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Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Open Thread: April 2010 - Less Wrong
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Speaking as someone who is seeing that sort of thing happening on the inside, I'm really not sure how you should deal with it. Even teaching traditional rationality doesn't help if religion is wrapped up in their social identity. I myself was lucky, in that I never did believe in god. I almost believe that the reason I came through sane was my IQ, although I'm sure that cannot be entirely correct. Getting them to socialize with other children who don't believe in god, or if that's not possible, children who believe in very different gods might help. I would also suggest you introduce them to fiction with strong rationality memes - Eliezer's Harry Potter fanfic [edited, see below] is the kind of thing that might appeal to children, although it has too much adult material.
Um... Chapter 7 is not the child-friendliest chapter in the world. Teen-friendly, maybe. Not child-friendly.
Ah, yes. Totally slipped my mind. Part of the problem might be that I was reading that kind of material by age 10 so I'm a bit desensitized. However, I continue to think that the overall package is generally appealing to children. Perhaps delivery of a hard copy that has been judiciously edited might work.
True story: when I was 8 or so, I loved Piers Anthony's Xanth books. So much that I went and read all of his other books.
Even Xanth isn't harmless throughout.
Xanth's dark places are a heck of a lot more kid-friendly than, say, Bio of a Space Tyrant.
Of course. But I can't think of a single Piers Anthony item that I'd actually recommend to a child. Or, for that matter, to an adult, but that's because Anthony's work sucks, not because it's inappropriate.
I'd classify his... preoccupation... with young teenage girls paired with much older men as "inappropriate".
This is one of those "stupid questions" to which the answer seems obvious to everyone but me:
What's wrong with a 16-year-old and a 30-year-old having sex?
It's a power thing. In our culture, the power differential between most 16-year-olds and most 30-year-olds is large enough to make the concept of 'uncoerced consent' problematic.
In principle, nothing. Positive, worthwhile, sexual relationships can exist between 16-year-olds and 30-year-olds. In practice, there can be a great deal wrong, that cuts against the probability of any given relationship with that age split being a net positive. There are immediately obvious power differentials (several legal and common commercial age lines of increasing responsibility and power are between them[1]), there is a large disparity in history and experience, and probably economic power. These really can lower the downside immensely, while not raising the upside.
[1]: i.e. 18 several things change, 21 drinking, renting cars at 25
Most of my aversion to that theme is (just?) cultural preference. I cannot tell whether I would object to the practice in another culture without more information about, for example, any physical or emotional trauma involved, reproductive implications, degree of physical maturity and the opportunity for the girls to self-determine their own lives. I would then have to compare the practice with 'forced schooling' from our culture to decide which is more disgusting.
I've read a fair bit about this, but I would be interested in reading more about your perspective on this, in particular, the parts of the system that evoke for you such a visceral feeling as disgust.
Right. And I would consider that inappropriateness sufficient to refrain from recommending the books to a child. The fact that they also suck is necessary to extend that lack of recommendation to adults. Sorry if it was unclear.
Oh no, you were clear. All I mean is that the skeeviness of that particular theme is sufficient for not recommend PA to adults (even if the writing weren't ass).
ETA: Yeah, so, that was me being unclear, not you.
Having read quite a bit of Piers Anthony's work, I noticed that it got consistently worse as he got older. I still think A Spell for Chameleon was pretty good (and so was Tarot, if you don't mind the deliberate squick-inducing scenes), but anything he wrote after, say, 1986 is probably best avoided - everything had a tendency to turn into either pure fluff or softcore pornography.
The entire concept of Chameleon is nasty. Her backstory sets up all of the men from her village as being thrilled to take advantage of "Wynne" and universally unwilling to give "Fanchon" the time of day, while about half of them like "Dee". (Anthony is notable for being outrageously sexist towards both genders at once.) Her lifelong ambition is to sit halfway between the two extremes permanently, sacrificing the chance to ever have her above-average intellect because she wants male approval and it's conditional on being pretty (while she recognizes that being as stupid as she sometimes gets is a hazard). Bink is basically presented as a saint for putting up with the fact that she's sometimes ugly for the sake of getting "variety". It's implied that in her smart phase he values her as a conversation partner but actually touching her then would be out of the question. I haven't read the book in years, but I don't remember Chameleon having any complaints about the dubious sort of acceptance Bink offers; she just loves him because he's the protagonist and love means never having to say you want any accommodations whatsoever from your partner, apparently.
I still have some fondness for Macroscope. The gender stuff is creepy, but the depiction of an interstellar information gift culture seemed very cool at the time. I should reread it and see how it compares to how the net has developed.