"Tim Rhodes" <proftim@speakeasy.org> wrote:
> I think one subtle point we seem to be missing here is the fact
> that most of these scientists have held the <God> meme since
> childhood.
Actually, that was 99% of my point...
> (Implanted with very little or no coercion, Eric.
> How many two year olds have pre-existing ideas about God which
> must be overcome to get them to go to sunday school? The coercion
> would not be aplicable until the teen years when they naturally
> begin to question all of their parents most friercly held memes,
> religious or not.)
That has certainly not been my experience -- little children in general
hate going to church (although the day-care facilities help to temper that
dislike). Later (by 8 or 9) it has become routine (meaning they sleep
through it!) -- and by 14 or 15, the child is old enough to have become
infected, and *wouldn't* miss church. But then, perhaps my experience is
non-standard.
As to a fierce questioning of the parents most fiercely held memes, THAT is
a by product of a coercive upbringing. I'll see if I can dig up the
appropriate TCS post here for you... Got it... I'll stick it on the end.
If you need me to explain how the discussion of child-hood loss of trust
generalizes to teen rebellion, I'm game, just speak the words...
> For these scientists the <God> meme is `grandfathered' into their
> meme complex and as such, all future memes must find a way of
> becoming compatable with the <God> meme. That can either be by
> refusing to accept data contrary to the <God> meme (seldom the case
> with scientists) or by reconfiguring their <God> meme as something
> which exists outside of the realm of hard data.
Excellent point, Tim.
I wonder how many theistical scientists have ever seriously pondered the
argument from evil? (a classic case of data contrary to the <God> meme...)
ERiC
Attached TCS post:
Subject: Harm done by occasional coercion
From: David Deutsch <d.deutsch1@PHYSICS.OXFORD.AC.UK>
Date: Mon, 5 Jan 1998 00:01:52 +0000
There has been a discussion on several threads (including 'Ian pulls some
carrots') about forcing a toddler to stop pulling up the parent's prize
carrots or bouncing on the couch etc., in which several correspondents have
tried to justify such coercion as either (1) not harmful; or (2) negligibly
harmful; or (3) slightly harmful but outweighed by the distress caused to
the parent; or (4) slightly harmful but outweighed by the benefit to the
child of learning about other people's rights and feelings, and so on. In
response to these and other eager excuses, Stephen Trapani
<trapani@wwics.com> wrote:
>The important aspect to this, and the main reason I am answering
>here is in response to those who have said recently that they
>think it might be a good idea to coerce their children to teach
>them that parents' property, time, and desires are important.
>Fawn, Robert, and a few newer people are wondering if coercion
>isn't a good way for them to learn this.
>
>Fawn says that she doesn't think damage from coercion is that
>bad in some instances so why not use it to help them learn? The
>answer to this is above.
['above' were arguments and examples showing how alternative couches might
be provided, etc., and therefore:]
>You don't need to use it. Children can
>learn this theory in numerous other ways. Why use a method that
>*may* damage them and *will* make the theory more difficult to
>learn when there are other better ways?
My first comment is that the people who are advocating coercion here are
advocating it in precisely the cases where they *have not been able* to
think of practical solutions such as providing an alternative couch to
bounce on. Such solutions virtually always *exist*, but if one cannot think
of them, one cannot use them. Moreover, since the inability to think of
solutions is usually caused by hangups, it often doesn't help even if
someone *states* the solution: the parent is simply blind to it, and will
be filled with dread and revulsion at the very thought of enacting it.
Therefore, under the circumstances, though it contains nothing *inherently*
harmful to the parent, it is not a solution after all.
Hence I don't think that Stephen's response to this discussion is really to
the point. Essentially he is saying 'hey, guys, here's a way of making
everyone happy (in this case) that you haven't noticed, and it's obviously
better than your proposal, which makes everyone *un*happy'. This is
perfectly true, but not relevant.
In another posting, Stephen said:
>First of all there is no way a parent, or anyone, can know how
>much damage will occur with any given incident of coercion. Even
>the child themselves in whose mind it is occurring doesn't know.
>Since you can never know the damage will be minimal you can
>never know when something else should take priority over it.
Again, this is perfectly true, but it does not really address the problem
in the critics' minds, namely why should *this* potential disaster with
unknowable probability take precedence over other potential disasters of
unknowable probability, such as those which might be caused by the parent's
distress over lost carrots?
We have to face the fact that under such circumstances (i.e. where, for
whatever reason, no solution is found, and therefore *someone* has to
suffer), it is necessary to justify the TCS position that it should be the
parent and not the child.
I could repeat our standard arguments about the moral responsibility of
parents, and why children have no analogous responsibility to secure the
happiness of their parents, and so on. But even those arguments (though
perfectly sound) are slightly off the point that these correspondents have
been making. What is really driving this discussion is, I think, a gut
feeling that pulling the toddler off the couch, or away from the carrots,
surely can't be *all that* harmful in the great scheme of things. At least,
it can't be *infinitely* harmful, so it seems out of proportion for TCS to
insist on its taking precedence over *all* other preferences in the
parent's mind. Why (they want to know) is it *so* important?
Before I answer that, let me make a further comment. Whenever you hear an
argument that is based on 'weighing' one human preference against another
(whether within one person or between different people), you are hearing a
recipe for unhappiness. Now, causing unhappiness is sometimes right and
proper -- for instance, when we make the burglar unhappy by calling the
police. But in close personal relationships it has no place, and therefore
whenever you find yourself 'weighing', you can be sure that you are making
a bad mistake.
Now, back to the carrots. When you pull the child away from the carrots
against his will, Stephen is right that this will tend to impair his
thinking about such matters, and about you, and so on, and this *could*
cause him to acquire serious hangups that *could* make him very unhappy in
his future life. But his creativity is great, so in practice this one
instance of coercion probably won't cause such a disaster. So let me set
that 'coercion-damage' effect aside for a moment. One certain and immediate
effect of thwarting him in this way is that *he will no longer believe that
you will never thwart him in this way*. No irrationality is involved here.
It is not a matter of 'coercion damage'. It is simply a fact that he has
become aware of. But his awareness of this fact has unlimited potential to
harm both him and you. That is because, from then on, he must classify all
his actions, desires and projects into two categories: those that you will
thwart when you become aware of them, even when that distresses him, and
those that you will not thwart. In regard to the latter category, he will
continue to be honest with you, seek your advice and be open to your
criticism because he knows that it is designed to make him better off *by
his lights*. In regard to the former, he will behave evasively, conceal his
actions and intentions, and not take your advice seriously because he knows
that it is not designed to make him better off by his lights.
Furthermore, it will not take many occurrences of this before it becomes
vital to him to build up a detailed understanding of which actions, desires
and projects are in which of these two categories. Among other things, he
will need to perform experiments to determine where the line is, where it
is drawn sharply and where there are grey areas, and so on. You will
perceive these experiments as repeated, cruel assaults directed with
uncanny accuracy at your most vulnerable points -- your areas of
irrationality.
The point is, non-coercive child rearing has a rhythm and style that is
unique and confers, we believe, unique benefits to the parent as well as
the child. But it is not magic. It depends on certain conditions being met,
and when they are not met, the engine of problem solving and
common-preference-finding simply stops delivering, just as certainly as the
engine of coercive education stops delivering homework the moment the
teacher says that tonight's homework is optional.
One of those conditions is that the child must believe -- feel in his guts
-- that his parents' every action towards him is intended to help him to
achieve what he wants to, and that he is in no danger of their trying to
prevent him from achieving what he wants to.
This condition will cease to hold the instant you pull him away from the
carrots against his will.
Now, unlike 'coercion damage' proper, this sort of mishap is
straightforwardly remediable. All you have to do is restore the child's
confidence that such mishaps won't happen again -- or at least, that they
will happen rarely enough for it not to be worth his while taking that risk
into account when considering what to do, or what to ask, or what to
believe. However, as I have said before about this: words are not enough,
it's deeds, deeds, deeds that will set things right.
Do you see, now, how unhelpful it is to 'weigh the damage' caused by each
instance of coercion against other harm that could occur? Let me try to
replace this extremely misleading metaphor with another metaphor -- far
from perfect but perhaps helpful:
When you are trying to find your way to an urgent appointment in an
unfamiliar city, how 'harmful' is taking a single wrong turning? (In this
metaphor 'the appointment' = 'happiness'.) Well -- it depends. As
fallibilists, we agree with the critics that no one can guarantee *never*
to take a wrong turn when navigating in complex and unfamiliar territory.
To assume that every turning one has made must have been correct is to
doubt a quick way of getting lost. We can also concede that if you are
lucky, you just drive on and the wrong road will still take you to the
right place on time, without further effort. More likely though, you will
have to take some remedial action, which is, however, likely to be no big
deal -- *provided that you do indeed take it*. (But it does typically
require *three* corrective turns to compensate for one wrong one!) If you
are unlucky, you could get hopelessly lost, or be shunted off onto the
freeway and an unavoidable 50-mile detour, run out of gas and die of a
heart attack. Or you might not.
One thing you absolutely *mustn't* do is take the same wrong turning every
time you return to a given spot! If you do that, you will be in a loop of
guaranteed failure. But in general, how harmful a wrong turning is depends
very little on the geometry of the turning and almost entirely on your
attitude towards wrong turnings. You cannot normally guess whether any
given wrong turning will make you late for the appointment or not, though
it probably won't. What you can know is that a *policy* of taking wrong
turnings, or a policy of not regarding them as very harmful or of not
trying to correct them, will guarantee that you will miss the appointment.
-- David Deutsch
http://eve.physics.ox.ac.uk/Personal/deutsch/David.html