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My 7-year-old son (who by the way loves math) always wants to go there. I can't help but explain that the payoff is horrendous from any point of view, and he understands and doesn't argue against it, but he still insists. Sometimes I convince him by offering alternatives, but sometimes I have to cave because he seems to like it so much. But man, spending euros on that stings, I have the feeling that the people who run the stall must be laughing at all the suckers who fall into the trap.
The first few years I hated this for exactly the reasons you mention, but now I'm just happy they are happy. I think I have a few more years left before they don't want to go rubber ducky fishing with their dad no more and I doubt by then €20 gets me 2 minutes of joy with them.
As an adult, if I went and they said it cost 0€, I think I'd play too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hook-a-duck
Oh yes, I got it, they are like the claw machines that have fake bills and iPhones with them (at least that's what I saw too).
But the point of having fun, you know it's a rigged game.
The reward of a game is playing it, not the 'prize', although that can add to the enjoyment too.
You can just say no. I have never played a single one of those types of games in my life because once I was old enough to work I understood my parents. I'm actually thankful for them teaching me these sorts of lessons no matter how much I hated at the time.
which lesson is it exactly?
I see the point about violence but I'm ok with it because it's based on fun and not anger. Olympic archery, javelin, or even fencing have an obvious past in warfare but today they've become sports.
I can only speak for some of the European versions of SCA-like clubs but there's a lot of pride-flag flying strictly-no-fascists fun activity with a dose of pretending to be children again.
(Buhurt is a bit more complicated.)
There is no more violence in hitting a nail with a hammer.
That's the problem. Hitting a tied up animal until it breaks is clearly a violent affair, similar how hanging puppets in nooses or putting a doll in a guillotine.
I'm sure that there are kids growing up in places where bullfights are common thinking that torturing and killing a bull in a party-like atmosphere is fine.
I wonder if it's true that people don't remember. People maybe remember but don't want to talk about it. It is such a cognitive dissonance.
Ruith sa mhonadh, ruith nam beann
’S mar sin dhan sgoil aig deireadh samhraidh
Nar clann aig còig bliadhna dh’aois
’S gun facal Beurla nar ceann
translated:
Freedom of the moor, freedom of the hills (Ruith is literally "running" though)
And off to school at summer's end
As children of five years old
And not a word of English in our heads
Particularly resonant with me as my 6-year-old cycles off to school for the second month of Primary 2. Quite a wrench to have to deal with sitting still and listening to the teacher when it's 20° outside and sunny and there are bikes and toy cars and mud and sticks.
At least some twenty years later by the late 70s when I was that age they actually were teaching Gaelic in schools again instead of literally beating it out of people, and now my son is in a Gaelic-medium class in school making it one of the three languages he speaks.
And like that to school at summer's end
Us being children of five years of age
Without a word of English in our heads
That's my literal translation anyway.
I was talking to an American yesterday who couldn't understand the concept of the Highlands yesterday. His whole idea was of a place presented magically but with little more than funny accents in it.
I tried to get over to him all the history of suppression, eviction, lack of economic development etc... but the big one is cultural. If the Highlands lose their culture (and they already have largely) then they are indistinguishable from anywhere else.
Could you please elaborate?
My understanding is that ADHD would make you more likely to behave in childlike ways as an adult, but not that that would necessarily lead to holding leadership positions.
I’m genuinely very interested in your thoughts.
You really may want to think about if you are around people who are genuinely good for you and your children.
I’m not surprised though, over the years I have noticed a notable shift towards the controlling and narcissistic spectrums of parents. I’m not totally sure why that is, but it seems to be definitely happening and it’s also rather clear to me that it’s a rather “American” toxic nature, probably due to the sick and perverse obsession with besting, outdoing, greedily wanting and needing more and shinier things than “the Joneses”, the obsession with celebrity and fame and money. It all contributes to the diseased state of society and “culture”, if you can call obsession with corporate outputs that.
But anyways, just let kids have their moment of fun, people, their identity and soul will be crushed by the “American” indoctrination and propaganda machine soon enough and they will become like the drone adults. Let them be human for at least a couple years of their lives.
There is also a tendency to treat children as a strange species rather than as human beings. I think that is older but its become worse as people come up with more and more parenting approaches, write books and make videos about it, etc.
Its sadly not just an American problem. At the very least an Anglophone problem.
"Children heal the soul" - Dostoevsky
I think infantilisation is a huge part of the reason we're where we are today - kids 100 years ago were working harder jobs than most adults today (not implying child slave labour is a good thing, just making a point)
Kids today, though, are given exactly 0 responsibility and treated like babies the whole way through their prime learning years
I feel so sorry for the next generation
Children should not be touching the Big Sharp Knives!
Yeah, did he cut himself? No? Was he holding the knife and the strawberries carefully, so he didn't cut himself? Yes?
Want to take a guess as to why?
He's five. He knows how to chop vegetables. My parents taught me how to cook from a young age, I am teaching him how to cook from a young age. I'm raising a *man* here, not a perma-infant.
Although, between you and me, I think he could stand to use a bit less oregano in his pizza sauce. I'd never criticise his choices, I think he'll figure it out in time.
They're absorbing everything. They're scraping the entirety of your personality to build their own.
> The word “briskly” here means “quickly, so as to get the Baudelaire children to leave the house.”
> “Wipi!” Sunny shrieked, which meant “I’d much prefer gardening to sitting around watching my siblings struggle through law books.”
Also, back then in 1925 infant mortality was probably ~10x worse [0], which adds to how we (today) might underestimate the prevalence of parent-child traumas.
[0] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.IMRT.IN?location...
Emil of Lönneberga and The Six Bullerby Children are great books, the rest about traumatized kids/orphans not so much as kid books.
It's perhaps no coincidence that the opening theme song of the Fincher (Mara/Craig) version of the movie is an outstanding cover of "The Immigrant Song" by Led Zeppelin.
This book says basically - no biggie, there is no death, you commit suicide to move to another level to be with your brother, you can't lose him, you have infinite lives in this videogame called Life. And what if I F up the next level? no biggie, you just commit suicide again to be with him, there is no such thing as permanent death/separation from your loved ones, after each death you just move to another level. That's really F up thing to teach small kids, who should know death is permanent.
I've literally re-read it this year again and I couldn't disagree more, like, to a point where I wonder if we even read the same book. That book made me scared of dying when I was a child, and it made me appreciate the finality of death again now that I'm a grown up. There's nothing there that "glorifies" suicide - we could have a meta 2026 conversation about whether it's trying to say that yes, terminally ill people _should_ be able to decide what they want to do with their own lives, but that's not the message the book is going for(imho) - it's about bravery and loyalty even through the darkest of times, and about sacrifice(not suicide!!!) that comes from standing up for what you believe for. I don't personally believe in afterlife, but just as much as I loved the idea of naningalia when I was a child I still love it now - it gives children hope that even in the darkest moments of despair, there is something better waiting for them. The main character literally dies of ilness at the start, being bed bound for a long time without his loving brother and mother who doesn't know how to help him. The fact that he chooses to join Johnatan at the end in the trip to the "next" level of afterlife couldn't be further from glorifying suicide.
And what if I F up the next level? no biggie, you just commit suicide again to be with him, there is no such thing as death, after each death you just move to another level.
So there is no risk at all you will lose your brother/relative, very F up thing to teach the kids, exactly opposite from what should make them scared of dying which is PERMANENT and there is no next level, where you can be with your family again.
Like, it ought to be enough to say that the problem with AI is that it’s not human. Unfortunately, we live in a world where many (most?) people have willingly put away the childish things, so as to achieve some goal.
The problem is that the point of life is to explore and have fun and have human to human experiences. I think math is probably fun because you’re working on hard problems with your collaborators.
It should be obvious to everyone, as it is to children, that the point of life isn’t the goal, the point is the experience one has of living. They say that when you die the only thing you lose is the current moment. The problem with AI is that it doesn’t have a current moment to live in or to lose, it’s an inanimate thing. So, it should be obvious to everyone that the problem with the AI is that it’s not human. Alas.
So it's not that only children appreciate life, it's just that adults have to deal with that whole money problem, while children don't.
To add to that I think people can have a rose-tinted view and deny what they felt at the time.
I think the impulse to use AI to replace human effort in cases where it's not drudgery, like art, math, etc is the issue, more than the fact that AI isn't human. Let AI do AI things, and humans do human things. I honestly hope that when everything shakes out we have a lot more room in the world for people doing things that are uniquely human, or amazing new collaborations that let humans do things they've never been able to do before.
Not really. The point of life is successful reproduction. Because without it, we cease to exist. It wasn't that long ago when humans spent their entire lives struggling to live and protect their children.
To do all those things, I need money.
You can make this case for pretty much anything? Are cars human? Are excavators human? The universe does not exist to cater to the human experience, it just is. Not everything we do in it has to be for the greater enlightenment or whatnot, sometimes you just need to get something done.
This is probably harder to do than to say, but this video resonated with me because your mindset is something you do have control over, and choosing not to get stressed about work, and choosing not to take things "seriously" and choosing not to do something for the outcome but just for performing the act, just like you would play music (an example he gave) or to see it as a game is something you can do.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9BXvBJ2dWo
Changing your mindset is hard, you are fighting against an entire society where your are expected to be "serious" as an adult and identify yourself with your work, but you do have a choice
I think it's hilarious that they just let me play with a ÂŁ150k Nexus 9000 stack at work, like it's fucking Roblox or something.
"Here you go EB, figure that one out, all it's doing is connecting our core network with our VM servers and SAN, no pressure! Documentation? Naaah, we never had any of that..."
It's liberating. There seems to be more scope for freedom in what you do than most people think there is.
I look at my cohort who I schooled with, and they are all so terrifyingly sober and adult, and take themselves so very seriously. They toil, they spin, they die.
Me… I don’t really know what happened. As a child, the more I was told to be normal, the more I dug my heels in, not out of contrarianism but out of a still indefatigable conviction that all of these people were wrong.
And the proof lies in the pudding. I am in my 40s, still a child, still stop to explore incessantly, still enjoy poking things with a stick, still finding joy, still being told to just for the love of god be normal, when will you get a proper job, settle down and become a banker or a lawyer or a doctor, and all that jazz.
Maybe it’s just the (until recently undiagnosed) ADHD talking - maybe I have been graced with a surfeit of good luck - but I’m pretty content with how being a cast iron weirdo panned out.
On the remembrance of childhood, much of it is clear to me - and now that I have a toddler of my own, I so often find her doing X or Y and going “good god, I remember being that kid”. Her other doesn’t remember her childhood at all, and struggles to relate - whereas I’ll gleefully fill my pockets with sand and run around hooting Yankee Doodle at full blast. It’s fun. People don’t have enough fun.
Ah, this is the problem, I work with people who take themselves so terribly seriously all the time.
But they do not take what they do seriously.
I don't take myself seriously at all, which really seems to irritate some people - but I take what I do very seriously indeed.
And then the people paying the wages don't seem to understand why my time is *so* *bloody* *expensive*. Yeah, it's not expensive, it's just a lot of money.
While his concerns expressed here aren't new, it looks like the recent cases of scientific misconduct were enough to push for urgency:
> But in the immediate term, the most pressing issue is for the entire mathematical community to unite around our core values and objectives, and reject irresponsible and unsustainable usages of AI technology that only serve to advance nominal goals rather than the true underlying goals of the field.
From personal experience, and as noted here, this approach is valuable for everyone regardless of age. In the short term it's far more efficient to learn by having the right way 'pushed' to you. However, by taking the time to fail, repeatedly, and eventually 'pulling' that knowledge the tacit understanding you build has a depth that's hard to shortcut.
IMHO, that's the whole point of AI: automate the fun, to leave people with more drudgery. Worker! Spend less (ideally no) time doing creative things like coding, spend your time instead doing code review!
As a parent of two, now pretty much independent grown, children, I came to the conclusion a while ago that my childhood was for my parents enjoyment and my children's childhoods were for my enjoyment.
I fucking loved being able to guide them on their early ride through life. I think I re-lived my childhood vicariously through them, so I assume my parents did the same, and my kids will do the same with theirs. fingers firmly crossed
It feels as if this is how it should be. When you're a child going through childhood you don't have the awareness that, well, that's what's happening, you're just doing your thing without any knowledge yet of what your thing is; very little to compare it to, not a lot of real choice.
As an adult you're aware of the a lot of the badness in the world and the place you've ended up occupying in the innumerable spectrums of all the things. As an adult trying to guide kids into the world, the mad freedom of being a child is a wonder to behold.
For those of you who haven't had kids yet, or have young ones, record their madness. My home videos of my kids being entirely unbridled children are probably my favourite possessions in the whole world. My kids even go back and watch themselves, to their own endless amusement.
I often try to retain my 'wonder', and every now and then make sure to do something a bit mad. It makes the worthwhile people smile (and my kids cringe these days, but I sense there's an appreciation underneath it).
(summary: AI as a metaphor for optimising the fun out of play)
> Father: "Ugh, how do kids enjoy this garbage?" [...]
I had forgotten how often young-me would be daydreaming about stuff. I don't think having more digital distractions fully explains it.
I don't know how the site was allowed into production like this.