Parenting (was: God, Education, Epistemology)

[Rami Rustom]

The way a mother care about
a child can play a big role in the future ability of the child to be
able to change its mind on deep questions.

Right. But what do you mean by the "way"? You're talking about the
memes that replicate from her to the child, right?

Sometimes people look at you, and can see you or hear you. That's mean
they have enough empathy.
Sometimes people look at you but don't see you, nor hear you.

That has nothing to do with love. If a parent doesn't help a child
solve his problems, love won't matter.

I disagree. Intelligence is an emotional state. I think.

Intelligence is not a state. And its not emotional either. Emotion
includes a physiological component.

Take for example a situation where a child is trying to solve a
problem. He's riding his tricycle and it just started to veer right
heavily. His attempts to just turning the steering wheel left fail.
Lets say he gets frustrated. At this point, there is still no emotion.
This is a psychological state without any physiological component. Now
lets say no one is around to help him. He might get angry, especially
if he has seen his parent get angry after getting frustrated. The
anger is an emotion. There are physiological changes like increased
heartbeat, some hormones are secreted more, etc.

Wait. Just because someone (or many people) lived and died and didn't
fix their prejudices doesn't mean that they were *incapable* of fixing
their prejudices. Agreed?

I agree.
It means only they *were*, actually, incapable to fix it in their
life time.

You said incapable again. That means that that person had no
possibility of changing the prejudice. But he was capable.

This seems true especially in the spiritual domain, where 99,9% of the
humans follow the rule "the boss is right", and in the beginning the
parents are the bosses.

Following the rule "the boss is right" is a meme. Its not a human
nature thing. People can get rid of that meme. Our society will one
day get rid of that meme (if our species survives long enough).

Long enough, OK.
I disagree. That meme is deep. It concerns almost all living creatures.
There is a sense that if the boss is not too bad, he might not be that
wrong, you know ... nature exploits this all the times. It is part of
evolution.
Is Nature not a bit authoritative when It imposes you your genomes,
right at birth?

For humans no, for others yes. Human minds are 100% softcoded. All
other animals minds are both hardcoded and softcoded (actually I think
some beings are 100% hardcoded). Hardcoding is authoritative. But
softcoding is not. Human inborn knowledge is softcoded, which means we
change it.

So what determines whether or not the teacher will accept the
student's criticism of the grade? Its the teacher choice. And making
that choice *is* exercising authority.

I disagree. The teacher is supposed to have learned the subject
matter, and he evaluates the student's work according to his beliefs
and knowledge.
Bad teacher uses authoritative arguments. Not all teachers are bad.

I said "choice". I said that when a teacher makes the choice of
setting a grade, he is exercising his authority over the student.
Arguments, whether good or bad (whether by the standard of the teacher
or student), are irrelevant to the subject of whether or not the
choice is an exercising of a teacher's authority.

The way to remove the authoritative part includes getting rid of test
grades, and of passing/failing, and of forcing people to do school,
and of forcing students to learn what the school wants them to learn.

We can always compare, especially different things. Then it is
difficult, and personal, for such affair, to extract information, and
we will follow mostly our intuition.

Intuition sounds like gut feelings. Gut feelings are
subconscious/inexplicit ideas. These ideas must be made conscious and
explicit, which means they would become explanations. Its the
explanations that we are to criticize.

OK. But terrorism or coercion are human acts, and they can rely on gut
feelings, so we have to talk about that.
We cannot rationally condemn them, as they are gut feelings. Our gut
feelings are engaged in that process too, also.

We criticize our gut feelings and emotions like we criticize theories.
Why am I having this gut feeling? It is a theory. One that conflicts
with the theory that I am currently thinking about (consciously). With
some thinking, I can figure out what the subconscious theory is and
make it conscious and explicit. Then I can properly criticize both
rival theories in order to judge which one is right (the one that is
left uncriticized).

So the point is that we are never left only with gut feelings and
emotions. We should dig deeper. There is no limit to figuring out the
reasons why one is having a gut feeling or an emotion.

The point is that that guy doesn't know whether or not there would
have been a better outcome if his father did something else besides
punishment. And to say otherwise is to claim that correlation means
causation.

That's why we will use our gut feelings, in particular situation. This
will not prevent us to dream better ways to solve problems and evolve
toward better behavior, but as it touch the gut feelings, the purely
rational approach might be counter-productive.

You might have a different understanding of what a gut feeling is than
I do. A gut feeling means that you have a (conscious) idea that you
are currently thinking about and it "feels" wrong. That "feeling" is a
result of the fact that you have a subconscious and inexplicit idea
that conflicts with the conscious idea you're thinking about. And that
conflict is what is producing the gut feeling. So discovering what
that subconscious idea *is* a rational approach. It is not
counter-productive. Quitting is counter-productive. Not thinking about
why one is having a gut feeling is counter-productive and irrational.
Note that by rational approach I mean an approach that invokes
truth-seeking methods. And seeking the subconscious ideas that are the
cause of gut feelings *is* a truth-seeking method.

They were 5 children in that family. Only one
has been punished that way. And he, as an adult now, consider that he
deserved it.

And he's wrong. No ones deserves punishment. For one thing, punishment
does not fulfill its intended goal of changing behavior. A person who
was forced to learn (stuff he's not interested in) as a child, can be
expected to hate learning in adulthood. Punishment caused that. In
general, punishment can be expected to replicate anti-rational memes.

Not always. Some punishment can be fair, and even appreciate as such
by the punished.

Appreciating punished does not mean that it was moral. For one thing,
the punishee thinks that correlation means causation.

You don't know what the punishee thinks.

I guessed about why the guy thinks punishment was good. And I have an
explanation. You guessed too. And you have an explanation. Your guess
conflicts with my guess. Our guesses are rival theories. We are now
criticizing each other's theories. When we're done, one of our
theories will be left uncriticized, and we'll call that one true. Or
both theories will have been shown as flawed and we'll have a 3rd
theory which may or may not be a version of one of the starting
theories.

He thought, well
I was bad before, and now I'm good, and in between I was punished, so
that means that the punishment caused me to become good.

He lived the punishment as fair. He help him to get aware of the
gravity of the fact for which he was punished.
And this took time.
I think that nobody can be sure of anything in such matter, except the
people involved.

No. The people involved can be wrong while an uninvolved party looking
in from afar could be right.

My point is not that father was right, but that I cannot
judge him to be wrong on this.

Nor can he judge that he's right on that.

Nor that he's wrong. He did it.
And apparently it works. The son are more love and respect for his
father, and get back with a new tonus and appetite for life. In this
situation.

See my criticism above.

It was not a criticism. It your opinion.

It was an explanation. A theory about why the guy thinks it was good
for his father to punish him. My theory conflicts with your theory.
Therefore my theory is a criticism of your theory. A criticism is an
explanation of a flaw in a theory. You can call it an opinion also,
but that label doesn't change that fact that it is a criticism.

I agree that punishment is bad, but this does not mean that all
punishment are condemnable. It means it is avoidable in the limit, but
we can't argue logically against it in the temporal local neighborhoods.
We cannot think and we cannot feel for the others.

I think what you mean is that since we don't know all the details,
there might be some relevant details about their situation that we are
ignorant of but are needed in order to determine the truth. I agree.
But, so far, your example contains details that I can criticize using
only the details you've provided. (for example, the dish throwing
situation you describe below.)

May be the son was suffering by a feeling his father was indifferent
toward him,

So you're saying that maybe father was bad for years, which caused son
to feel like father doesn't love him, and then father punishes son,
and so now son feels like father loves him. So father is evil and son
is confused.

That is one interpretation. Another one is that the child was bad for
years, pissing-of the whole family, who complained on the father

Complained about what? Is complaining bad?

who
eventually react and take the good decision.

You are looking at a problem without thinking about why that problem
exists. See below.

Why does it matter that its difficult? Are you saying that because a
parent finds it difficult that its ok to coerce his child?

When the child's goal consists in being as much non cooperative as
possible,

Why does child have goal of non-cooperation?

There are billions of reasons. The "non-future" state of mind, the
part of adolescense where you can easily made them kills themselves
legally (war) or illegally (gang). The passage from child to adult,
makes them dumband vulnerable, and there are many crisis before.
The causes, might terribly multiple.

Are you saying that those things are inevitable? That children cannot
do better? That they aren't rational enough to do better? If so, do
you believe that *all* children are like that? If not, what do you
believe is the difference between the children that are like that and
the children that aren't like that?

That mean parent was
coercing child for years and now child has learned to distrust parent.

There are many sort of parents. Life is a coercing situation. Most try
to do their best.

No. Most lie to themselves and make themselves believe that they are
doing their best.

This is parent's fault.

You are not coercing a child when you try to prevent him to throw the
dishes on his brothers.

Actually that *is* coercion. But that coercion is moral. It is
analogous to (coercive) self-defense and police (coercively)
restraining a person intending to commit violence.

If you ask the child what problem he is trying to solve by throwing
dishes, you take the risk to get the fork and the knife on you.

You're describing a father-son relationship where the son distrusts
the father. That is not a "human nature" thing. It is a result of the
father's behavior towards the son. It is 100% the parent's fault.

For one thing, having a 2nd child is the father fault. He betrayed the
1st child when he did that. He forced the 1st child to share stuff
with the 2nd child (like a bed room, toys, parent time, etc.). So for
example, if 1st child gets jealous of 2nd child, should the parent
blame the 1st child for "being" jealous? No. But that is what your
argument says to do. The reality is that the parent caused a situation
where the 1st child feels that way. The parent could have done
differently such that the 1st child wouldn't feel that way. And the
parent can do these even after making the first mistake of having a
2nd child.

All
parents knows that some child can have difficult moment, which are
hard to reason about at times.

And most parents resort to punishment instead of truth-seeking. That
punishment is counter-productive to the goal of truth-seeking. The
truth that should be sought after is *why* does the kid want to hurt
his family. What is the underlying problem that is causing the obvious
problem (that the kid wants to hurt his family)?

And you're saying that in this situation
parent should do more of his badness and that will somehow work? No.
Parent should stop coercion and start persuasion and start to
eventually child will learn to not distrust parent.

I agree in principle, and we must tend toward that. But you can
advertize on this only by examples, and you cannot judge the parents
in concrete situation, as there is no way for you to think and judge
from their perspective. There is no theory to follow, even if you
follow mostly your reason.

You're saying that there might be relevant details about the situation
that are crucial to understanding the morality of the situation. I
agree. But, for example, one of the situations you described didn't
have missing relevant details. You said that father punished son in
order for him to study. This is immoral. It is anti-freedom. It is
also counter-productive in that what can be expected is that the son
can learn to hate studying.

A strong FAIR punishment can be less detrimental than that fake and
unfair persuasion method which might miss the "reason of the heart".

Why did you qualify the persuasion with "fake and unfair"?

It is the "meaning" which can hurt, not so much the method.

I don't know what you mean here.

-- Rami

[Bruno Marchal]

The way a mother care about
a child can play a big role in the future ability of the

child to be

able to change its mind on deep questions.

Right. But what do you mean by the "way"? You're talking

about the

memes that replicate from her to the child, right?

Sometimes people look at you, and can see you or hear you.

That's mean

they have enough empathy.
Sometimes people look at you but don't see you, nor hear you.

That has nothing to do with love. If a parent doesn't help a child
solve his problems, love won't matter.

I disagree. Intelligence is an emotional state. I think.

Intelligence is not a state. And its not emotional either. Emotion
includes a physiological component.

Intelligence too.

Take for example a situation where a child is trying to solve a
problem. He's riding his tricycle and it just started to veer right
heavily. His attempts to just turning the steering wheel left fail.
Lets say he gets frustrated. At this point, there is still no emotion.

?
Frustration is an emotional state.

This is a psychological state without any physiological component.

There is always a physiological components, in most plausible theories
of the mind, and certainly with comp.

Now
lets say no one is around to help him. He might get angry, especially
if he has seen his parent get angry after getting frustrated. The
anger is an emotion. There are physiological changes like increased
heartbeat, some hormones are secreted more, etc.

perhaos I am using the word "state" in a more large sense. This is
vocabulary. What I meant is that intelligence is something you can get
in one second, and that you can lost in one second. It is quite
different from competence, which can ask for years of work.

It seems to me that we have lost the original thread.

Wait. Just because someone (or many people) lived and died and

didn't

fix their prejudices doesn't mean that they were *incapable* of

fixing

their prejudices. Agreed?

I agree.
It means only they *were*, actually, incapable to fix it in their
life time.

You said incapable again. That means that that person had no
possibility of changing the prejudice. But he was capable.

Apparently not in his life time, and that happens a lot. in principle
all universal machine have the same capacity, but the circumstances
makes them harboring different capacities.

This seems true especially in the spiritual domain, where

99,9% of the

humans follow the rule "the boss is right", and in the

beginning the

parents are the bosses.

Following the rule "the boss is right" is a meme. Its not a human
nature thing. People can get rid of that meme. Our society will

one

day get rid of that meme (if our species survives long enough).

Long enough, OK.
I disagree. That meme is deep. It concerns almost all living

creatures.

There is a sense that if the boss is not too bad, he might not be

that

wrong, you know ... nature exploits this all the times. It is part

of

evolution.
Is Nature not a bit authoritative when It imposes you your genomes,
right at birth?

For humans no, for others yes.

?

Human minds are 100% softcoded.

Human minds are Lôbian (they are universal and knows that they are
universal), but I think this begin with spider and octopi. The
difference between human and spider is a matter of degree. there is
always a level where everything is hard coded, but once you have a
universal soft program, you get "infinite freedom" in principle. Some
spiders have that. Some humans believes they are superior, but they
are only more sophisticated, and more deluded on this.

All
other animals minds are both hardcoded and softcoded (actually I think
some beings are 100% hardcoded).

Insects and worms, perhaps.

Hardcoding is authoritative. But
softcoding is not. Human inborn knowledge is softcoded, which means we
change it.

More than other species, but I think all homeotherm animals are
Löbian, and also some invertebrates.

So what determines whether or not the teacher will accept the
student's criticism of the grade? Its the teacher choice. And

making

that choice *is* exercising authority.

I disagree. The teacher is supposed to have learned the subject
matter, and he evaluates the student's work according to his beliefs
and knowledge.
Bad teacher uses authoritative arguments. Not all teachers are bad.

I said "choice". I said that when a teacher makes the choice of
setting a grade, he is exercising his authority over the student.

His authority in the field taught. But that is not necessarily
authoritative. He just knows better the field.
If not, then a pilot of a plane can be said to use authoritative
argument on the passengers when handling the plane.

Arguments, whether good or bad (whether by the standard of the teacher
or student), are irrelevant to the subject of whether or not the
choice is an exercising of a teacher's authority.

His authority in the field taught. That is not necessarily
authoritative.

The way to remove the authoritative part includes getting rid of test
grades, and of passing/failing, and of forcing people to do school,
and of forcing students to learn what the school wants them to learn.

People might have more choice in the matter. If they want go to some
school, they can. If not, they might follow other curriculum.
Exams? I don't like that, and would prefer more work or research
instead, but in practice that might be difficult.

We can always compare, especially different things. Then it is
difficult, and personal, for such affair, to extract

information, and

we will follow mostly our intuition.

Intuition sounds like gut feelings. Gut feelings are
subconscious/inexplicit ideas. These ideas must be made

conscious and

explicit, which means they would become explanations. Its the
explanations that we are to criticize.

OK. But terrorism or coercion are human acts, and they can rely on

gut

feelings, so we have to talk about that.
We cannot rationally condemn them, as they are gut feelings. Our gut
feelings are engaged in that process too, also.

We criticize our gut feelings and emotions like we criticize theories.

I don't think so. It is different.

Why am I having this gut feeling? It is a theory.

Not at all. It is more close to a sensation or a feeling. You can't
control it in the same way than your thought process. Some "yoga"
technic can be needed, or some drugs.

One that conflicts
with the theory that I am currently thinking about (consciously). With
some thinking, I can figure out what the subconscious theory is and
make it conscious and explicit.

Partially, and most of the time, for most humans, very partially.

Then I can properly criticize both
rival theories in order to judge which one is right (the one that is
left uncriticized).
So the point is that we are never left only with gut feelings and
emotions. We should dig deeper. There is no limit to figuring out the
reasons why one is having a gut feeling or an emotion.

You live the emotion, you reason on a theory. I can explain that the
machines have both, and they obey to very different logic.

The point is that that guy doesn't know whether or not there would
have been a better outcome if his father did something else

besides

punishment. And to say otherwise is to claim that correlation

means

causation.

That's why we will use our gut feelings, in particular situation.

This

will not prevent us to dream better ways to solve problems and

evolve

toward better behavior, but as it touch the gut feelings, the purely
rational approach might be counter-productive.

You might have a different understanding of what a gut feeling is than
I do. A gut feeling means that you have a (conscious) idea that you
are currently thinking about and it "feels" wrong. That "feeling" is a
result of the fact that you have a subconscious and inexplicit idea
that conflicts with the conscious idea you're thinking about.

There is always a conflict, or a dialog, between the heart and reason.
They can be both right, and yet cannot always see that. My opinion is
that in case of doubt, reason has to be the servant of the heart.

And that
conflict is what is producing the gut feeling.

No. the conflict is only when the gut feelings is in opposition with
the theory, but most people will follow their guts even before
thinking to a theory.
Why?
Because our emotions are rooted in billions of years of evolution. Our
theories are far more recent.
I guess we are more hard or soft, but precoded than you think. We
cannot change our gut feeling by reason. We can learn to act against
them in some circumstance, but we have no control on our deep emotion
and even beliefs.

So discovering what
that subconscious idea *is* a rational approach.

You will face the problem of the centipede, when trying to use his
many legs rationally. No brains can entirely understands its own
functioning, especially in real time, still less change it accordingly
in real time.

It is not
counter-productive. Quitting is counter-productive. Not thinking about
why one is having a gut feeling is counter-productive and irrational.
Note that by rational approach I mean an approach that invokes
truth-seeking methods. And seeking the subconscious ideas that are the
cause of gut feelings *is* a truth-seeking method.

But this is what we do when introducing laws, and teaching. We just
cannot do that "in real time". No animals can do that.
This is an overuse of reason, and I can explain why, even for the
ideally correct machine, this is already NOT rational. It is rational
to be irrational on those matter.

In the present case, the father took a long time before punishing the
kid, because he was acting rationally. But this was probably what
makes the child even more and more angry against his father. The point
was made by the child. Everyine was relieved when finally the father
get angry and did what everyone felt to be the correct, and loving,
attitude. Fair punishment can make sense, and are taken by children as
mark of genuine love.
This is part of our condition today.
I kind of agree with you "in theory", but imposing such a theory would
lead to the contrary of the intended effect.

They were 5 children in that family. Only one
has been punished that way. And he, as an adult now,

consider that he

deserved it.

And he's wrong. No ones deserves punishment. For one thing,

punishment

does not fulfill its intended goal of changing behavior. A

person who

was forced to learn (stuff he's not interested in) as a

child, can be

expected to hate learning in adulthood. Punishment caused

that. In

general, punishment can be expected to replicate anti-

rational memes.

Not always. Some punishment can be fair, and even appreciate

as such

by the punished.

Appreciating punished does not mean that it was moral. For one

thing,

the punishee thinks that correlation means causation.

You don't know what the punishee thinks.

I guessed about why the guy thinks punishment was good. And I have an
explanation. You guessed too. And you have an explanation. Your guess
conflicts with my guess. Our guesses are rival theories. We are now
criticizing each other's theories. When we're done, one of our
theories will be left uncriticized, and we'll call that one true. Or
both theories will have been shown as flawed and we'll have a 3rd
theory which may or may not be a version of one of the starting
theories.

Not at all. I was using my gut feeling. The theory behind it is
billions years old, I can't abandon it by a rational critics, as I am
hard or soft programmed to believe it before reason, and for good
reason, as the machine looking inward can understand: it is related
with a concept which is at the start rather irrational: Truth (truth
is not entirely rational for machines). Pain and joy are not rational.
You can't decide you are not suffering by reason alone. The gut
feeling are pain and joy related. We don't control that, yet. (Unless
you follow some spiritual path, or take drug, or practice yoga).

He thought, well
I was bad before, and now I'm good, and in between I was

punished, so

that means that the punishment caused me to become good.

He lived the punishment as fair. He help him to get aware of the
gravity of the fact for which he was punished.
And this took time.
I think that nobody can be sure of anything in such matter, except

the

people involved.

No. The people involved can be wrong while an uninvolved party looking
in from afar could be right.

He cant', as the problem is in part due to the involvement, and the
multiple self-reference, including the first person one, which are
already not nameable or describable in any third person views.

My point is not that father was right, but that I cannot
judge him to be wrong on this.

Nor can he judge that he's right on that.

Nor that he's wrong. He did it.
And apparently it works. The son are more love and respect for

his

father, and get back with a new tonus and appetite for life.

In this

situation.

See my criticism above.

It was not a criticism. It your opinion.

It was an explanation. A theory about why the guy thinks it was good
for his father to punish him. My theory conflicts with your theory.
Therefore my theory is a criticism of your theory.

I am not sure to see what you theory is, at this point. That
punishment is bad?
I agree with that theory, but only ideally, meaning that I cannot
judge someone who does not follow it. I can only try to apply it
myself, and in all human affair, I know that I can expect situation
where it will not work. All generalization are wrong on the human
affairs (and more generally on the universal machine affair).

A criticism is an
explanation of a flaw in a theory. You can call it an opinion also,
but that label doesn't change that fact that it is a criticism.

We can have different opinions, and we can be both partially right and
partially false.

I agree that punishment is bad, but this does not mean that all
punishment are condemnable. It means it is avoidable in the limit,

but

we can't argue logically against it in the temporal local

neighborhoods.

We cannot think and we cannot feel for the others.

I think what you mean is that since we don't know all the details,
there might be some relevant details about their situation that we are
ignorant of but are needed in order to determine the truth. I agree.
But, so far, your example contains details that I can criticize using
only the details you've provided. (for example, the dish throwing
situation you describe below.)

As you said, the situation is complex, and it involves love, pain,
parenthood, etc. And we don't know the detail. I appreciate very much
that guy, and his father, so everything is fine to me. One thing seems
to be sure: the father would not have acted, he would have been in
trouble with the whole family, including the child in question, I am
*pretty* sure.

May be the son was suffering by a feeling his father was

indifferent

toward him,

So you're saying that maybe father was bad for years, which

caused son

to feel like father doesn't love him, and then father punishes

son,

and so now son feels like father loves him. So father is evil

and son

is confused.

That is one interpretation. Another one is that the child was bad

for

years, pissing-of the whole family, who complained on the father

Complained about what? Is complaining bad?

Complaining is not bad, but points on something which is bad and needs
to be fixed.

who
eventually react and take the good decision.

You are looking at a problem without thinking about why that problem
exists. See below.

Why does it matter that its difficult? Are you saying that

because a

parent finds it difficult that its ok to coerce his child?

When the child's goal consists in being as much non

cooperative as

possible,

Why does child have goal of non-cooperation?

There are billions of reasons. The "non-future" state of mind, the
part of adolescense where you can easily made them kills themselves
legally (war) or illegally (gang). The passage from child to adult,
makes them dumband vulnerable, and there are many crisis before.
The causes, might terribly multiple.

Are you saying that those things are inevitable?

Well, if that damned Eve did not eat that damed apple, may be things
would have been avoided.
You seem to think that we can reason in theory, like in practice. But
the application of a theory to a concrete siutation is itself
something complex.

That children cannot
do better?

The fact is that he did not get better until the punishment.

That they aren't rational enough to do better?

Reason is not synonymous with better, although it can help a lot. But
it is counterproductive on the irrational, like the "reason" why we
are living. That's why theology is a very complex field, full of
traps, and delusion.

I have know different friends who both parents were psychologists, and
try to educate their children following theories. That led to
disaster, but a bit less in the couples who was able to take some
distance with theories. I can explain why it is like that with
machines too. This has even an important consequence: machines will
become intelligent, not because we will understand intelligence, but
because we will fight against their intelligence, and this without any
understanding of what happens.

I am not sure you realize how much we are ignorant. BTW, you don't
criticize my argument that if we are machine, then Aristotle is wrong,
materialism is wrong, naturalism is wrong, and it is Plato and
Plotinus who are much less wrong. Notably on afterlife and things like
that. Today, it is enough to inform oneself of the mundial health
politics to understand that we are still in the obscurantist era.

If so, do
you believe that *all* children are like that? If not, what do you
believe is the difference between the children that are like that and
the children that aren't like that?

Some dogs barks, others don't. We, the animals, are very similar, and
very different. It is a bit like the shape of the clouds, or of the
parts of the Mandelbrot set. With comp such difference are related to
the infinite richness of arithmetic. It is full of chaos, life, and
surprises. We can only scratch the surface, and we know already that
the more we will know about that, the more we will realize that we are
ignorant about that. When embedded in real relative time and space,
most our decision are irrational.

That mean parent was
coercing child for years and now child has learned to distrust

parent.

There are many sort of parents. Life is a coercing situation. Most

try

to do their best.

No. Most lie to themselves and make themselves believe that they are
doing their best.

Some lie to themselves. Not most. You seem to have a negative view of
the humans. I agree they lie more easily than animals, but they are
not so bad with their children, in majority. Imo.

This is parent's fault.

You are not coercing a child when you try to prevent him to throw

the

dishes on his brothers.

Actually that *is* coercion. But that coercion is moral. It is
analogous to (coercive) self-defense and police (coercively)
restraining a person intending to commit violence.

OK. Then I will just put the act of the punishing father in that
category. It helps a lot the family. I will not tell you what the
child did, I don't even know myself, but I can guess easily that it
was way worst than throwing dishes.

If you ask the child what problem he is trying to solve by throwing
dishes, you take the risk to get the fork and the knife on you.

You're describing a father-son relationship where the son distrusts
the father. That is not a "human nature" thing.

?

It is a result of the
father's behavior towards the son. It is 100% the parent's fault.

How can you know that?
If you can imagine a bad father-adult, why can't you imagine a bad son-
kid?
May be it was the fault of the grandfather?
Oh, wait, it is was 100% the fault of Eve! or of the Snake.

For one thing, having a 2nd child is the father fault. He betrayed the
1st child when he did that. He forced the 1st child to share stuff
with the 2nd child (like a bed room, toys, parent time, etc.). So for
example, if 1st child gets jealous of 2nd child, should the parent
blame the 1st child for "being" jealous? No. But that is what your
argument says to do. The reality is that the parent caused a situation
where the 1st child feels that way. The parent could have done
differently such that the 1st child wouldn't feel that way. And the
parent can do these even after making the first mistake of having a
2nd child.

??? It is a mistake to do a second child? I believe the complete
contrary, and would say it is a mistake to do only one child. But,
anyway, those are not "mistakes". Those are current facts of current
life.

All
parents knows that some child can have difficult moment, which are
hard to reason about at times.

And most parents resort to punishment instead of truth-seeking.

Truth seeking is way more complex. You just can't do it in most
situation for the human affairs. It is too much complex. People have
very different theories about this.

That
punishment is counter-productive to the goal of truth-seeking.

Truth seeking is natural activity, but is not entirely relevant in the
search of a minimum of life quality.

The
truth that should be sought after is *why* does the kid want to hurt
his family. What is the underlying problem that is causing the obvious
problem (that the kid wants to hurt his family)?

That the child was believing his father did not notice him, or taking
him seriously. The child was wrong. He failed to see the positive
contribution of his father? He noticed it after the negative
contribution (punishment).
Everyone was happy after. Is that not the main thing.

And you're saying that in this situation
parent should do more of his badness and that will somehow work?

No.

Parent should stop coercion and start persuasion and start to
eventually child will learn to not distrust parent.

I agree in principle, and we must tend toward that. But you can
advertize on this only by examples, and you cannot judge the parents
in concrete situation, as there is no way for you to think and judge
from their perspective. There is no theory to follow, even if you
follow mostly your reason.

You're saying that there might be relevant details about the situation
that are crucial to understanding the morality of the situation. I
agree. But, for example, one of the situations you described didn't
have missing relevant details. You said that father punished son in
order for him to study.

? I don't remember saying this. If I say this, it was another case.

This is immoral. It is anti-freedom. It is
also counter-productive in that what can be expected is that the son
can learn to hate studying.

But I still disagree. I am happy to have studied, but I was against
going to school when young. I am happy my parent coerce on me for
doing that.

A strong FAIR punishment can be less detrimental than that fake and
unfair persuasion method which might miss the "reason of the heart".

Why did you qualify the persuasion with "fake and unfair"?

because I was mentioning those fake and unfair persuasion often based
on prejudices and beliefs (like with the psychologist parents). Those
method miss the "reason of the heart".

It is the "meaning" which can hurt, not so much the method.

I don't know what you mean here.

If parents love genuinely a child, it will be OK, in most case.
if parents does not have that love, it will be hard, no matter what.

Theories, here, add noise, in situations which are not
'theoreticalizable' in practice. We can never think at the place of
others. Your thinking, theoretical or not, is for personal use. Doing
moral is immoral. Judging people bad, is bad, unless they do real bad
to you, here and now.
You know, even in math, you can still have problem when saying 2+2=4.
Humans are chatting apes, who are so clever that they have invented
thousand ways of making the life of their pair very miserable. And the
culprit is not so much ignorance, as most animals are very ignorant.
the culprit most of the time comes from those who believe in some
human panacea, be it a God, Reason, Science, Progress, Solidarity,
etc. The hell *is* paved with good intentions.

My opinion is that people should mind their own business, and stop
judging others as bad or good, as far as they don't feel their liberty
and souls threatened in some immediate way.

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[Bruno Marchal]

Post by Bruno Marchal
There is always a conflict, or a dialog, between the heart and reason.
They can be both right, and yet cannot always see that. My opinion is
that in case of doubt, reason has to be the servant of the heart.

Post by Rami Rustom
And that
conflict is what is producing the gut feeling.

No. the conflict is only when the gut feelings is in opposition with
the theory, but most people will follow their guts even before
thinking to a theory.
Why?
Because our emotions are rooted in billions of years of evolution. Our
theories are far more recent.
I guess we are more hard or soft, but precoded than you think. We
cannot change our gut feeling by reason. We can learn to act against
them in some circumstance, but we have no control on our deep emotion
and even beliefs.

Actually our emotions can be see as our oldest "mind" theories, and
are quite hardcoded in the limbic system, and the stem, the
cerebellum. What I call theory above, could be called, the recent
cortical or neo-cortical theories. The brain has a longer story that
the individual life, and we can't change so easily very old programs,
even if this is what we are forced to do when confronting fears and
some emotions (and that can be helped through initiations, like in
many cultures. Our exams can be related to that too.

Some people fear drugs because they believe that they show that it
might be very easy to change the old program, and that we could find a
pill of happiness, or a pill of acceptance of death, and eventually
demotivate humanity. But of course things are far more complex. In any
case we have only partial control.

Bruno







http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[Rami Rustom]

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom

That has nothing to do with love. If a parent doesn't help a child
solve his problems, love won't matter.

I disagree. Intelligence is an emotional state. I think.

Intelligence is not a state. And its not emotional either. Emotion
includes a physiological component.

Intelligence too.

Post by Rami Rustom
Take for example a situation where a child is trying to solve a
problem. He's riding his tricycle and it just started to veer right
heavily. His attempts to just turning the steering wheel left fail.
Lets say he gets frustrated. At this point, there is still no emotion.

?
Frustration is an emotional state.

Post by Rami Rustom
This is a psychological state without any physiological component.

There is always a physiological components, in most plausible theories
of the mind, and certainly with comp.

I guess you mean neuronal firing. I'm talking about hormone secretion,
increase heart rate, etc.

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom
Now
lets say no one is around to help him. He might get angry, especially
if he has seen his parent get angry after getting frustrated. The
anger is an emotion. There are physiological changes like increased
heartbeat, some hormones are secreted more, etc.

perhaos I am using the word "state" in a more large sense. This is
vocabulary. What I meant is that intelligence is something you can get
in one second, and that you can lost in one second. It is quite
different from competence, which can ask for years of work.

I don't see a difference bewteen intelligence and competence.

I see intelligence as a function of one's epistemic ideas. More
intelligence means better epistemic ideas. The results is increased
ability to solve problems. It means better creativity and better
criticism. It means better error-correction methods in one's thinking.

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom

Is Nature not a bit authoritative when It imposes you your genomes,
right at birth?

For humans no, for others yes.

?

Our genes don't affect our ideas. Our genes produce our inborn
softcoding, and then we change that softcode afterwards.

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom
Human minds are 100% softcoded.

Human minds are Lôbian (they are universal and knows that they are
universal), but I think this begin with spider and octopi. The
difference between human and spider is a matter of degree. there is
always a level where everything is hard coded, but once you have a
universal soft program, you get "infinite freedom" in principle. Some
spiders have that.

Are you saying that some spiders are 100% softcoded?

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom

I disagree. The teacher is supposed to have learned the subject
matter, and he evaluates the student's work according to his beliefs
and knowledge.
Bad teacher uses authoritative arguments. Not all teachers are bad.

I said "choice". I said that when a teacher makes the choice of
setting a grade, he is exercising his authority over the student.

His authority in the field taught.

But sometimes the student is right and the teacher wrong even within
the teacher's field. And in these situations, the teacher will decide
whether the student is right or the teacher is right. At this point,
the teacher is exercising his authority to decide who is right.

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom
We criticize our gut feelings and emotions like we criticize theories.

I don't think so. It is different.

We guess and we criticize. Right?

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom
Why am I having this gut feeling? It is a theory.

Not at all. It is more close to a sensation or a feeling. You can't
control it in the same way than your thought process. Some "yoga"
technic can be needed, or some drugs.

Why are you talking about control?

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom
One that conflicts
with the theory that I am currently thinking about (consciously). With
some thinking, I can figure out what the subconscious theory is and
make it conscious and explicit.

Partially, and most of the time, for most humans, very partially.

Can you give an example and an explanation of why it must be partial?

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom
Then I can properly criticize both
rival theories in order to judge which one is right (the one that is
left uncriticized).
So the point is that we are never left only with gut feelings and
emotions. We should dig deeper. There is no limit to figuring out the
reasons why one is having a gut feeling or an emotion.

You live the emotion, you reason on a theory. I can explain that the
machines have both, and they obey to very different logic.

K. Explain.

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom
You might have a different understanding of what a gut feeling is than
I do. A gut feeling means that you have a (conscious) idea that you
are currently thinking about and it "feels" wrong. That "feeling" is a
result of the fact that you have a subconscious and inexplicit idea
that conflicts with the conscious idea you're thinking about.

There is always a conflict, or a dialog, between the heart and reason.

The heart is a mechanical pump and nothing more.

Post by Bruno Marchal
They can be both right, and yet cannot always see that. My opinion is
that in case of doubt, reason has to be the servant of the heart.

What is the heart? You mean gut feelings and emotions? What causes gut
feelings? What causes emotions?

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom
And that
conflict is what is producing the gut feeling.

No. the conflict is only when the gut feelings is in opposition with
the theory, but most people will follow their guts even before
thinking to a theory.
Why?
Because our emotions are rooted in billions of years of evolution.

How do you think emotions work? What is happening in a person that
causes emotions?

Post by Bruno Marchal
Our
theories are far more recent.
I guess we are more hard or soft, but precoded than you think. We
cannot change our gut feeling by reason. We can learn to act against
them in some circumstance, but we have no control on our deep emotion
and even beliefs.

That doesn't make any sense to me. I believe the theories that I have
no criticisms of. What do you mean that I don't have control over
this? I actively create and seek out criticisms of my currently
unrefuted theories. Sometimes I create (or am provided) with a
criticism that I can't refute, in which case my previously unrefuted
theory is now refuted, and rendered false, in which case it is no
longer a belief of mine. I was responsible for actively thinking about
my theories. I was responsible for criticizing them, and for posting
them publicly so that I can get external criticism. I was responsible
for actively thinking about the criticisms, which means actively
trying not to rationalize (i.e. shield my theories from criticism).
You are saying that I am not responsible. How does that make sense? Or
did I misunderstand you?

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom
It is not
counter-productive. Quitting is counter-productive. Not thinking about
why one is having a gut feeling is counter-productive and irrational.
Note that by rational approach I mean an approach that invokes
truth-seeking methods. And seeking the subconscious ideas that are the
cause of gut feelings *is* a truth-seeking method.

But this is what we do when introducing laws, and teaching. We just
cannot do that "in real time".

I do it in real time plenty. My sales manager had a gut feeling about
a potential sales person. I didn't have that gut feeling. I asked him
to try to explain it. It was hard for him. Some time later, because of
some of my questions and guesses and criticism, we discovered what it
was that his gut feeling was telling him. It was something he
subconsciously picked up on in the interviewer's body language and
responses. That new thing we learned we were able to apply to future
interviews, this time without relying on the gut feeling, and instead
relying on the objective facts about the interviewer's actions. And
the point is that I was able to learn this idea too, even though I
never had the gut feeling.

Post by Bruno Marchal
No animals can do that.
This is an overuse of reason, and I can explain why, even for the
ideally correct machine, this is already NOT rational. It is rational
to be irrational on those matter.
In the present case, the father took a long time before punishing the
kid, because he was acting rationally. But this was probably what
makes the child even more and more angry against his father. The point
was made by the child. Everyine was relieved when finally the father
get angry and did what everyone felt to be the correct, and loving,
attitude. Fair punishment can make sense, and are taken by children as
mark of genuine love.
This is part of our condition today.
I kind of agree with you "in theory", but imposing such a theory would
lead to the contrary of the intended effect.

You mean onto newborns?

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom

It was not a criticism. It your opinion.

It was an explanation. A theory about why the guy thinks it was good
for his father to punish him. My theory conflicts with your theory.
Therefore my theory is a criticism of your theory.

I am not sure to see what you theory is, at this point. That
punishment is bad?
I agree with that theory, but only ideally, meaning that I cannot
judge someone who does not follow it. I can only try to apply it
myself, and in all human affair, I know that I can expect situation
where it will not work. All generalization are wrong on the human
affairs (and more generally on the universal machine affair).

False. For example, stealing is bad, all the time. Agreed?

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom
A criticism is an
explanation of a flaw in a theory. You can call it an opinion also,
but that label doesn't change that fact that it is a criticism.

We can have different opinions, and we can be both partially right and
partially false.

Right.

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom
Complained about what? Is complaining bad?

Complaining is not bad, but points on something which is bad and needs
to be fixed.

It points to the idea that the father's parenting is bad, and needs fixed.

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom

Why does child have goal of non-cooperation?

There are billions of reasons. The "non-future" state of mind, the
part of adolescense where you can easily made them kills themselves
legally (war) or illegally (gang). The passage from child to adult,
makes them dumband vulnerable, and there are many crisis before.
The causes, might terribly multiple.

Are you saying that those things are inevitable?

Well, if that damned Eve did not eat that damed apple, may be things
would have been avoided.
You seem to think that we can reason in theory, like in practice. But
the application of a theory to a concrete siutation is itself
something complex.

So what? Are you saying that the complexity of the situation prevents
us from applying reason?

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom
That children cannot
do better?

The fact is that he did not get better until the punishment.

Who defined what "better" means? How do you know the father or even
the child was right about that?

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom
That they aren't rational enough to do better?

Reason is not synonymous with better, although it can help a lot. But
it is counterproductive on the irrational, like the "reason" why we
are living. That's why theology is a very complex field, full of
traps, and delusion.

I use reason for that too. Why do you think its off limits?

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom
If so, do
you believe that *all* children are like that? If not, what do you
believe is the difference between the children that are like that and
the children that aren't like that?

Some dogs barks, others don't. We, the animals, are very similar, and
very different. It is a bit like the shape of the clouds, or of the
parts of the Mandelbrot set. With comp such difference are related to
the infinite richness of arithmetic. It is full of chaos, life, and
surprises. We can only scratch the surface, and we know already that
the more we will know about that, the more we will realize that we are
ignorant about that. When embedded in real relative time and space,
most our decision are irrational.

What do you mean by irrational? Do you mean wrong? Or without use of
reason? Or without use of one's error-correcting methods of guesses
and criticism?

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom
No. Most lie to themselves and make themselves believe that they are
doing their best.

Some lie to themselves. Not most. You seem to have a negative view of
the humans. I agree they lie more easily than animals, but they are
not so bad with their children, in majority. Imo.

Animals don't lie. Lying is deception. Animals don't attempt to
deceive other animals nor themselves. Only humans do that.

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom
Actually that *is* coercion. But that coercion is moral. It is
analogous to (coercive) self-defense and police (coercively)
restraining a person intending to commit violence.

OK. Then I will just put the act of the punishing father in that
category. It helps a lot the family. I will not tell you what the
child did, I don't even know myself, but I can guess easily that it
was way worst than throwing dishes.

Ah so he was using violence against another family member. Any idea
why he would do that? Bad parenting. Coercion. Parent not helping
child learn conflict resolution methods so that their kids know how to
do it instead of fight.

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom

If you ask the child what problem he is trying to solve by throwing
dishes, you take the risk to get the fork and the knife on you.

You're describing a father-son relationship where the son distrusts
the father. That is not a "human nature" thing.

?

I'm saying if the son distrust the father, it means that the father
acted in such a way for the son to distrust him.

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom
It is a result of the
father's behavior towards the son. It is 100% the parent's fault.

How can you know that?
If you can imagine a bad father-adult, why can't you imagine a bad son-
kid?

Because all evil is due to ideas, or lack thereof. The father passed
on some of his anti-rational memes. And he didn't do well helping his
child learn how to resolve conflicts.

Post by Bruno Marchal
May be it was the fault of the grandfather?

If the grandparent was involved in the parenting, sure.

Post by Bruno Marchal
Oh, wait, it is was 100% the fault of Eve! or of the Snake.

They weren't involved in the parenting.

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom
For one thing, having a 2nd child is the father fault. He betrayed the
1st child when he did that. He forced the 1st child to share stuff
with the 2nd child (like a bed room, toys, parent time, etc.). So for
example, if 1st child gets jealous of 2nd child, should the parent
blame the 1st child for "being" jealous? No. But that is what your
argument says to do. The reality is that the parent caused a situation
where the 1st child feels that way. The parent could have done
differently such that the 1st child wouldn't feel that way. And the
parent can do these even after making the first mistake of having a
2nd child.

??? It is a mistake to do a second child? I believe the complete
contrary, and would say it is a mistake to do only one child. But,
anyway, those are not "mistakes". Those are current facts of current
life.

Having two children, and then failing to help them learn conflict
resolution, is a recipe for disaster.

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom

All
parents knows that some child can have difficult moment, which are
hard to reason about at times.

And most parents resort to punishment instead of truth-seeking.

Truth seeking is way more complex. You just can't do it in most
situation for the human affairs. It is too much complex. People have
very different theories about this.

Why does it matter that most people have different theories about it?
What problem does that position solve?

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom
The
truth that should be sought after is *why* does the kid want to hurt
his family. What is the underlying problem that is causing the obvious
problem (that the kid wants to hurt his family)?

That the child was believing his father did not notice him, or taking
him seriously. The child was wrong. He failed to see the positive
contribution of his father? He noticed it after the negative
contribution (punishment).
Everyone was happy after. Is that not the main thing.

No. You're saying that ends justify the means. Its evil.

For one thing, they say they are happier, and could be rationalizing,
i.e. deceiving themselves.

Another thing is that they have nothing to compare their situation to.
Say the parent did something different, other than punishment. Say
that produced better results, i.e. they are happier.

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom

And you're saying that in this situation
parent should do more of his badness and that will somehow work? No.
Parent should stop coercion and start persuasion and start to
eventually child will learn to not distrust parent.

I agree in principle, and we must tend toward that. But you can
advertize on this only by examples, and you cannot judge the parents
in concrete situation, as there is no way for you to think and judge
from their perspective. There is no theory to follow, even if you
follow mostly your reason.

You're saying that there might be relevant details about the situation
that are crucial to understanding the morality of the situation. I
agree. But, for example, one of the situations you described didn't
have missing relevant details. You said that father punished son in
order for him to study.

? I don't remember saying this. If I say this, it was another case.

Post by Rami Rustom
This is immoral. It is anti-freedom. It is
also counter-productive in that what can be expected is that the son
can learn to hate studying.

But I still disagree. I am happy to have studied, but I was against
going to school when young. I am happy my parent coerce on me for
doing that.

You might have been against school because school is coercive. You
might have been *for* a better situation. One where you got to learn
whatever you wanted to learn. And your parents or other people helped
you in your learning. And each thing you were interested in, is the
thing you would go learn. Its a problem for you. And by learning it,
you solve your problem. And that reveals new problems for you, new
things you're interested in. And you solve those problems. And repeat.

The point is that learning works best when a person is interested. So
that what people should learn, stuff they are interested in.

Post by Bruno Marchal
My opinion is that people should mind their own business, and stop
judging others as bad or good, as far as they don't feel their liberty
and souls threatened in some immediate way.

By that logic, nobody is evil.

-- Rami

[Bruno Marchal]

Post by Rami Rustom

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom

That has nothing to do with love. If a parent doesn't help a child
solve his problems, love won't matter.

I disagree. Intelligence is an emotional state. I think.

Intelligence is not a state. And its not emotional either. Emotion
includes a physiological component.

Intelligence too.

Post by Rami Rustom
Take for example a situation where a child is trying to solve a
problem. He's riding his tricycle and it just started to veer right
heavily. His attempts to just turning the steering wheel left fail.
Lets say he gets frustrated. At this point, there is still no emotion.

?
Frustration is an emotional state.

Post by Rami Rustom
This is a psychological state without any physiological component.

There is always a physiological components, in most plausible theories
of the mind, and certainly with comp.

I guess you mean neuronal firing. I'm talking about hormone secretion,
increase heart rate, etc.

?
But that is physiological.

Post by Rami Rustom

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom
Now
lets say no one is around to help him. He might get angry,

especially

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom
if he has seen his parent get angry after getting frustrated. The
anger is an emotion. There are physiological changes like increased
heartbeat, some hormones are secreted more, etc.

perhaos I am using the word "state" in a more large sense. This is
vocabulary. What I meant is that intelligence is something you can get
in one second, and that you can lost in one second. It is quite
different from competence, which can ask for years of work.

I don't see a difference bewteen intelligence and competence.
I see intelligence as a function of one's epistemic ideas. More
intelligence means better epistemic ideas. The results is increased
ability to solve problems. It means better creativity and better
criticism. It means better error-correction methods in one's thinking.

OK. But that is not competence, it is more a form of meta-competence.
Someone can be so much competent (usually in some domain) that he will
lack the ability to be criticized.
Intelligence is needed to develop competence, but competence can have
a negative feedback on intelligence.

Post by Rami Rustom

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom

Is Nature not a bit authoritative when It imposes you your genomes,
right at birth?

For humans no, for others yes.

?

Our genes don't affect our ideas.

I doubt this. Unless perhaps in the ultimate enlightened state.

Post by Rami Rustom
Our genes produce our inborn
softcoding, and then we change that softcode afterwards.

Very partially and painfully. But we are always influenced by a
complex context.
Again, you present the ideal situation.

Post by Rami Rustom

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom
Human minds are 100% softcoded.

Human minds are Lôbian (they are universal and knows that they are
universal), but I think this begin with spider and octopi. The
difference between human and spider is a matter of degree. there is
always a level where everything is hard coded, but once you have a
universal soft program, you get "infinite freedom" in principle. Some
spiders have that.

Are you saying that some spiders are 100% softcoded?

I am saying that the spider got the universal 100% softcode, but it is
executed by a 100% hardcode.
We are all executed, at some level, by 100% hardcode. We are words
written in the universal biochemical language. My mind cannot change
the trajectory of an electron at will directly. I have to use my brain-
muscle relations which are hardcoded.

Post by Rami Rustom

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom

I disagree. The teacher is supposed to have learned the subject
matter, and he evaluates the student's work according to his beliefs
and knowledge.
Bad teacher uses authoritative arguments. Not all teachers are bad.

I said "choice". I said that when a teacher makes the choice of
setting a grade, he is exercising his authority over the student.

His authority in the field taught.

But sometimes the student is right and the teacher wrong even within
the teacher's field. And in these situations, the teacher will decide
whether the student is right or the teacher is right. At this point,
the teacher is exercising his authority to decide who is right.

His authority in the field. He doesn't have to make it into an
authoritative argument. he will not if he is a good teacher.
But we all do that. If you think that your salvia can grow outside in
winter, the gardener, if he is good, might decide to put them indoor,
as he is competent and know that the salvia cannot survive a probable
icy winter. He does not do that per authority, but just because he is
a good gardener knowing his stuff, with the goal to grow healthy salvia.

Post by Rami Rustom

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom
We criticize our gut feelings and emotions like we criticize theories.

I don't think so. It is different.

We guess and we criticize. Right?

I don't guess an emotion, nor a headache. I live it. It is 1p
experience. In the math, a part of them are unconscious guess, but the
"guess" part cannot be conscious, even if in some case, with drugs, or
meditation, we can become aware of it, but this is a special case.

Post by Rami Rustom

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom
Why am I having this gut feeling? It is a theory.

Not at all. It is more close to a sensation or a feeling. You can't
control it in the same way than your thought process. Some "yoga"
technic can be needed, or some drugs.

Why are you talking about control?

Why were you talking on criticizing an emotion, if not for controlling
(changing) some behavior?

Post by Rami Rustom

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom
One that conflicts
with the theory that I am currently thinking about (consciously). With
some thinking, I can figure out what the subconscious theory is and
make it conscious and explicit.

Partially, and most of the time, for most humans, very partially.

Can you give an example and an explanation of why it must be partial?

A person can understand some theories, which might be correct, on the
basic functioning of their brain.
They can also "understand, or feel to understand" their most high
level functioning, but in between, no machine can unravelled the
complexity of their own behavior. It is just too much complex, and
partial comprehension here, when made explicit, can only make the
things more complex. Like in the joke, "I felt guilty with respect to
my mother, and I saw a doctor. Now I felt guilty toward my mother and
toward the doctor".

Post by Rami Rustom

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom
Then I can properly criticize both
rival theories in order to judge which one is right (the one that is
left uncriticized).
So the point is that we are never left only with gut feelings and
emotions. We should dig deeper. There is no limit to figuring out the
reasons why one is having a gut feeling or an emotion.

You live the emotion, you reason on a theory. I can explain that the
machines have both, and they obey to very different logic.

K. Explain.

Intuitively: You look at a movie, then you laugh. You lived the
laughing feeling, you can't criticize your primary emotion. Perhaps
later you can doubt it was really funny, but this is a critics of
reason, not of the primary feeling that you were living. The emotion
is a given experience, mainly hardwire, through chemical receptors
that you cannot directly control. There is no reason why machine
cannot live them, and comp assumes they can.

Post by Rami Rustom

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom
You might have a different understanding of what a gut feeling is than
I do. A gut feeling means that you have a (conscious) idea that you
are currently thinking about and it "feels" wrong. That "feeling" is a
result of the fact that you have a subconscious and inexplicit idea
that conflicts with the conscious idea you're thinking about.

There is always a conflict, or a dialog, between the heart and reason.

The heart is a mechanical pump and nothing more.

The heart, in this setting, is the old name for the "right brain",
which is also a suggested natural "implementation" of the Yin of the
Yin-Yang. The heart is the lived intuition, as opposed to the colder
analytical mode of reasoning.

Post by Rami Rustom

Post by Bruno Marchal
They can be both right, and yet cannot always see that. My opinion is
that in case of doubt, reason has to be the servant of the heart.

What is the heart? You mean gut feelings and emotions? What causes gut
feelings? What causes emotions?

I guess that they are byproducts of the universal goal imprinted in us
by nature and which is that we have to do whatever we can do to
survive and multiply.

Post by Rami Rustom

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom
And that
conflict is what is producing the gut feeling.

No. the conflict is only when the gut feelings is in opposition with
the theory, but most people will follow their guts even before
thinking to a theory.
Why?
Because our emotions are rooted in billions of years of evolution.

How do you think emotions work? What is happening in a person that
causes emotions?

Very deep subroutine probably, related to our survival, and the deeper
part of the brain. The cerebral stem and the limbic system manage most
of it.

Post by Rami Rustom

Post by Bruno Marchal
Our
theories are far more recent.
I guess we are more hard or soft, but precoded than you think. We
cannot change our gut feeling by reason. We can learn to act against
them in some circumstance, but we have no control on our deep emotion
and even beliefs.

That doesn't make any sense to me. I believe the theories that I have
no criticisms of.

You said this often. I am not sure about this, but I do agree that
such a theory is deep and important, but not yet totally correct. What
about theories that you don't criticize, but don't criticize the
opposite theory?

Post by Rami Rustom
What do you mean that I don't have control over
this?

Because we are not even conscious of them. We are just ignorant of
them. We can' make our thought processes entirely conscious, for the
same reason that you are not conscious of the working of all what your
computer is doing to present you my post.

Post by Rami Rustom
I actively create and seek out criticisms of my currently
unrefuted theories. Sometimes I create (or am provided) with a
criticism that I can't refute, in which case my previously unrefuted
theory is now refuted, and rendered false, in which case it is no
longer a belief of mine.

OK.

Post by Rami Rustom
I was responsible for actively thinking about
my theories. I was responsible for criticizing them, and for posting
them publicly so that I can get external criticism.

Good. I do the same.

Post by Rami Rustom
I was responsible
for actively thinking about the criticisms, which means actively
trying not to rationalize (i.e. shield my theories from criticism).
You are saying that I am not responsible. How does that make sense? Or
did I misunderstand you?

I guess you did, as we were talking about emotions and so old theories
that we are not even aware of them. Note that, as a logician working
on very fundamental question I work semi-axiomatically, abstracting
from many existing nuance to quickly get the most general result, and
for a large part of what I say, I identify number, machine, body,
theories, language, ideas, etc. I think that there is a level of
explanation where a human body is really a theory made by nature,
itself a theory selected by consciousness, etc. You are not
responsible for your unconscious subtheories, because you inherit them
from your biological ancestors. You did invent the idea that when you
are hungry you have to eat.

Post by Rami Rustom

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom
It is not
counter-productive. Quitting is counter-productive. Not thinking about
why one is having a gut feeling is counter-productive and irrational.
Note that by rational approach I mean an approach that invokes
truth-seeking methods. And seeking the subconscious ideas that are the
cause of gut feelings *is* a truth-seeking method.

But this is what we do when introducing laws, and teaching. We just
cannot do that "in real time".

I do it in real time plenty. My sales manager had a gut feeling about
a potential sales person. I didn't have that gut feeling. I asked him
to try to explain it. It was hard for him. Some time later, because of
some of my questions and guesses and criticism, we discovered what it
was that his gut feeling was telling him. It was something he
subconsciously picked up on in the interviewer's body language and
responses. That new thing we learned we were able to apply to future
interviews, this time without relying on the gut feeling, and instead
relying on the objective facts about the interviewer's actions. And
the point is that I was able to learn this idea too, even though I
never had the gut feeling.

One case is not a statistic. As you mention it was hard for him to do
that. Luckily you could help, but in many case things remains
subconscious.

Post by Rami Rustom

Post by Bruno Marchal
No animals can do that.
This is an overuse of reason, and I can explain why, even for the
ideally correct machine, this is already NOT rational. It is rational
to be irrational on those matter.
In the present case, the father took a long time before punishing the
kid, because he was acting rationally. But this was probably what
makes the child even more and more angry against his father. The point
was made by the child. Everyine was relieved when finally the father
get angry and did what everyone felt to be the correct, and loving,
attitude. Fair punishment can make sense, and are taken by children as
mark of genuine love.
This is part of our condition today.
I kind of agree with you "in theory", but imposing such a theory would
lead to the contrary of the intended effect.

You mean onto newborns?

Onto most thinking entities.

Post by Rami Rustom

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom

It was not a criticism. It your opinion.

It was an explanation. A theory about why the guy thinks it was good
for his father to punish him. My theory conflicts with your theory.
Therefore my theory is a criticism of your theory.

I am not sure to see what you theory is, at this point. That
punishment is bad?
I agree with that theory, but only ideally, meaning that I cannot
judge someone who does not follow it. I can only try to apply it
myself, and in all human affair, I know that I can expect situation
where it will not work. All generalization are wrong on the human
affairs (and more generally on the universal machine affair).

False. For example, stealing is bad, all the time. Agreed?

No. Stealing the weapon of your enemy can be good, even moral. But OK,
in general (meaning allowing exceptions).
I often agree with you, but in the human affair, or in the higher
complexity domain, there are always exceptions. exceptions are not
necessarily refutation of theories, in the human domain. Such theories
have often fuzzy values, with no clear frontiers.

Post by Rami Rustom

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom
A criticism is an
explanation of a flaw in a theory. You can call it an opinion also,
but that label doesn't change that fact that it is a criticism.

We can have different opinions, and we can be both partially right and
partially false.

Right.

OK.

Post by Rami Rustom

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom
Complained about what? Is complaining bad?

Complaining is not bad, but points on something which is bad and needs
to be fixed.

It points to the idea that the father's parenting is bad, and needs fixed.

But in the situation I described, there were no complains, after the
punishment.

Post by Rami Rustom

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom

Why does child have goal of non-cooperation?

There are billions of reasons. The "non-future" state of mind, the
part of adolescense where you can easily made them kills themselves
legally (war) or illegally (gang). The passage from child to adult,
makes them dumband vulnerable, and there are many crisis before.
The causes, might terribly multiple.

Are you saying that those things are inevitable?

Well, if that damned Eve did not eat that damed apple, may be things
would have been avoided.
You seem to think that we can reason in theory, like in practice. But
the application of a theory to a concrete siutation is itself
something complex.

So what? Are you saying that the complexity of the situation prevents
us from applying reason?

It asks us to apply reason, but being aware that the application is
limited by that complexity. In complex domain, reason is often wrong,
as it lacks a lot of information.

Post by Rami Rustom

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom
That children cannot
do better?

The fact is that he did not get better until the punishment.

Who defined what "better" means?

In this case everyone in the family, say.

Post by Rami Rustom
How do you know the father or even
the child was right about that?

We never know such things for sure, but we can have deep general
intuition about it.

Post by Rami Rustom

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom
That they aren't rational enough to do better?

Reason is not synonymous with better, although it can help a lot. But
it is counterproductive on the irrational, like the "reason" why we
are living. That's why theology is a very complex field, full of
traps, and delusion.

I use reason for that too. Why do you think its off limits?

Because, notably, we can prove that, for machines, the truth will
always extends what the reason can justify.

Post by Rami Rustom

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom
If so, do
you believe that *all* children are like that? If not, what do you
believe is the difference between the children that are like that and
the children that aren't like that?

Some dogs barks, others don't. We, the animals, are very similar, and
very different. It is a bit like the shape of the clouds, or of the
parts of the Mandelbrot set. With comp such difference are related to
the infinite richness of arithmetic. It is full of chaos, life, and
surprises. We can only scratch the surface, and we know already that
the more we will know about that, the more we will realize that we are
ignorant about that. When embedded in real relative time and space,
most our decision are irrational.

What do you mean by irrational? Do you mean wrong? Or without use of
reason? Or without use of one's error-correcting methods of guesses
and criticism?

Without use of reason.

Post by Rami Rustom

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom
No. Most lie to themselves and make themselves believe that they are
doing their best.

Some lie to themselves. Not most. You seem to have a negative view of
the humans. I agree they lie more easily than animals, but they are
not so bad with their children, in majority. Imo.

Animals don't lie. Lying is deception. Animals don't attempt to
deceive other animals nor themselves. Only humans do that.

Animals attempts to deceive other animals. Some spiders can mimic non
edible ants for not being eaten by their predators, some animals can
fake being death to survive. Some wasp can chemically makes ants to
believe they are their own enemies so that they fight themselves
instead of the wasp, etc. delusion exists everywhere in nature.

Post by Rami Rustom

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom
Actually that *is* coercion. But that coercion is moral. It is
analogous to (coercive) self-defense and police (coercively)
restraining a person intending to commit violence.

OK. Then I will just put the act of the punishing father in that
category. It helps a lot the family. I will not tell you what the
child did, I don't even know myself, but I can guess easily that it
was way worst than throwing dishes.

Ah so he was using violence against another family member. Any idea
why he would do that? Bad parenting.

I disagree. I have lived a period where the child is all nice, and if
it is not it is the fault of the parents, but things are much more
complex, and some people are "bad" because they have a chromosome too
much. Of course we have to help them, and protect the community of the
bad doing, but sometimes it is not as clear as the case of one
chromosome too much. There are family traits.

Post by Rami Rustom
Coercion. Parent not helping
child learn conflict resolution methods so that their kids know how to
do it instead of fight.

There is also an age where children are programmed to piss of the
parents, and parents reacts as they can, with the information available.

A good idea was the initiation idea, where the grow up child have to
pass some test, like in the Bwiti religion, where they have to take
some amount of iboga, which helps a lot to become "adult", apparently.
But I guess you will not appreciate such testing.

Post by Rami Rustom

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom

If you ask the child what problem he is trying to solve by throwing
dishes, you take the risk to get the fork and the knife on you.

You're describing a father-son relationship where the son distrusts
the father. That is not a "human nature" thing.

?

I'm saying if the son distrust the father, it means that the father
acted in such a way for the son to distrust him.

I am far from sure about this. They can have simply different and
hardly compatible character, or the child is in love with his mother
and jealous with the father, but not consciously. I can imagine
thousand of reason for a child to be hard with the parents for complex
reasons not amenable to the direct use of reason.

Post by Rami Rustom

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom
It is a result of the
father's behavior towards the son. It is 100% the parent's fault.

How can you know that?
If you can imagine a bad father-adult, why can't you imagine a bad son-
kid?

Because all evil is due to ideas, or lack thereof.

I don't believe this. Evil can be circumstancial and related to bad
situations.

Post by Rami Rustom
The father passed
on some of his anti-rational memes. And he didn't do well helping his
child learn how to resolve conflicts.

In this case I think he did.
Children don't want to be love by reason, but by heart.

Post by Rami Rustom

Post by Bruno Marchal
May be it was the fault of the grandfather?

If the grandparent was involved in the parenting, sure.

Post by Bruno Marchal
Oh, wait, it is was 100% the fault of Eve! or of the Snake.

They weren't involved in the parenting.

Of course, even if indirectly.

Post by Rami Rustom

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom
For one thing, having a 2nd child is the father fault. He betrayed the
1st child when he did that. He forced the 1st child to share stuff
with the 2nd child (like a bed room, toys, parent time, etc.). So for
example, if 1st child gets jealous of 2nd child, should the parent
blame the 1st child for "being" jealous? No. But that is what your
argument says to do. The reality is that the parent caused a situation
where the 1st child feels that way. The parent could have done
differently such that the 1st child wouldn't feel that way. And the
parent can do these even after making the first mistake of having a
2nd child.

??? It is a mistake to do a second child? I believe the complete
contrary, and would say it is a mistake to do only one child. But,
anyway, those are not "mistakes". Those are current facts of current
life.

Having two children, and then failing to help them learn conflict
resolution, is a recipe for disaster.

Nothing will help more a child for learning conflict resolution than
having a bro or a sis. Imo.

Post by Rami Rustom

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom

All
parents knows that some child can have difficult moment, which are
hard to reason about at times.

And most parents resort to punishment instead of truth-seeking.

Truth seeking is way more complex. You just can't do it in most
situation for the human affairs. It is too much complex. People have
very different theories about this.

Why does it matter that most people have different theories about it?

It was just a pointing on a fact.

Post by Rami Rustom
What problem does that position solve?

What problem does solve the annulus of saturn?

Post by Rami Rustom

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom
The
truth that should be sought after is *why* does the kid want to hurt
his family. What is the underlying problem that is causing the obvious
problem (that the kid wants to hurt his family)?

That the child was believing his father did not notice him, or taking
him seriously. The child was wrong. He failed to see the positive
contribution of his father? He noticed it after the negative
contribution (punishment).
Everyone was happy after. Is that not the main thing.

No. You're saying that ends justify the means. Its evil.

Some ends can justify partially some means.

Post by Rami Rustom
For one thing, they say they are happier, and could be rationalizing,
i.e. deceiving themselves.

Perhaps. Perhaps not. That's were the gut feeling will do the
decision, and where reason is very often self-deceiving.

Post by Rami Rustom
Another thing is that they have nothing to compare their situation to.

Neither the alternative.

Post by Rami Rustom
Say the parent did something different, other than punishment. Say
that produced better results, i.e. they are happier.

Or they are self-deceiving.
I do think that a fair punishment can make someone happier in life.

Post by Rami Rustom

Post by Bruno Marchal

Post by Rami Rustom

And you're saying that in this situation
parent should do more of his badness and that will somehow work? No.
Parent should stop coercion and start persuasion and start to
eventually child will learn to not distrust parent.

I agree in principle, and we must tend toward that. But you can
advertize on this only by examples, and you cannot judge the parents
in concrete situation, as there is no way for you to think and judge
from their perspective. There is no theory to follow, even if you
follow mostly your reason.

You're saying that there might be relevant details about the situation
that are crucial to understanding the morality of the situation. I
agree. But, for example, one of the situations you described didn't
have missing relevant details. You said that father punished son in
order for him to study.

? I don't remember saying this. If I say this, it was another case.

Post by Rami Rustom
This is immoral. It is anti-freedom. It is
also counter-productive in that what can be expected is that the son
can learn to hate studying.

But I still disagree. I am happy to have studied, but I was against
going to school when young. I am happy my parent coerce on me for
doing that.

You might have been against school because school is coercive. You
might have been *for* a better situation. One where you got to learn
whatever you wanted to learn. And your parents or other people helped
you in your learning. And each thing you were interested in, is the
thing you would go learn. Its a problem for you. And by learning it,
you solve your problem. And that reveals new problems for you, new
things you're interested in. And you solve those problems. And repeat.

This can work for some people, and not for some others.

Post by Rami Rustom
The point is that learning works best when a person is interested. So
that what people should learn, stuff they are interested in.

But sometimes you have to learn boring things before being able to
grasp the presence of wonderfully interesting things behind them.

Post by Rami Rustom

Post by Bruno Marchal
My opinion is that people should mind their own business, and stop
judging others as bad or good, as far as they don't feel their liberty
and souls threatened in some immediate way.

By that logic, nobody is evil.

OK. That is what I like in this. Nobody is really evil. So evil is
just when *you* are threatened. The tiger is not evil; but the
situation you+the tiger can be evil for you.

Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/





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