huh, thanks for the engagement guys—I definitely didn’t anticipate this to be so triggering…
I’m hearing two separate points here: 1) magic creatures and fairy tails do more to confuse rather than clarify; 2) let’s be careful not to scare kids about sex nor make it a bigger deal than it already is. I think we could have a rich discourse about each of these, and I see many arguments to be made for both sides—with neither being a clearly resolved issue, imho. Just as an example, here are some possible counters I see to these:
1) What role do fairy tails and lore play in our education and building understanding? For one, “all models are wrong, some are useful”—so I don’t think that whether Santa exists or not is really the interesting question, I’d rather ask in what ways is it helpful / confusing? As far as story-telling is a good vehicle for humans to convey values and information, it serves its purpose. As far as lying to kids—I’d say we can keep Santa without claiming things about him that aren’t true. I think another important purpose of such lore is ritual—of which Christmas is an example. Ritual practices have a clear role and impact on people, that can be cognitively very beneficial if not abused.
2) Yes, sex may already “too big of a deal,” but not in ways that are constructive / helpful. The hormonal impact of sex on our mind itself is hard to overstate—it really is a huge deal, for some people more than others. Since this is a question of qualia, I can reliably talk only about personal experience—and in retrospect I see that it ran my life for a number of years, the more so the more I repressed it. Learning to sublimate that energy, and really enjoy it in areas of life outside of sex has been the single greatest shift I experienced in persistent personal happiness, energy, and productivity. And this is what I’m referring to in this story—to me, sex and its broader impact is the most magical thing I have experienced in life, and so if anything is worth calling magical, I’d say this is it.
Of course, both of these points are a biased side of the full story, and I wouldn’t personally 100% agree with these, as reality is always more subtle and balanced than such arguments. If you like, check out some other, perhaps more scientific discussions I wrote around related topics:
huh, thanks for the engagement guys—I definitely didn’t anticipate this to be so triggering…
I’m hearing two separate points here: 1) magic creatures and fairy tails do more to confuse rather than clarify; 2) let’s be careful not to scare kids about sex nor make it a bigger deal than it already is. I think we could have a rich discourse about each of these, and I see many arguments to be made for both sides—with neither being a clearly resolved issue, imho. Just as an example, here are some possible counters I see to these:
1) What role do fairy tails and lore play in our education and building understanding? For one, “all models are wrong, some are useful”—so I don’t think that whether Santa exists or not is really the interesting question, I’d rather ask in what ways is it helpful / confusing? As far as story-telling is a good vehicle for humans to convey values and information, it serves its purpose. As far as lying to kids—I’d say we can keep Santa without claiming things about him that aren’t true. I think another important purpose of such lore is ritual—of which Christmas is an example. Ritual practices have a clear role and impact on people, that can be cognitively very beneficial if not abused.
2) Yes, sex may already “too big of a deal,” but not in ways that are constructive / helpful. The hormonal impact of sex on our mind itself is hard to overstate—it really is a huge deal, for some people more than others. Since this is a question of qualia, I can reliably talk only about personal experience—and in retrospect I see that it ran my life for a number of years, the more so the more I repressed it. Learning to sublimate that energy, and really enjoy it in areas of life outside of sex has been the single greatest shift I experienced in persistent personal happiness, energy, and productivity. And this is what I’m referring to in this story—to me, sex and its broader impact is the most magical thing I have experienced in life, and so if anything is worth calling magical, I’d say this is it.
Of course, both of these points are a biased side of the full story, and I wouldn’t personally 100% agree with these, as reality is always more subtle and balanced than such arguments. If you like, check out some other, perhaps more scientific discussions I wrote around related topics:
a rationalist perspective on “magic”: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/uRiiNMCDdNnGo3Lqa/magic-tricks-and-high-dimensional-configuration-spaces
Is Santa Real—as an effective theory: https://www.pchvykov.com/post/is-santa-real