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saliency comments on Less Wrong Parents - Less Wrong
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Comments (58)
Is this from real data?
I would think that the behavior of parents has a massive impact on the way the children grow up (but indeed, not the material stuff that so many parents fuss so much over), considering how strong of a correlation there is between the parents' belief systems and behaviors and their children's.
I'm not much compared to even a small survey, but from my small sample I've noticed a possible strong correlation between the way parents respond to questions / handle "problematic" behavior / do anything to "educate" their children and the intelligence, rational behavior and open-mindedness of the children later in life.
The most salient example (but not the most statistically significant) is that everyone I talked to about this who were on the higher end of the intelligence scale had clear memory of their parents responding "I don't know, let's find out" to their curiosity when they were a child, while everyone else I talked to had no such memory.
I think looking into actual pedagogical research results and how to best behave towards children would probably be very high expected utility / value of information if maximizing your child's chances of not being stupid is something you care about.
At the very least, a parent can affect the environmental factors that the book mentioned in the parent post mentions (I haven't read the book, only the abstract) by carefully selecting a good initial environment with these things in mind in the first place.
Obviously also worth looking into is alternative forms of education. Public schools are far from optimal both for social and intellectual development.
If any of this is of interest, I can try to help with some research on it.
The school of thought shminux represents, though not popular in the main stream, is one I ascribe to. Bryan Caplan and a few others have books on the subject.
Shminux, this though is exactly why I see this group to be of value. I don't want to spend a lot of time doing research. I want to examine three peoples strategies and trust that I can blindly go with the suggestions, or at least have a strong starting point.
This group is certainly a good idea, but probably not in the way you describe. Chances are, the most value you get will be from babysitting by the people you trust, as one thing new parents lack the most tends to be the time away from their young children and spent with each other. If you find yourself spending a lot of time doing research, you are probably overthinking it.
One clarification I wanted to make is that, while it is easy to royally screw up your kids by being a surly, high-strung, abusive, or even overly possessive parent, it is hard to "optimize" them by doing your absolute best at every conceivable aspect of parenting. The point of diminishing returns is reached very quickly, and all the extra effort tends to be wasted (that was the point made in the book, I believe), so spend this extra effort on something worthwhile instead. The wisdom to know the difference is probably what your group ought to keep in mind more than anything.