= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Ishaan comments on Open Thread, May 4 - May 10, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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 (215)
Interested in what you guys think about this. Jayman(hbd blogger) say's parenting has no effect on how children turn out. Seems empirically incorrect to me and it's just probably difficult to encapsulate the results/hard to see non-linearities to make it easy to reference.
He insists on twin-adoption studies contrary to my views.
Thoughts? This sort of seems like the two cultures divide we agree on. I might make a thread just for this.
Argument: Does parenting have any effect on child outcomes?
His view: Zero effect & Breast milk confers no advantage either
My view: Parenting has some variable effect that is difficult to encapsulate in the studies he references while maintaining the correctness and good taste of genetic arguments.
I cite decision theory, statistical inference, study design, and the related area as being primal over empirical references which have failed to encapsulate the effects he is pointing to in his observables. Statistical inference just doesn't work like that to give such strong conclusions. Any one who reads the literature on study design/inference knows that it's just not possible to give recommendations that are that strong. Sort of in the realm is Isaac Levi's "Gambling with the Truth" if not only the first few chapters although not quite, probably just statistical study design/inference in general.
Thoughts any one? I think scientists or empirical researchers are not used to being told that there is a higher plane of reference. Saying that there is zero influence is equivalent to saying all the relevant variables have been enumerated and assigned exact values for probability & effect and that there is nothing else to be assigned.
I believe my orientation is correct.
edit: I might add that not ONLY would that be saying that the relevant variables have been completely enumerated && assigned cost functions but that we are sure there is nothing else(no uncertainty) and that we are sure they all equal zero/canceled out.
I mean, obviously parenting matters, right? You can't just drop kids in the wilderness.
What's actually being said here is that if we remove the extreme cases, the people who aren't really fulfilling the role of "parents" as they should, the normal diversity we see among various types of parenting isn't really a big deal as far as outcomes are concerned. (This is still a bold claim, because, as you said, we might just not be aware of the slice of diversity that matters.)
Yeah parenting definitely matters in specific skills you choose to teach your kids/putting your kids on medication if they need it etc. It's a problem with scientists getting over-excited about the implications of their studies, they want to believe they can be a priesthood to the world when there is a higher plane of counsel & reference, which is prescriptive decision theory.
Well, I can't say I agree with that sentiment at all (but I suspect that discussion will devolve into disagreements about tone, and which types of media we take as representative of "scientists".)
I think my statement is understated. Read Isaac Levi's gambling with the truth for kind of the right area but any statistical decision theory book will work. This is a place for prescriptive decision theory and not scientists even though they are important.
Very lesswrongish.
What do you mean by "extreme cases"? One culture's "extreme case" is anther's typical parent.
In this cases, I think "non-extreme cases" basically means "the child manages to survive until the age of psychological maturity with no debilitating injuries". The claim is that the main role of parents is just to get the kid to adulthood in one piece, and anything else is extra and might not seriously help or harm commonly measured outcomes. One might add the assumption that the parents at least didn't actively inhibit ordinary non-parental exposure, to rule out things such as never learning to talk or something.
(But remember, I'm not claiming this at all, just stating what I think the real claim is. I don't even think the more conservative version is correct: even if you assume that childhood experiences with parents controlling-for-differing-non-parent-related experiences aren't that important, how could variations in ongoing parental support in adulthood possibly not make a difference?)