You don’t know that doing nothing would have achieved the same outcome with the Lego bricks. Perhaps what she needed was to have someone show her what to do and then have some time elapse.
(That’s not an argument for trying to teach her every day, of course. But if you did and she eventually figured it out, you wouldn’t necessarily be wrong to give your teaching some of the credit. Explaining once and waiting might be just as effective, but that doesn’t mean that explaining not at all and just waiting would have been.)
Yeah, the correct conclusion is probably to give me partial credit. First, to account for the fact that my intervention was only a part of a larger causal chain (some credit rightfully goes for buying the bricks, right?), some parts of which I don’t even know about (this becomes prominent now in kindergarten, where I have no idea about all the little things they do). Second, because that’s how one deals with probabilities (if you assume 20% chance you caused something, take 20% of the credit, it will work on average).
But I try to be humble, because I believe that people overestimate their impact. First, because they forget about many other influences (including the genes, and the child’s own work); second, because they assume 100% probability whenever there is a plausible story (and there usually is one). So, whenever I see an opportunity to impart some knowledge painlessly, I go for it, but in far mode I believe I deserve much less credit than it feels I do. (Not “less credit” as in “less than other parents”, but as in “parents in general deserve less credit than they feel they do”.)
Related: Bryan Caplan’s Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids.
You don’t know that doing nothing would have achieved the same outcome with the Lego bricks. Perhaps what she needed was to have someone show her what to do and then have some time elapse.
(That’s not an argument for trying to teach her every day, of course. But if you did and she eventually figured it out, you wouldn’t necessarily be wrong to give your teaching some of the credit. Explaining once and waiting might be just as effective, but that doesn’t mean that explaining not at all and just waiting would have been.)
Yeah, the correct conclusion is probably to give me partial credit. First, to account for the fact that my intervention was only a part of a larger causal chain (some credit rightfully goes for buying the bricks, right?), some parts of which I don’t even know about (this becomes prominent now in kindergarten, where I have no idea about all the little things they do). Second, because that’s how one deals with probabilities (if you assume 20% chance you caused something, take 20% of the credit, it will work on average).
But I try to be humble, because I believe that people overestimate their impact. First, because they forget about many other influences (including the genes, and the child’s own work); second, because they assume 100% probability whenever there is a plausible story (and there usually is one). So, whenever I see an opportunity to impart some knowledge painlessly, I go for it, but in far mode I believe I deserve much less credit than it feels I do. (Not “less credit” as in “less than other parents”, but as in “parents in general deserve less credit than they feel they do”.)
Related: Bryan Caplan’s Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids.
I’d read Viliam as agreeing with your comment.