I don’t think there is anything wrong, fundamentally, with trying to influence your childrens desires and assumptions toward what you understand to be good ends.
I have friends who were protested outside of abortion clinics before they were old enough to vote, and I doubt one could swing a cat on LessWrong (if one were so inclined) and not hit someone who came to rationality feeling like they wasted (n) years of their life following Jesus and not asking questions.
So I am unconvinced that there couldn’t be rather a lot wrong with trying to influence your children’s desires & assumptions towards what you understand to be good ends. (eta:) I could be way off base here, but isn’t drawing your OWN conclusions kind of what rationality is about?
Well, because there’s a bad method of doing something doesn’t mean that there are no good methods, so I don’t think your example is a refutation. I’m not fond in general of using children as political props, even if that helps them to absorb those political ideas; but I don’t see that as analagous to presenting a normative situation in casual conversation.
However, on the broader point, it is worth thinking about. I assume by “drawing your own conclusions”, you mean each person independently arriving at the truth, rather than each person arriving at a unique set of conclusions, because the latter strikes me as more postmodernism than rationality.
Upon reflection, I’ll say that children as children I don’t expect to be rational enough to draw their own conclusions, but as they get more so I do expect them to question my conclusions that I try to impart, and then either to convince me I am wrong or vice versa. I’d rather we both be right than both be independent, but I don’t want them to be unquestioning of imparted ‘knowledge’ either. Does that make sense?
I have friends who were protested outside of abortion clinics before they were old enough to vote, and I doubt one could swing a cat on LessWrong (if one were so inclined) and not hit someone who came to rationality feeling like they wasted (n) years of their life following Jesus and not asking questions.
So I am unconvinced that there couldn’t be rather a lot wrong with trying to influence your children’s desires & assumptions towards what you understand to be good ends. (eta:) I could be way off base here, but isn’t drawing your OWN conclusions kind of what rationality is about?
Well, because there’s a bad method of doing something doesn’t mean that there are no good methods, so I don’t think your example is a refutation. I’m not fond in general of using children as political props, even if that helps them to absorb those political ideas; but I don’t see that as analagous to presenting a normative situation in casual conversation.
However, on the broader point, it is worth thinking about. I assume by “drawing your own conclusions”, you mean each person independently arriving at the truth, rather than each person arriving at a unique set of conclusions, because the latter strikes me as more postmodernism than rationality.
Upon reflection, I’ll say that children as children I don’t expect to be rational enough to draw their own conclusions, but as they get more so I do expect them to question my conclusions that I try to impart, and then either to convince me I am wrong or vice versa. I’d rather we both be right than both be independent, but I don’t want them to be unquestioning of imparted ‘knowledge’ either. Does that make sense?