knb comments on Open Thread, May 4 - May 10, 2015 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: Gondolinian 04 May 2015 12:06AM

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Comment author: knb 04 May 2015 04:29:34AM *  2 points [-]

Argument: Does parenting have any effect on child outcomes?

Certainly there are some things affected by parenting. A baby born in Japan to Japanese parents, but adopted in infancy by English speaking Americans will grow up speaking English, not Japanese. If her bio-parents were Buddhists and her adopted parents were Christian, there is a good chance she will be a Christian at adulthood. While I would say these parenting affects are substantial, I get the feeling this is not what you and Jayman are talking about. It would be helpful if you specified what precisely you disagree about.

Comment author: SanguineEmpiricist 04 May 2015 05:47:43AM *  4 points [-]

The fact that he claims so authoritatively and certainly that there is zero effect which is hubris manifest. it is also incorrect for the arguments I have or at best rather incomplete.

Comment author: D_Malik 04 May 2015 06:15:16AM *  3 points [-]

The null hypothesis is always false, and effect sizes are never zero. When he says it's zero you should probably interpret zero as "too small to care about" or "much smaller than most people think". I'll bet the studies didn't say the effect was literally zero, they just said that the effect isn't statistically significant, which is really just saying the effect and the sample size were too small to pass their threshold.

People say a lot of things that aren't literally true, because adding qualifiers everywhere gets annoying. Of course if he doesn't realize that there are implicit qualifiers, then he's mistaken.

Comment author: SanguineEmpiricist 04 May 2015 07:05:00AM 2 points [-]

Yeah but his abrasiveness of delivery is contrary to your goodwill. I'm being polite in his favor.