from the top of a tree that she couldn't climb down. Now both children can climb up to their treehouse without a ladder, and love to climb over the roof of our house (much to the consternation of our neighbors). Walking into the street: In a hazardous place like a supermarket car park, we put the children in their backpack-style child carriers. They loved riding up high on our backs. It's great for the parents too, being able to chat freely with the child while going places. I would recommend a child-carrying backpack to all able-bodied parents. From an early age our children had played in toy ride-on cars, so they soon learned that collisions were painful. By the age of three they understood that if you ran into the street and a car hit you, you would be squashed. So they never ran into the street. If you shout "don't run into the street" while chasing after the child, it turns it into a game and of course the child runs away from you into the street. So don't do that. Most of the time, a child's natural instinct is to stay close to the parent when going places. Putting logs onto the fireplace: We allowed that, although I don't think they wanted to do that as toddlers, I think it was from about 4 onwards, when they were wanting to do things that adults do. But when they were 2, we were already having campfires in the garden and letting them toast marshmallows. And if they get a small burn, despite our warnings, they learn that fires can burn. But I don't think they ever burned themselves, although I often burned myself as a child. We had a designated part of the garden where they were allowed to gather leaves and twigs and light their own fires. They had to ask for the matches though; we always kept those hidden and out of reach. I could go on through the list, but there's not much point. Some of the things I would have taken immediate action about. For example, I would immediately take the marble out of the child's mouth. But I guess since my wife and I were generally allowing our toddlers to experience the world, they were happy enough to let us occasionally act first and explain later. We never thought we could "teach" by "forbidding" though.

You don't need to take knives from toddlers. The kid will lose interest in a minute and put the knife down, provided you haven't drawn attention to it. If you can't wait a minute, just give the child something that requires two hands to hold. The child will put the knife down without even realising. Or just don't worry about it, like in most parts of the tropics: http://cdn-3-service.phanfare.com/images/external/4067616_4340794_81141902_Web_2/0_0_591d84d3c3c6323be6ea4f17ace8ddbe_1

For sure, loss of life is a bigger issue, but it's not the relevant one. It's already well-understood that many more lives can be saved, much more cheaply and easily, by (for example) building better roads.

That's understandable. You have been with your own children since their birth, so you are always going to know them better than you know someone else's child. I don't think of this as a problem. Assuming that you continue to grow closer to your partner's daughter as you get to know her better, it shouldn't matter that the relationship isn't identical to the relationship you have with your own children.

I can identify with that. If I buy a new camera, or book a hotel, or replace my car, I spend ages looking into the available choices. When I make my decision, I feel great anxiety as to whether I've made the right decision. But I'm still going to feel that anxiety, even if my choices are reduced right down to two. That anxiety would only go away if I have only one possibility, and no decision to make. But that situation, having no choice and therefore no chance to improve my situation, would be worse than having to experience choice-anxiety. On the other hand, if there are so many choices that I don't need to go through them one by one, I can just articulate my requirements and see which ones match. I know that the matches are "all good" and can just arbitrarily choose one. That's when I experience no choice-anxiety.

Infinite options are great because you don't need to select between alternatives. You just articulate what you want, and one of the infinite options will already match that. Humans choose from "infinite" options all the time. If I have nothing planned for a Sunday, I think "What shall I do today?". An infinite number of choices is available to me, yet I have no trouble thinking "It's a nice sunny day, so I'll go to the beach", or "I haven't mown the lawn for a while, so I'll do that today".

Delegating decision-making is not giving up fredom. When I tell a taxi-driver to take me downtown, I'm not losing any freedom if I let the driver choose the route, because I can withdraw this delegation at any time by asking the driver to take a specific turn. I don't see this as ironic at all. It's one of the many techniques humans use to get the benefit of choices without the choice becoming burdensome. Here are some of those techniques: 1. Delegating some decisions to a person whose knowledge you respect (for example, asking a doctor what he/she would do in the same circumstances). 2. Delegating some decisions to a person who may not have specific knowledge but whose overall wisdom you respect (for example, asking an older family member what they would suggest) 3. Relying on reputation (for example, when buying a new product you could choose a brand name that has served you well in the past with other products) 4. Not sweating the small stuff (don't anguish over decisions that make little difference, save the decision-making for the things that really matter) 5. Making a choice that eliminates the need to make other choices. For example, some people choose a package holiday where flights, hotels and perhaps car rental or excursions are all bundled together. These are all legitimate ways for people to maximise the benefits of choice while reducing the burden.

Fractional reserve banking is by definition deceptive, if everyone is fully aware of the fact that their money isnt in the bank then it is not a bank but a very poor investment vehicle, like buying stocks only with a lot more risk and not a lot of return. If everyone is fully aware, I don't see how there is any deception. In most (if not all) countries, when a business becomes insolvent, bank loans must be repaid before the shareholders can get anything. Therefore, an interest-bearing bank account will have a lower risk than stocks, but also (as you say) not a lot of return.

Just to clarify, your concern relates to a possible lack of attachment. Am I understanding this right?

Offering a story as a personal example of something you have a lot of research backing up does not make you non-empirical. What makes you non-empirical is if you have no research and you think your one story is a substitute for research. His personal story doesn't even support his thesis. He says he had too many choices, but he came away with the best pair of jeans he ever had. Now let's look at the longer term. The next time he buys jeans, when the salesman asks "straight leg or tapered, stretch or regular" he will know exactly what to say in order to get a great pair of jeans. He doesn't even need to make a decision, just state his preference. And that is one example of how humans gain the benefits of choice without needing to be overwhelmed by it. At my supermarket, there are over 200 types of bread. I am always amazed that such abundance is available to me. When I first moved here, it took a while to find the one I liked, but for the past ten years I've just bought that one every time. So although it took a while at first to discover what I liked from that immense choice, it's no burden in the long run, and I get the benefit of the most wonderful type of bread. I would not be happier under communism where I consider myself lucky to be able to get the standard white loaf. Another example: he says we can give a goldfish the maximum number of choices by smashing its bowl. How ridiculous! An increase in choices for the goldfish would include allowing it to swim in the bowl if it chose to. He is taking away the one choice that the goldfish might actually want (compared to floundering on the carpet after its bowl is smashed). Earlier in the thread I gave the example of the doctor who is supposedly giving the patient maximum choice, but is in fact denying the one choice that the patient wants: to follow the advice of a doctor that they trust. In the TED talk, Swartz is basically just pimping his book. I haven't read the book, so I'm giving Swartz the benefit of the doubt and am not disputing any of his evidence. I'm just saying that he draws the wrong conclusions from it, because he has a mindset that choices are provided to an individual by society, rather than being out there already.

A bank cannot lend any money unless it practices fractional reserve banking. As soon as a bank lends out some money, it no longer holds enough reserves to satisfy all of the depositors at once. Fractional reserve banking is only fraudulent if it's deceptive, i.e. if the bank tells the depositors that their money is safely held in the bank vault whereas it has actually been borrowed and spent by some property developer who is about to go bankrupt. There are, of course, alternatives to fractional reserve banking. Instead of receiving interest for providing your money to the bank to be lent out, you could pay the bank a fee for keeping your money safe without lending it out. And those who want to borrow could do so from investors (who understand that they might lose everything) rather than from unwitting depositors (who think their money is "safe in the bank").

The way you phrase that, it seems to imply that one party is "providing" choices to the other party, and has the ability to "increase" or "decrease" the number of choices. That doesn't resemble freedom to me. If you say to someone "you may have a coffee or a soda" you force that person to make a choice. If you allow them to have an extra choice ("coffee or a soda or a glass of milk") you don't make them more free. But if you simply allow the person to be free (by removing restrictions, as bbeljefe said), what happens is this: the person thinks "I'd like a beer", and they get themselves a beer. It doesn't even occur to them that they had to make a choice, and they don't suffer the stress of having been offered "too many" choices.

Barry Schwartz says, near the beginning, "The way to maximise freedom is to maximise choice". That's where he gets it wrong. Giving a prisoner ten menu choices for lunch instead of two doesn't maximise the prisoner's freedom. It's freedom itself that allows happiness, not maximising the number of pre-ordained choices. Take the "doctor" example at 3:45. Schwartz presents this as an example of having too many choices, but actually it's an example of too few choices. The choice that is denied to the patient is the one choice that the patient really wants to have: the ability to say "You're the doctor, I'm happy to do what you recommend". "Giving" people a large number of crappy choices doesn't help anyone.

Not surprisingly, many people find this ... unsatisfying. The farmed sheep doesn't feel very free when its head is forced underwater into the filthy bath of the sheep dip, nor would it make much difference if the sheep could see the farm for what it was. The farmed cow doesn't feel very free when its newborn calf is forcibly removed so that the cow will continue to produce milk, nor would it make much difference if the cow could see the farm for what it was.

What I had in mind was this: There are many experiments with more than one detector. Let's consider experiments with two detectors, which I will call A and B. Some experiments measure a "particle" phenomenon, and some experiments measure a "wave" phenomenon, even when it is the same type of object being measured (e.g. an electron). We usually measure the time at which events occur (because we want to discover something about cause and effect). Suppose we measure a "particle" phenomenon, and detector A triggers before detector B. Then we measure a "wave" phenomenon, and detector B triggers before detector A. We would then have "blatantly obvious" evidence that particles and waves travel in opposite directions. But it doesn't happen that way. I don't think any good will come from re-defining such fundamental concepts as a "wave". Sure it's good to question things, but you need to have a good reason to redo the fundamentals. If you dispute the fundamentals, the onus falls on you to re-visit all of the science from hundreds of years that has been successfully built on top of those fundamentals. If you don't do that, you can't expect to be taken seriously.

Well ... if you have no rulers, then you also have no rules. I realise it's not conventionally expressed that way, because there will still be rules that you voluntarily accept. For example, if you choose to drive on someone's expressway you might accept their rule about which side of the road to drive on. But really, if you've accepted it voluntarily, it doesn't need to be called a rule. It can be called a convention that you chose to accept. The first page aside, what did you think of the rest of the book?

Wonderful, thanks for posting that!

I was hoping for something rigorous, rather than a lot of contradictory handwaving. I don't like the way Boyd ridicules the scientists who worked on Quantum Mechanics (Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg etc). "It never even occured to them", says Boyd, "that waves and particles might travel in opposite directions". Firstly, he just pulled that statement out of his ass: he has no idea what thoughts those scientists had. Secondly, I'm pretty sure the possibility would have occurred to the QM guys. If you read any of their papers, you will see that those QM guys are rigorous and thorough. Thirdly, it would be blatantly obvious in any experiment if the observed velocity of particles was in one direction, and the observed velocity of waves was in the other. I almost didn't watch the whole video because of Boyd's arrogant introduction. But because you took the time to locate it and post it, I kept watching As the top-rated comment on YouTube points out, Boyd mis-represents the paper that he is criticising. The experiment does not illustrate a problem with Quantum Mechanics as such. It only illustrates the inadequacy of a naive wave description of light, or a naive particle description of light. As no-one here is proposing a naive wave or particle description of light, we can dismiss Boyd at this point. Notice that between 10:00 and 10:30, Boyd says there are no wave packets in his theory. In other words, there are waves that go on forever, not "packets" of waves. Yet he still says that if you introduce enough delay in the Bismith the interference pattern will disappear. What nonsense! Infinite waves will always interfere, no matter how great the phase delay is. Sorry, I can't stomach any more of Boyd.

There's no way you can bend the trajectory of an electron (at the slits or elsewhere) without changing its momentum. Quantum Mechanics has no difficulty here, because it describes the probability of each location of the electron. Summing over all the probabilities yields a result that equals the average experimentally measured momentum. Excellent! That provides a way to have a useful discussion about TEW. Please point me to a specific experiment where TEW and QM make different predictions, and where the experimental results are in accordance with the TEW predictions and not with the QM predictions.

A proposed alternative theory is not much use if it explains fewer things than the mainstream theory. The first video starts by re-stating a few uncontroversial things, then after 4 minutes introduces some ideas that immediately raise problems. For example: if waves and particles are simultaneously moving in both directions, then all of our experiments that measure momentum cannot be explained. And if the interference occurs near the electron gun rather than near the slit, and the particle goes from the electron gun to its spot in the interference pattern as a regular particle, then the particle must bend its trajectory as it passes through the slit. That requires a change in momentum, which is not experimentally observed. The TEW guy handwaves all the problems away after 10 minutes, saying "Needless to say, there must be a more robust elementary wave explanation of the double-slit experiment, and I'm not going to try to state it here". So, I just wasted 10 minutes of my life watching this uninsightful video.

Even the Bernanke has an opinion on this. From a commencement speech that he delivered to Princeton graduates: "... Remember that physical beauty is evolution’s way of assuring us that the other person doesn’t have too many intestinal parasites. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for beauty, romance, and sexual attraction–where would Hollywood and Madison Avenue be without them? But while important, those are not the only things to look for in a partner. The two of you will have a long trip together, I hope, and you will need each other’s support and sympathy more times than you can count ..."

Invariably these state-sanctioned "free cities" involve a relaxation of some rule that operates against business. For example, in the UK the "new town" of Milton Keynes was for many years exempted from some of the more onerous aspects of planning laws. People get excited by the term "free city", but I don't know of any case where a state has permitted (or even contemplated permitting) increased civil liberties.

Financial Times, June 4 Western healthcare can learn from advances in poorer nations "... In my experience, the poor are happy to pay affordable prices. They like being customers, able to demand high-quality services and dignified treatment rather than beggars who must accept whatever is on offer ..." The article is free-to-view if you search for it in Google News, or if you register. Great article!