I see this clearly at kids birthday parties whenever there is a piñata. Adults hate them. All they see is the goal and the incredibly inefficient path the kids are taking towards it.
But the kids love it, they don’t care when they miss, they are just enjoying hitting something with a stick. And every miss heightens the excitement for the eventual lolly scramble.
galaxyLogic 2 hours ago [-]
The British rock-band Traffic said it in their "Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys" : "... we were children once, playing with toys".
I wonder if it's true that people don't remember. People maybe remember but don't want to talk about it. It is such a cognitive dissonance.
ErroneousBosh 18 minutes ago [-]
Runrig's song "Fichead Bliadhna", too, but that's more kind of a protest song:
Ruith sa mhonadh, ruith nam beann
’S mar sin dhan sgoil aig deireadh samhraidh
Nar clann aig còig bliadhna dh’aois
’S gun facal Beurla nar ceann
translated:
Freedom of the moor, freedom of the hills (Ruith is literally "running" though)
And off to school at summer's end
As children of five years old
And not a word of English in our heads
Particularly resonant with me as my 6-year-old cycles off to school for the second month of Primary 2. Quite a wrench to have to deal with sitting still and listening to the teacher when it's 20° outside and sunny and there are bikes and toy cars and mud and sticks.
At least some twenty years later by the late 70s when I was that age they actually were teaching Gaelic in schools again instead of literally beating it out of people, and now my son is in a Gaelic-medium class in school making it one of the three languages he speaks.
sublinear 1 hours ago [-]
Everyone remembers, but ADHD is overrepresented in the high-level positions of leadership.
setopt 12 minutes ago [-]
Do you have a source for that? My experience has been that people with ADHD are rather underrepresented, the ones who are overrepresented are rather hyper-extroverts that sometimes present similarly, but that do not have the same impulse control challenges (impossible to focus on boring tasks, hyperfocus on fun tasks) as someone with true ADHD.
baliex 41 minutes ago [-]
I can’t tell if you’re implying that those with ADHD are more likely or less likely to think and act in a childlike way. Or whether doing so or not is what causes the over representation in high level positions.
Could you please elaborate?
My understanding is that ADHD would make you more likely to behave in childlike ways as an adult, but not that that would necessarily lead to holding leadership positions.
I’m genuinely very interested in your thoughts.
cbolton 38 minutes ago [-]
It never occurred to me to consider efficiency in piñata, but I dislike them because it's making a game out of violence.
rolfus 14 minutes ago [-]
This is only tangentially directed at your reply, but this is the kind of statement that I'll sometimes hear other parents say, and it makes me think that they've completely forgotten what childhood was actually like. Like, the idea that normal, fun activities and sports are bad because they bear some abstract resemblance to adult violence feels very contrived and misses what childhood play is about.
socalgal2 2 minutes ago [-]
Is it? Or is that just you, projecting. You could argue baseball, golf, hockey, are all violent as you smash a stick into a ball.
gattr 12 minutes ago [-]
I wouldn't say "violence", rather, an opportunity to demolish something on (good) purpose. Same reason children will be glued to the window if workers outside are going at it with jackhammers, or, better yet, an excavator is crushing and scraping off the asphalt. (Yeah, I remember exactly how awesome that was.)
worthless-trash 3 minutes ago [-]
There is no violence, because the pinata is not alive.
There is no more violence in hitting a nail with a hammer.
SlightlyLeftPad 8 minutes ago [-]
I dislike them because someone inevitably gets sacked in the groin.
red_admiral 14 minutes ago [-]
Those who don't lose the fun of hitting things graduate to hitting things with swords and end up in the SCA (not the coffee one).
I see the point about violence but I'm ok with it because it's based on fun and not anger. Olympic archery, javelin, or even fencing have an obvious past in warfare but today they've become sports.
I can only speak for some of the European versions of SCA-like clubs but there's a lot of pride-flag flying strictly-no-fascists fun activity with a dose of pretending to be children again.
(Buhurt is a bit more complicated.)
Computer0 36 minutes ago [-]
As a child I did not see it as violent
sevenzero 26 minutes ago [-]
Children have no concept of violence or empathy or right or wrong. Children often are extremely violent to other kids and sometimes even adults. They kick they scream they punch and they destroy objects. It's on the parents to teach them these concepts and its fun to have settings in which that behavior is allowed.
ubercore 15 minutes ago [-]
I am an incredibly non-violent person, but have a toddler has really made me work hard to understand the difference in what associations we attach to "violence" as adults.
I try to help him understand this slowly, but a lot of "play" can look violent to my eyes, and I struggle to remember that. A 3 year old just doesn't see it that way yet, and that's fine. But it's hard to remember that in the moment.
WalterBright 17 minutes ago [-]
> Children have no concept of violence or empathy or right or wrong
This is not correct. I remember having a sense of shame when I was 4 when I tried to hurt another kid. Kids will also hide the things they do wrong, because they know it is wrong.
locknitpicker 28 minutes ago [-]
> As a child I did not see it as violent
That's the problem. Hitting a tied up animal until it breaks is clearly a violent affair, similar how hanging puppets in nooses or putting a doll in a guillotine.
I'm sure that there are kids growing up in places where bullfights are common thinking that torturing and killing a bull in a party-like atmosphere is fine.
tyre 25 minutes ago [-]
One of the incredible powers of childlike imagination is the ability to differentiate between hitting a piñata and hitting an actual animal.
w4der 13 minutes ago [-]
As a kid I don't remember, or have pictures of, an animal-looking piñata, they were just colorful boxes full of candy and things.
applfanboysbgon 20 minutes ago [-]
Do you see Pokemon as encouraging a culture of accepting dogfighting/cockfighting rings?
gambiting 14 minutes ago [-]
I mean yeah, absolutely. But a child growing up in a western society is unlikely to encounter either of those. But generally I do see Pokemon as violent and I wouldn't let my 5 year old watch it quite yet. When he's a bit older I hope he enjoys playing through the original games and the OG tv show with me, but I see parents playing the TV show for their 4-5 year olds and I think that's just too young. Same with Spidey and friends and few other shows made "for children" which absolutely promote violence despite the colourful aesthetic.
r3trohack3r 28 minutes ago [-]
That you see the world this way says more about you than the piñata.
gambiting 18 minutes ago [-]
Yeah, something very positive I think.
31 minutes ago [-]
thin_carapace 17 minutes ago [-]
is play not an indirect method of practicing the physiological mechanisms designed for violence ? baby lions are both happy to play with other animals, and to eat them ... which inevitably progresses to predation only ... and humans are the apex predator ...
red_admiral 11 minutes ago [-]
Depends. Dolls' tea parties aren't violent.
CalRobert 47 minutes ago [-]
What?!?!? Piñatas are awesome! And as people who emigrated from California it’s usually a fun novelty for the local Dutchies to see (though I see them in local stores now too!)
HenrikPontoppid 2 hours ago [-]
I remember reading once about how Astrid Lindgren's children's books were supreme exactly because she - contrary to many others - remembers what it is like to be a child. Not just what you did or thought when you were a child - how it felt. The endless curiosity and appreciation for what in an adult's eyes is trivial is really a special thing I hope most people carry throughout their lives. On the other hand, children also understand more than one would normally think, essentially a Moravec's paradox but in relation to adults.
"Children heal the soul" - Dostoevsky
317070 2 hours ago [-]
Overestimate their understanding, underestimate their vocabulary.
Terr_ 1 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure whether to interpret this as a statement about what we currently over/under-estimate, or as command that we should try what feels like over/under-estimation in order to counter our own biases.
imawakegnxoxo 30 minutes ago [-]
Kids are so much smarter and more capable than adults give them credit for, and it is stunting society as a whole
I think infantilisation is a huge part of the reason we're where we are today - kids 100 years ago were working harder jobs than most adults today (not implying child slave labour is a good thing, just making a point)
Kids today, though, are given exactly 0 responsibility and treated like babies the whole way through their prime learning years
I feel so sorry for the next generation
ErroneousBosh 8 minutes ago [-]
One of the first emails from the school when my small son was in Primary 1 was that they'd been making some pancakes in class and he'd picked up a Big Sharp Knife and began slicing some strawberries to put on them, and this was Very Much Not Allowed!
Children should not be touching the Big Sharp Knives!
Yeah, did he cut himself? No? Was he holding the knife and the strawberries carefully, so he didn't cut himself? Yes?
Want to take a guess as to why?
He's five. He knows how to chop vegetables. My parents taught me how to cook from a young age, I am teaching him how to cook from a young age. I'm raising a *man* here, not a perma-infant.
Although, between you and me, I think he could stand to use a bit less oregano in his pizza sauce. I'd never criticise his choices, I think he'll figure it out in time.
ErroneousBosh 17 minutes ago [-]
"But it's okay if a battery goes on fire daddy, I'll put carbon dioxide on it!" - EBv2.0, aged 3 and a half
red_admiral 6 minutes ago [-]
More people should read Oliver Sacks' book Uncle Tungsten. As a kid he was allowed to buy real chemicals for his chemistry set and was told things like "can you make slightly less hydrogen peroxide next time". Minors buying pitchblende (Uranium ore) at the local drugstore for experiments? Sure, might encourage them to be scientists.
BLKNSLVR 6 minutes ago [-]
I think the first time my son said the 'f' word, he got the tone and the body language exactly right for the context in which he used it (a frustrated/resigned "fuck's sake", with roll-eyes and throw-head-back, look up to the sky). He might have been five years old at the time. And back then, I really didn't say it around them very much (out of an attempt to be somewhat responsible).
They're absorbing everything. They're scraping the entirety of your personality to build their own.
worthless-trash 6 seconds ago [-]
Tiny language models.
wizzwizz4 55 minutes ago [-]
I like Lemony Snicket's approach: he gives (obviously) wrong, but technically correct, definitions for hard words. These definitions are usually hyper-specific, or satirical. Children, who are still very familiar with learning vocabulary from context, can find this much more amusing than adults who have given up on learning new words except via dictionaries.
> The word “briskly” here means “quickly, so as to get the Baudelaire children to leave the house.”
> “Wipi!” Sunny shrieked, which meant “I’d much prefer gardening to sitting around watching my siblings struggle through law books.”
Markoff 1 hours ago [-]
I like some of her books, but I am quite annoyed with kids most of the time coming from poor families with missing father/mother, it's like she couldn't write a book without some tragedy, of course the most famous Emil of Lönneberga and The Six Bullerby Children are from normal families (there is probably reason why these are the most famous and beloved), but already Pippi Longstocking is pretty F-ed up and don't get me started on The Brothers Lionheart, which is glorifying suicide and should be really banned for kids under 15, certainly not appropriate for 9yo, though I read it to my younger kid with appropriate commentary.
vintermann 1 hours ago [-]
Remember that Astrid Lindgren was born in 1907, got pregnant at 18 and had to give up her son to a foster home for the first few years. She grew up in a completely different world, and it's no coincidence that a lot of her stories are basically about consoling traumatized children.
Terr_ 54 minutes ago [-]
Not directly related, but infant mortality as probably ~10x current back in 1925. That would--from another direction--also affect what people considered to be the normal amount of trauma in parent/child relationships.
I've literally re-read it this year again and I couldn't disagree more, like, to a point where I wonder if we even read the same book. That book made me scared of dying when I was a child, and it made me appreciate the finality of death again now that I'm a grown up. There's nothing there that "glorifies" suicide - we could have a meta 2026 conversation about whether it's trying to say that yes, terminally ill people _should_ be able to decide what they want to do with their own lives, but that's not the message the book is going for(imho) - it's about bravery and loyalty even through the darkest of times, and about sacrifice(not suicide!!!) that comes from standing up for what you believe for. I don't personally believe in afterlife, but just as much as I loved the idea of naningalia when I was a child I still love it now - it gives children hope that even in the darkest moments of despair, there is something better waiting for them. The main character literally dies of ilness at the start, being bed bound for a long time without his loving brother and mother who doesn't know how to help him. The fact that he chooses to join Johnatan at the end in the trip to the "next" level of afterlife couldn't be further from glorifying suicide.
mlsu 2 hours ago [-]
I think Tao correctly sees the problem with AI. It’s not that it is ineffective or has weaknesses. It’s that it’s not human.
Like, it ought to be enough to say that the problem with AI is that it’s not human. Unfortunately, we live in a world where many (most?) people have willingly put away the childish things, so as to achieve some goal.
The problem is that the point of life is to explore and have fun and have human to human experiences. I think math is probably fun because you’re working on hard problems with your collaborators.
It should be obvious to everyone, as it is to children, that the point of life isn’t the goal, the point is the experience one has of living. They say that when you die the only thing you lose is the current moment. The problem with AI is that it doesn’t have a current moment to live in or to lose, it’s an inanimate thing. So, it should be obvious to everyone that the problem with the AI is that it’s not human. Alas.
apt-apt-apt-apt 1 hours ago [-]
I think everyone wants the experience of living, but it's not a great one without money, and money commonly requires full-time work until financial freedom. But that point usually comes at 65.
So it's not that only children appreciate life, it's just that adults have to deal with that whole money problem, while children don't.
lynx97 38 minutes ago [-]
I take a 8 hour work day over being subjected to more or less random weirdness from "adults" every day. IOW, not everyone has this rose-tinted view of their childhood. I still remember adults saying "you will once look back at your childhood and miss the times". Turns out that was totally and utterly wrong. I even have bad dreams about my school/childhood time every few months. I am sooooo glad that time of being subjected to the will of others is over.
WalterBright 10 minutes ago [-]
I miss the 70's when I was in high school. I had a great time. It's one reason why I drive a '72 Dodge. I feel like a kid in it every time.
WalterBright 12 minutes ago [-]
> the point of life is to explore and have fun and have human to human experiences
Not really. The point of life is successful reproduction. Because without it, we cease to exist. It wasn't that long ago when humans spent their entire lives struggling to live and protect their children.
hubabuba44 20 minutes ago [-]
Isn't the problem that without exploration we won't actually get new goals e.g. can AI come up with new math conjectures instead of "just" solving existing ones.
jaggederest 1 hours ago [-]
I agree that AI isn't human, but why does that necessarily mean it's a problem? The analogy I use is watching an octopus juggle - just because it's better than a human can ever be, definitionally, doesn't mean it's a problem or replacing people.
I think the impulse to use AI to replace human effort in cases where it's not drudgery, like art, math, etc is the issue, more than the fact that AI isn't human. Let AI do AI things, and humans do human things. I honestly hope that when everything shakes out we have a lot more room in the world for people doing things that are uniquely human, or amazing new collaborations that let humans do things they've never been able to do before.
jeffreygoesto 50 minutes ago [-]
To be human is like being the training so much more than the execution. Like the parallel post's game where the speed of light is 5km/h, we always try to but never reach true "perfection" (setting aside the discourse what that even would be). Some overfit, some stop short of being good...
matheusmoreira 1 hours ago [-]
> the point of life is to explore and have fun and have human to human experiences
To do all those things, I need money.
ktallett 1 hours ago [-]
To do the first one perhaps, although how many have really explored locally in full. To have fun is all dependent on your view on life and have human to human experiences can be had any time you step outside the door. Just talk to people and be friendly.
While his concerns expressed here aren't new, it looks like the recent cases of scientific misconduct were enough to push for urgency:
> But in the immediate term, the most pressing issue is for the entire mathematical community to unite around our core values and objectives, and reject irresponsible and unsustainable usages of AI technology that only serve to advance nominal goals rather than the true underlying goals of the field.
ryuuseijin 2 hours ago [-]
This reminds me of a video I saw from Alan Watts [1] where he talks about how from childhood it is hammered into our minds that we must work we must do this or do that or we will be punished. And he talks about how you can choose to change your perspective or mindset and see work as a form of play, where you live in the moment.
This is probably harder to do than to say, but this video resonated with me because your mindset is something you do have control over, and choosing not to get stressed about work, and choosing not to take things "seriously" and choosing not to do something for the outcome but just for performing the act, just like you would play music (an example he gave) or to see it as a game is something you can do.
That's a nice story and all but it isn't a reality for most people. For most people on this planet it's work or starve on the street.
WalterBright 9 minutes ago [-]
Somebody's got to work. Look at all the nice goodies we have.
ErroneousBosh 5 minutes ago [-]
> And he talks about how you can choose to change your perspective or mindset and see work as a form of play, where you live in the moment.
I think it's hilarious that they just let me play with a £150k Nexus 9000 stack at work, like it's fucking Roblox or something.
"Here you go EB, figure that one out, all it's doing is connecting our core network with our VM servers and SAN, no pressure! Documentation? Naaah, we never had any of that..."
jaggederest 1 hours ago [-]
And, as with many things, as soon as you stop forcing yourself past the point of ease and fluency, you somehow both enjoy it more and also are more effective.
HenrikPontoppid 2 hours ago [-]
Really a nice perspective. Carry childhood with you as an adult.
madaxe_again 60 minutes ago [-]
You do have control over it, but the external pressure to be “normal” is enormous and insurmountable for a majority of people. There’d be no such thing as “normal” otherwise.
I look at my cohort who I schooled with, and they are all so terrifyingly sober and adult, and take themselves so very seriously. They toil, they spin, they die.
Me… I don’t really know what happened. As a child, the more I was told to be normal, the more I dug my heels in, not out of contrarianism but out of a still indefatigable conviction that all of these people were wrong.
And the proof lies in the pudding. I am in my 40s, still a child, still stop to explore incessantly, still enjoy poking things with a stick, still finding joy, still being told to just for the love of god be normal, when will you get a proper job, settle down and become a banker or a lawyer or a doctor, and all that jazz.
Maybe it’s just the (until recently undiagnosed) ADHD talking - maybe I have been graced with a surfeit of good luck - but I’m pretty content with how being a cast iron weirdo panned out.
On the remembrance of childhood, much of it is clear to me - and now that I have a toddler of my own, I so often find her doing X or Y and going “good god, I remember being that kid”. Her other doesn’t remember her childhood at all, and struggles to relate - whereas I’ll gleefully fill my pockets with sand and run around hooting Yankee Doodle at full blast. It’s fun. People don’t have enough fun.
red_admiral 2 minutes ago [-]
Might well be the ADHD - it seems to be common among neurodiverse people.
ErroneousBosh 2 minutes ago [-]
> I look at my cohort who I schooled with, and they are all so terrifyingly sober and adult, and take themselves so very seriously. They toil, they spin, they die.
Ah, this is the problem, I work with people who take themselves so terribly seriously all the time.
But they do not take what they do seriously.
I don't take myself seriously at all, which really seems to irritate some people - but I take what I do very seriously indeed.
And then the people paying the wages don't seem to understand why my time is *so* *bloody* *expensive*. Yeah, it's not expensive, it's just a lot of money.
palmotea 1 hours ago [-]
> But modern AI tools, when directed without such expert supervision, can now be aimed all too easily at the ostensible goals of the field, without any incentive to take the slow, whimsical path.
IMHO, that's the whole point of AI: automate the fun, to leave people with more drudgery. Worker! Spend less (ideally no) time doing creative things like coding, spend your time instead doing code review!
tripledry 41 minutes ago [-]
classic, now I can have AIs make my games for me while I still have to cook and wash the dishes! Maybe AI can soon start playing the games for me, can't wait.
BLKNSLVR 14 minutes ago [-]
This relates almost not at all to the actual linked words, but I feel it relates to the sentiment of the title.
As a parent of two, now pretty much independent grown, children, I came to the conclusion a while ago that my childhood was for my parents enjoyment and my children's childhoods were for my enjoyment.
I fucking loved being able to guide them on their early ride through life. I think I re-lived my childhood vicariously through them, so I assume my parents did the same, and my kids will do the same with theirs. fingers firmly crossed
It feels as if this is how it should be. When you're a child going through childhood you don't have the awareness that, well, that's what's happening, you're just doing your thing without any knowledge yet of what your thing is; very little to compare it to, not a lot of real choice.
As an adult you're aware of the a lot of the badness in the world and the place you've ended up occupying in the innumerable spectrums of all the things. As an adult trying to guide kids into the world, the mad freedom of being a child is a wonder to behold.
For those of you who haven't had kids yet, or have young ones, record their madness. My home videos of my kids being entirely unbridled children are probably my favourite possessions in the whole world. My kids even go back and watch themselves, to their own endless amusement.
I often try to retain my 'wonder', and every now and then make sure to do something a bit mad. It makes the worthwhile people smile (and my kids cringe these days, but I sense there's an appreciation underneath it).
(summary: AI as a metaphor for optimising the fun out of play)
zshn 2 hours ago [-]
"C'est le temps que tu as perdu pour ta rose qui fait ta rose si importante" - "It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important"
> Father: "Ugh, how do kids enjoy this garbage?" [...]
2 hours ago [-]
2 hours ago [-]
Markoff 2 hours ago [-]
the post has unreadable font in Vivaldi
hutattedonmyarm 1 hours ago [-]
Might be a Vivaldi problem. It has "Computer Modern Sans" in Firefox which seems to be perfectly legible
TonyStr 50 minutes ago [-]
I found Computer Modern Sans quite unpleasant to read. Disabling it and reading Mastodon Sans Serif was much more pleasant
Gualdrapo 4 minutes ago [-]
Yup, quite an odd choice to set the typeface for big blocks of text to a display typeface as CM Sans
thaumasiotes 47 minutes ago [-]
In Firefox, all text outside the headline post, including the name and username that begin the headline post, appears to be in some kind of shrunken state which ruins its appearance. Zooming in solves the problem and causes the letters to appear correct rather than grotesquely malformed.
I don't know how the site was allowed into production like this.
ktallett 1 hours ago [-]
I am not a Tao hater but also not a fanboy but this is spot on! He is right, I don't love AI in many states and feel it is used for pointless task, however the beauty of that helping hand supporting you do tasks that you have no idea how to do is the magic in it. As a child we all asked questions regularly of what if we did this instead of this, why do we do things this way, why not try something else. Work and adult life gets us stuck in a rut, so anything that gets us out of a rut is welcome.
alansaber 10 minutes ago [-]
Exactly, breadth not depth of knowledge, from a tutor with no ego
sublinear 2 hours ago [-]
All well and good. I agree with the sentiment, but why are we asking for permission? Does this not strongly demonstrate the inherent corruption of institutions?
Rendered at 08:11:57 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
I wonder if it's true that people don't remember. People maybe remember but don't want to talk about it. It is such a cognitive dissonance.
Ruith sa mhonadh, ruith nam beann
’S mar sin dhan sgoil aig deireadh samhraidh
Nar clann aig còig bliadhna dh’aois
’S gun facal Beurla nar ceann
translated:
Freedom of the moor, freedom of the hills (Ruith is literally "running" though)
And off to school at summer's end
As children of five years old
And not a word of English in our heads
Particularly resonant with me as my 6-year-old cycles off to school for the second month of Primary 2. Quite a wrench to have to deal with sitting still and listening to the teacher when it's 20° outside and sunny and there are bikes and toy cars and mud and sticks.
At least some twenty years later by the late 70s when I was that age they actually were teaching Gaelic in schools again instead of literally beating it out of people, and now my son is in a Gaelic-medium class in school making it one of the three languages he speaks.
Could you please elaborate?
My understanding is that ADHD would make you more likely to behave in childlike ways as an adult, but not that that would necessarily lead to holding leadership positions.
I’m genuinely very interested in your thoughts.
There is no more violence in hitting a nail with a hammer.
I see the point about violence but I'm ok with it because it's based on fun and not anger. Olympic archery, javelin, or even fencing have an obvious past in warfare but today they've become sports.
I can only speak for some of the European versions of SCA-like clubs but there's a lot of pride-flag flying strictly-no-fascists fun activity with a dose of pretending to be children again.
(Buhurt is a bit more complicated.)
I try to help him understand this slowly, but a lot of "play" can look violent to my eyes, and I struggle to remember that. A 3 year old just doesn't see it that way yet, and that's fine. But it's hard to remember that in the moment.
This is not correct. I remember having a sense of shame when I was 4 when I tried to hurt another kid. Kids will also hide the things they do wrong, because they know it is wrong.
That's the problem. Hitting a tied up animal until it breaks is clearly a violent affair, similar how hanging puppets in nooses or putting a doll in a guillotine.
I'm sure that there are kids growing up in places where bullfights are common thinking that torturing and killing a bull in a party-like atmosphere is fine.
"Children heal the soul" - Dostoevsky
I think infantilisation is a huge part of the reason we're where we are today - kids 100 years ago were working harder jobs than most adults today (not implying child slave labour is a good thing, just making a point)
Kids today, though, are given exactly 0 responsibility and treated like babies the whole way through their prime learning years
I feel so sorry for the next generation
Children should not be touching the Big Sharp Knives!
Yeah, did he cut himself? No? Was he holding the knife and the strawberries carefully, so he didn't cut himself? Yes?
Want to take a guess as to why?
He's five. He knows how to chop vegetables. My parents taught me how to cook from a young age, I am teaching him how to cook from a young age. I'm raising a *man* here, not a perma-infant.
Although, between you and me, I think he could stand to use a bit less oregano in his pizza sauce. I'd never criticise his choices, I think he'll figure it out in time.
They're absorbing everything. They're scraping the entirety of your personality to build their own.
> The word “briskly” here means “quickly, so as to get the Baudelaire children to leave the house.”
> “Wipi!” Sunny shrieked, which meant “I’d much prefer gardening to sitting around watching my siblings struggle through law books.”
[0] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.IMRT.IN?location...
I've literally re-read it this year again and I couldn't disagree more, like, to a point where I wonder if we even read the same book. That book made me scared of dying when I was a child, and it made me appreciate the finality of death again now that I'm a grown up. There's nothing there that "glorifies" suicide - we could have a meta 2026 conversation about whether it's trying to say that yes, terminally ill people _should_ be able to decide what they want to do with their own lives, but that's not the message the book is going for(imho) - it's about bravery and loyalty even through the darkest of times, and about sacrifice(not suicide!!!) that comes from standing up for what you believe for. I don't personally believe in afterlife, but just as much as I loved the idea of naningalia when I was a child I still love it now - it gives children hope that even in the darkest moments of despair, there is something better waiting for them. The main character literally dies of ilness at the start, being bed bound for a long time without his loving brother and mother who doesn't know how to help him. The fact that he chooses to join Johnatan at the end in the trip to the "next" level of afterlife couldn't be further from glorifying suicide.
Like, it ought to be enough to say that the problem with AI is that it’s not human. Unfortunately, we live in a world where many (most?) people have willingly put away the childish things, so as to achieve some goal.
The problem is that the point of life is to explore and have fun and have human to human experiences. I think math is probably fun because you’re working on hard problems with your collaborators.
It should be obvious to everyone, as it is to children, that the point of life isn’t the goal, the point is the experience one has of living. They say that when you die the only thing you lose is the current moment. The problem with AI is that it doesn’t have a current moment to live in or to lose, it’s an inanimate thing. So, it should be obvious to everyone that the problem with the AI is that it’s not human. Alas.
So it's not that only children appreciate life, it's just that adults have to deal with that whole money problem, while children don't.
Not really. The point of life is successful reproduction. Because without it, we cease to exist. It wasn't that long ago when humans spent their entire lives struggling to live and protect their children.
I think the impulse to use AI to replace human effort in cases where it's not drudgery, like art, math, etc is the issue, more than the fact that AI isn't human. Let AI do AI things, and humans do human things. I honestly hope that when everything shakes out we have a lot more room in the world for people doing things that are uniquely human, or amazing new collaborations that let humans do things they've never been able to do before.
To do all those things, I need money.
While his concerns expressed here aren't new, it looks like the recent cases of scientific misconduct were enough to push for urgency:
> But in the immediate term, the most pressing issue is for the entire mathematical community to unite around our core values and objectives, and reject irresponsible and unsustainable usages of AI technology that only serve to advance nominal goals rather than the true underlying goals of the field.
This is probably harder to do than to say, but this video resonated with me because your mindset is something you do have control over, and choosing not to get stressed about work, and choosing not to take things "seriously" and choosing not to do something for the outcome but just for performing the act, just like you would play music (an example he gave) or to see it as a game is something you can do.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9BXvBJ2dWo
I think it's hilarious that they just let me play with a £150k Nexus 9000 stack at work, like it's fucking Roblox or something.
"Here you go EB, figure that one out, all it's doing is connecting our core network with our VM servers and SAN, no pressure! Documentation? Naaah, we never had any of that..."
I look at my cohort who I schooled with, and they are all so terrifyingly sober and adult, and take themselves so very seriously. They toil, they spin, they die.
Me… I don’t really know what happened. As a child, the more I was told to be normal, the more I dug my heels in, not out of contrarianism but out of a still indefatigable conviction that all of these people were wrong.
And the proof lies in the pudding. I am in my 40s, still a child, still stop to explore incessantly, still enjoy poking things with a stick, still finding joy, still being told to just for the love of god be normal, when will you get a proper job, settle down and become a banker or a lawyer or a doctor, and all that jazz.
Maybe it’s just the (until recently undiagnosed) ADHD talking - maybe I have been graced with a surfeit of good luck - but I’m pretty content with how being a cast iron weirdo panned out.
On the remembrance of childhood, much of it is clear to me - and now that I have a toddler of my own, I so often find her doing X or Y and going “good god, I remember being that kid”. Her other doesn’t remember her childhood at all, and struggles to relate - whereas I’ll gleefully fill my pockets with sand and run around hooting Yankee Doodle at full blast. It’s fun. People don’t have enough fun.
Ah, this is the problem, I work with people who take themselves so terribly seriously all the time.
But they do not take what they do seriously.
I don't take myself seriously at all, which really seems to irritate some people - but I take what I do very seriously indeed.
And then the people paying the wages don't seem to understand why my time is *so* *bloody* *expensive*. Yeah, it's not expensive, it's just a lot of money.
IMHO, that's the whole point of AI: automate the fun, to leave people with more drudgery. Worker! Spend less (ideally no) time doing creative things like coding, spend your time instead doing code review!
As a parent of two, now pretty much independent grown, children, I came to the conclusion a while ago that my childhood was for my parents enjoyment and my children's childhoods were for my enjoyment.
I fucking loved being able to guide them on their early ride through life. I think I re-lived my childhood vicariously through them, so I assume my parents did the same, and my kids will do the same with theirs. fingers firmly crossed
It feels as if this is how it should be. When you're a child going through childhood you don't have the awareness that, well, that's what's happening, you're just doing your thing without any knowledge yet of what your thing is; very little to compare it to, not a lot of real choice.
As an adult you're aware of the a lot of the badness in the world and the place you've ended up occupying in the innumerable spectrums of all the things. As an adult trying to guide kids into the world, the mad freedom of being a child is a wonder to behold.
For those of you who haven't had kids yet, or have young ones, record their madness. My home videos of my kids being entirely unbridled children are probably my favourite possessions in the whole world. My kids even go back and watch themselves, to their own endless amusement.
I often try to retain my 'wonder', and every now and then make sure to do something a bit mad. It makes the worthwhile people smile (and my kids cringe these days, but I sense there's an appreciation underneath it).
(summary: AI as a metaphor for optimising the fun out of play)
> Father: "Ugh, how do kids enjoy this garbage?" [...]
I don't know how the site was allowed into production like this.