I heard a funny story once (online somewhere, but this was years ago and I can’t find it now).
Anyway I think it was the psychology department at Stanford. They were having an open house, and they had set up a PD game with M&M’s as the reward. People could sit at either end of a table with a cardboard screen before them, and choose ‘D’ or ‘C’, and then have the outcome revealed and get their candy.
So this mother and daughter show up, and the grad student explained the game. Mom says to the daughter “Okay, just push ‘C’, and I’ll do the same, and we’ll get the most M&M’s. You can have some of mine after.”
So the daughter pushes ‘C’, Mom pushes ‘D’, swallows all 5 M&M’s, and with a full mouth says “Let that be a lesson! You can’t trust anybody!”
So the daughter pushes ‘C’, Mom pushes ‘D’, swallows all 5 M&M’s, and with a full mouth says “Let that be a lesson! You can’t trust anybody!”
I have seen various variations of this story, some told firsthand. In every case I have concluded that they are just bad parents. They aren’t clever. They aren’t deep. They are incompetent and banal. Even if parents try as hard as they can to be fair, just and reliable they still fall short of that standard enough for children to be aware of that they can’t be completely trusted. Moreover children are exposed to other children and other adults and so are able to learn to distinguish people they trust from people that they don’t. Adding the parent to the untrusted list achieves little benefit.
I’d like to hear the follow up to this ‘funny’ story. Where the daughter updates on the untrustworthiness of the parent and the meaninglessness of her word. She then proceeds to completely ignore the mother’s commands, preferences and even her threats. The mother destroyed a valuable resource (the ability to communicate via ‘cheap’ verbal signals) for the gain of a brief period of feeling smug superiority. The daughter (potentially) realises just how much additional freedom and power she has in practice when she feels no internal motivation to comply with her mother’s verbal utterances.
(Bonus follow up has the daughter steal the mother’s credit card and order 10kg of M&Ms online. Reply when she objects “Let that be a lesson! You can’t trust anybody!”)
I suppose the biggest lesson for the daughter to learn is just how significant the social and practical consequences of reckless defection in social relationships can be.
This reminded me of Yudkovsky’s recent publication about “Lies told to children”, and I don’t understand very well what is the difference between the situations and whether there is any at all.
The mother destroyed a valuable resource (the ability to communicate via ‘cheap’ verbal signals) for the gain of a brief period of feeling smug superiority.
And in addition, the supposed gain is trash anyway.
I heard a funny story once (online somewhere, but this was years ago and I can’t find it now). Anyway I think it was the psychology department at Stanford. They were having an open house, and they had set up a PD game with M&M’s as the reward. People could sit at either end of a table with a cardboard screen before them, and choose ‘D’ or ‘C’, and then have the outcome revealed and get their candy.
So this mother and daughter show up, and the grad student explained the game. Mom says to the daughter “Okay, just push ‘C’, and I’ll do the same, and we’ll get the most M&M’s. You can have some of mine after.”
So the daughter pushes ‘C’, Mom pushes ‘D’, swallows all 5 M&M’s, and with a full mouth says “Let that be a lesson! You can’t trust anybody!”
I have seen various variations of this story, some told firsthand. In every case I have concluded that they are just bad parents. They aren’t clever. They aren’t deep. They are incompetent and banal. Even if parents try as hard as they can to be fair, just and reliable they still fall short of that standard enough for children to be aware of that they can’t be completely trusted. Moreover children are exposed to other children and other adults and so are able to learn to distinguish people they trust from people that they don’t. Adding the parent to the untrusted list achieves little benefit.
I’d like to hear the follow up to this ‘funny’ story. Where the daughter updates on the untrustworthiness of the parent and the meaninglessness of her word. She then proceeds to completely ignore the mother’s commands, preferences and even her threats. The mother destroyed a valuable resource (the ability to communicate via ‘cheap’ verbal signals) for the gain of a brief period of feeling smug superiority. The daughter (potentially) realises just how much additional freedom and power she has in practice when she feels no internal motivation to comply with her mother’s verbal utterances.
(Bonus follow up has the daughter steal the mother’s credit card and order 10kg of M&Ms online. Reply when she objects “Let that be a lesson! You can’t trust anybody!”)
I suppose the biggest lesson for the daughter to learn is just how significant the social and practical consequences of reckless defection in social relationships can be.
This reminded me of Yudkovsky’s recent publication about “Lies told to children”, and I don’t understand very well what is the difference between the situations and whether there is any at all.
And in addition, the supposed gain is trash anyway.
EDIT: I thought you could delete posts after retracting them?