= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
gwern comments on Talking to Children: A Pre-Holiday Guide - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (93)
I was just about to say, my parents tried this quite often on my younger siblings and it didn't seem very effective. Maybe there's a hard age-limit - it stops working after 5 or so?
Yes, there is definitely an age limit to where this has less effect, but I think it works a little bit even on adults. Then you're getting Dark Artsy.
The big point is that you can't get them to like something they already dislike, or vice versa. But you can get them from neutral to like/dislike.
For example, if she LOVES Wonderpets, then saying that she doesn't like Wonderpets is completely false, and ignored. But if she thinks Dora is decent, THEN saying that she loves Dora (maybe getting her some Dora games, if you REALLY want her to have that belief) is much more effective.
Something in here seems backwards!
Why is it dark arts only if you do it to adults? I'd say if anything, it's even darker if you do it to children
It depends substantially on what we mean by "dark arts." Generally, I think of dark arts as persuasion techniques that are effective at changing someone's mind without relying on that person's rationality. The important lesson is that deliberately circumventing the rational process of another is wrong.
But children (especially young children) just aren't rational by adult standards. So, is it a kind of dark art to take advantage of some irrational thinking process for the purpose of improving little Johnny's future rationality? It's deliberately avoiding the (mostly non-existent) rational process of the child. But it doesn't seem wrong.
That said, the example about changing aesthetic preferences is hard to justify on "improving future rationality" grounds. Which doesn't necessarily make it wrong, but it certainly is a closer question.
My parents also tried this quite a lot, and still do when they have the opportunity. I found that a statement of "you like/want X" caused me to have an opinion about X, I'm reasonably confident this caused me to have the opposite inclination at least as often as the intended one. I don't think there's an age limit on this tactic having some effect, though not necessarily the intended one (though there is at least some projection from my own experience going on there, so discount accordingly).