I can remember believing very weird things before school age, just as when my grand-mother told me that gravity is because of Earth's rotation. I tried to verify that experimentally with a globe, but in spite of the failure to attract things to the globe I continued to believe the explanation for some time, concluding that Earth has to rotate very fast.

I am, on the other hand, not aware of losing any skill at school. Not sure about others, but in the third grade they didn't seem any more stupid than in the first. But of course, I might have had lost even the ability to observe critical thinking during the time.

Indeed, this seems to be a problem. Even with unusually bright children, it seems deception still remains the only charitable option, otherwise you're pretty much condemning them to an early dose of "Everyone expects X of you. You must do X. We both know X is wrong, and stupid, and your next ten years will be a waste of time and effort and resources, but you must do X or be treated like a demon." and all the subsequent depression, narcissism, detachment and unhappiness.

Encouraging them to obtain information on their own and keep asking questions seems like the most worthwhile strategy.

Children are often visibly treated more like pets than people, at least in north american society. When a child asks a scientific question that upsets religious creed, receives a dogmatic answer and instructions to never speak of it again, and then loudly rejects this answer in light of obvious evidence, what happens isn't a discussion or an argument with the person, the child themselves...

What happens is an angry parent screaming "WHAT THE F*** DID YOU DO TO MY CHILD?!", in similar manner to how someone might yell at a pet-keeper upon finding out that the cat was taught to scratch itself and eat rotten food when it was left in their care during the owner's vacation.

Republicans spend a lot of time torturing non-Americans and then laughing about it in their Republican forums, so as a non-American,

There are two ways to interpret the above statement, one of which makes it false, the other true but highly misleading.

The false interpretation: Republicans support torturing random non-Americans and than laugh about it on their forums. (Seriously, if this statement sounds at all plausible to you, you have bigger problems.)

The misleading interpretation: Republicans support torturing certain particular non-Americans and laugh than laugh about it on their forums. Of course, those particular non-Americans are terrorists, dictators, dictators' thugs, and otherwise nasty people who one could reasonably say deserve it.

I hear the deregulation thing touted a lot and I don't buy it. Do you have any links or sources? It seems like "deregulation" usually refers to less explicit rules in favor of a closer alliance between government and the major players of the industry in question.

A prerequisite to the above question:

Do the political parties, when elected, implement the policies that they advocate when campaigning?

Are there other affiliations besides party which more accurately predict a politician's actions?

This question strikes me as both too mindkill-y, and as unimportant in light of the fact that you don't get to vote for political parties, only for individual candidates in individual races. What do you think would be the important change in your behavior if you were convinced, in general, that Republicans were "better" than Democrats or vice versa, and how do you think that would impact the political process?

I think that this thread will go better, by the established norms of LW, if we stick to single, small topics that can actually be taken apart. The question you ask has far too many nested unknowns - definition of party platforms is hard, and economic outcomes of various policies is even harder - and too many places for discussion to go off the rails. Even with this group, that debate will devolve into talking points within three layers of replies. I'd rather have that sort of discussion in an ordinary group, and use LW for political debate of the sort LW actually has an advantage at.

The thing is, there's already selection pressure against psychopaths who can't conceal their true nature.

We didn't eradicate malaria or polio with kinder, gentler methods. Don't leave anything for evolution to work with.

However, psychopaths may be perfect candidates for testing post-cryogenic restoration.

I was being somewhat facetious.