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Athrelon comments on On the Care and Feeding of Young Rationalists -- Revisited[Draft] [Request for Feedback] - Less Wrong
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If punishment has the problem of punishing being noticed as well as bad behavior, reward also reinforces being noticed rather than good behavior. I don't think this is an airtight argument against either, but you seem asymmetrically down on punishment.
I think the idea is that making it clear that you've done good deeds is less destructive than hiding that you've done bad ones.
Looking at people I know, some people need to be more attention-seeking; others need to be more humble. "On the margin" is the watchword here, and it's not obvious to me from this observation that the optimal amount of corporal punishment is zero, or that we should be biased against punishment in general.
(I note, however, that this anti-punishment claim is frequently made by middle- and high-class parents, which suggests to me that we need to be extra rigorous about making evidence based assessments of this claim. Not only are we biased against punishment for status reasons, epidemiological studies here are likely even worse than epidemiological studies of ie. diet.)
Certainly, but, on the whole, issues of humility are easier dealt with than children learning that your will is only important when you are there to enforce it. It seems intuitively obvious to me that behaviors learned at the threat of force will be absorbed at a more shallow level, and more temporarily, than behaviors encouraged by rewards and explanation. Though, obviously, the latter is harder to instill, it's more likely to hang around and provide a useful cognitive tool in adulthood.
Anecdotally, of the children I knew who were routinely struck by their parents in punishment, they were far more likely to be extremely polite in their parent's presence ('sir' and 'mam'), and all significantly more likely to go try to set something on fire when they weren't. The kids who weren't beaten, if not as well behaved in general, were at least more consistent in their behavior.
That's nowhere near isomorphic IMO. Activities usually viewed as laudable are hardly ever conducted in a cladenstine way, and if the judging authorities are rational and strive for objectivity, I suppose they'll usually notice those activities on their own, without signaling from the subject.
If you really do care about your child's well-being and development and simply keep your eyes open, you'll easily find out if they prove to be diligent, honest or compassionate - but to discover undesirable behavior you'll have to actively outsmart them.
http://www.bworldonline.com/weekender/content.php?id=54652 relevant
I'm confident there really is a correlation between corporal punishment and bad outcomes in life. But this epidemiology must contend with the fact that spanking is currently low status and is mostly practiced by the unfashionable people, who tend to have bad outcomes because they're low status not because their methods are all bad. (See: paleo diet vs. mainstream health advice)