Not all are created equal. Our children are unique.
One of my children showed natural talent in language at 9 months with no prompting. This was brought to our attention by childcare staff. Another of our children showed a natural talent with mathematical concepts at about a year old.
Even as they grew, our linguist struggled with math (for years) and our procedurally oriented child struggled with language (for years).
To this day, these two children maintain these core differences. It took at least 6 years for our linguist to crack basic arithmetic (even basic addition) which was at least several years behind our proceduralist.
I found out later that some leading child psychologists recognise different brain types in very young children (exactly as I found). An Internet search on brain types of children will show some high profile child psychologists who talk about this in depth, despite some strong "opinions" (ie. devoid of evidence) that oppose these studies.
Our linguist, with minimal pressure, has developed into a strong mathematician (at least grades wise) but to this day has never demonstrated anywhere near the natural ability of our proceduralist.
I have drawn the same conclusions with my own siblings and my wife's siblings. At a very young age, our own strengths become apparent without intervention. I am very glad I never pushed my kids to be equal (or even close to equal) in all skills. I consider most uses of the word "equal" worrisome (except for equal opportunity, a concept frequently downplayed in the last decade or so. Even Zuckerberg's famous open letter was unclear on such a fundamental concept).
OBS: when I asked our linguist to step through basic math, they understood the concept but could not do the work independently. Someone in this thread described a similar story for their child and attributed this to a lack of "confidence". For my child, I wholly reject that it was confidence related. When things clicked for our linguist, they clicked. If anything, our linguist's ability to crack the basics took patience on my part. I wanted my child to succeed quickly but I restrained myself (thankfully).
People need to realise that not all kids are the same. We have innate strengths. We have different learning styles, different learning rates, and different interests and motivations. I strongly reject the modern populist theory that we are all equal in ability and I believe we do significant harm because of this factoid. The motives behind this factoid concern me deeply.
If I could offer one piece of advice, your child(ren) are unique. Don't ever let anybody tell you that your child's strength or weakness comes from social conditioning. The only social conditioning cones from extreme behaviour (eg. Heavy handed forcing of "equality" under the banner of political correctness is extremely harmful, rather than focussing on potential and opportunity. This heavy handedness is also driving some extremely destructive social engineering under the banner of "equality". If you are watching academic trends you should be horrified as a patent).
I always encourage(d) play at a young age (physical activity, math games, language games). However, if you make this more than games (if you call this teaching and you start to measure), you set kids up for failure, especially when many children need patience and time.
According to PISA rankings, most western countries (especially English speaking) are not the top performers. I have hinted my beliefs of the root cause of this in this post. I predict most western countries will slip in ranking even further (especially English speaking countries). If things play as I expect, the slip will be significant in the next 10 years.
Your version is a somewhat closer reflection of the version of what is taught in school today (ie. there is no magical 1869). However, the actual conflict was sparked over Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand's assassination. You excluded some fundamental points that help understand a much broader series of issues (namely, a very late unification of Germany causing upset in many alliances, region-wide instability beyond Germany and a crumbling Austro-Hungarian empire desperate to cling to power).
As an example, read Aethelric's post here as it is important in explaining the seeds that set Germany as it was in 1869.
The region we now know as Germany was a series of small towns with mostly independent rule. With instability (especially crumbling of the Austro-Hungarian Empire), Germany established formal alliances quickly as the political climate grew in intensity.
Franz Ferdinand was shot, the European states fought and the US (with late entry) injected fresh ideas, troops and supplies, which decisively turned the tides of a messy war.
So, 1869 was more like a traffic light that triggered the car crash. Without understanding the history, you can't really understand each participant's trajectories or motives. To limit the answer to "1869" is only slightly more informative than limiting the answer to "Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand's assassination".
If you're looking for a more insightful history to the "penny university", the Wikipedia page contains much more detail about coffee houses and some analysis of the pamphlet.
It's a fascinating read. Trying to capture how people lived and thought a few hundred years ago is very difficult today because much history is now overlaid with politics and filters. The Wikipedia page paints a picture that seems feasible based on my wide reading of history.
The resobscura speculates (without evidence) that the pamphlet was most probably written by a man. This view is not shared by the Wikipedia article for multiple reasons that anybody can speculate over.
Re: whether the pamphlet was written by a man or a woman, if you reread you'll see that I simply note that others have speculated, but there's no evidence either way. Suffice to say, 17th century pamphlets aren't always what they purport to be, so I think it's best to be agnostic about claims of authorship without additional documentation.
Either way, authorship doesn't really matter that much. At the time, printing these pamphlets still cost some money, it wasn't something done entirely on a whim; therefore, if a pamphlet exists, there was someone with a purpose behind it, either religious, or political, or economic motivation but it wasn't just someone expressing an opinion, it was someone hoping to somewhat influence the public narrative.
From the recent discussion about banana monoculture, I read an article suggesting that Coffee Leaf Rust destroyed coffee production in British held Sri Lanka, initiating the switch to tea. Its a silly conjecture, but maybe the lower amounts of caffeine contributed to the decline of coffeehouses.
As someone who is married, I truly do not understand your comment. The exact opposite seems true to me. Honesty and integrity are paramount (at least to me).
Find somebody you respect. Find somebody who is compatible with you. Hope you find someone who thinks and feels the same as you do.
If I struggled on my journey, it was to find a woman who did not want to dominate me or be dominated who was worthy of my respect. I consider myself very lucky. Been married for a long time to an amazing women who is an engineer in heart and soul.
So, nothing about self doubt, deceit for me.
If you are college educated divorce rates plummets. Same for marrying later in life. +the 50% stat is quite weighted by people with multiple divorces. The average HN reader probably has an 80% shot at lifelong marriage.
About 1/2 of my friends are female. Over the years, I've had a few of my expressions of interest rejected. However, I've had quite a few female friends "give up because I didn't get the message they were interested". I've been abused, called stupid, asked if I was gay, etc by female friends who were interested in me. I once had to ask a mutual (female) friend what happened because I couldn't get a word out of one woman. "You can't be THAT dumb, can you?".
I call bs on this one. I've had too many instances of being explicitly hit on (about 1 in 3 of good female friends at a guess) to believe the "women aren't attracted to male friends".
However, I have plenty of female friends who I just like because they are amazing people.
Your understanding of slavery in Ancient Rome is quite different to mine. I'd really appreciate knowing your sources as you seem to have a wealth of knowledge.
Slaves could lead very productive and meaningful lives. It was not uncommon for slaves to be freed and made a citizen. Some slaves also held high positions (eg. Dentists, accountants, etc). I also understand that the word slave was interchangeably used with the word family.
And Mary Beard's Meet the Romans (an exceptionally good documentary from BBC. Mary is one of my favourites).
Mary talked about a wealthy Roman woman (a business owner) who freed her slave and married him. Depending on who you ask, her slave would have been considered a sex slave before they married. The truth is always a matter of perspective!
Having said that, the Spanish and Italians used boys as young as 6 as slaves for mining silver and malachite. The boys that survived were significantly physically deformed by the time they reached adulthood. There is also significant discussion about little girls who were forced to play with dolls to be good slave housewives (the girls were described as having terrible lives).
Source: Mary Beard's other Roman documentaries and the history of Sicilian mines (can't remember the link, but easily found on Google).
> And Mary Beard's Meet the Romans (an exceptionally good documentary from BBC. Mary is one of my favourites).
i finished watching this an hour ago, what a coincidence. i strongly recommend it as well, she discusses the role of slavery in roman society at length -- though it's spread throughout the whole series
SPQR by the same is a good book for gaining an understanding of what Rome was. One of my takeaways from it is that mapping a contemporary term to something similar from the past is a tricky thing and can lead to poor interpretations.
"It's the same reason small towns are (I hear) less socially stressful. I am not convinced though. In larger society I end up dealing with relatively small groups anyway - friends, family, and co-workers."
There's a fundamental difference. In a small town, most of the people around you are usually known to you and friendly. In a bigger town, you tend not to know/trust more people directly around you. Kids spend much less time at the local park and more time indoors. I wrote a posting recently talking about social pressures of our modern day and part of my post was comparing the communities around us today vs 50 years ago.
I'm lucky that I live in a suburb where I know many people around me. My friends (who don't live locally) and extended family are both surprised and envious at how lucky we are being surrounded by friendly and generous people. Frequently popping in, bringing home made cakes, jams etc. I love it! As an example, I had a neighbour bring my wife some flowers recently for no particular reason.
I am fairly certain that our modern lifestyles and socialisation with neighbours is far more stressful than it used to be, judging by most people I know.
Excellent point about centralisation. I can't help but feel many people either misunderstood or didn't read the article. In my view, the power Zuckerberg wields is staggering, although I've seen many postings here with contrasting views on that level of power.
The article is excellent. It's well structured and insightful. It also leads us to ask excellent questions and provides relevant content to mull over. As an example, Zuckerberg's message was fascinating in what it didn't say.
My superficial value add to truthhawk's article is as follows.
1. How much sway does Facebook actually have? Do most people seek information outside of Facebook? If they hear/see something enough, does it become truth?
2. Would Zuckerberg want to be president? I've always viewed the President as being a servant to power brokers behind the scenes. Wouldn't Zuckerberg have more influence by striking deals with potential candidates and hold leverage through Facebook profile analysis? Does Zuckerberg have the power to be more than a president?
3. Does anyone actually have the power to take on Facebook? Might that person be subjected to extra criticism (eg. during the next election) if they don't play ball?
4. Facebook exists and it is particularly powerful. If you were to decentralise the leadership (as discussed by truthhawk), would that add benefit? How? I see potential for a fragmented committee, or worse. Could Zuckerberg be like Jobs was to Apple?
5. Long term, assuming Facebook and Zuckerberg survive the test of time, who takes over? What sort of people would gravitate to that role? What might that mean for this wealth of information on many citizens of the world? Even if Zuckerberg is a benevolent dictator, the potential vacuum of power that will be created horrifies me, especially thinking about the personalities that may fight for it.
I don't believe Facebook will disappear any time soon. There are serious questions around Facebook that we desperately need to consider. This article is excellent as it helps focus us on this goal.
This is why I (mostly) love HN. It really makes me think about the world around me in so many interesting and meaningful ways. I may have given up on MSM and once-brilliant sites like Ars Technica (who now thrust biased gender and governmental politics down our throats). I hope HN can keep its secret sauce flowing.
One of my children showed natural talent in language at 9 months with no prompting. This was brought to our attention by childcare staff. Another of our children showed a natural talent with mathematical concepts at about a year old.
Even as they grew, our linguist struggled with math (for years) and our procedurally oriented child struggled with language (for years).
To this day, these two children maintain these core differences. It took at least 6 years for our linguist to crack basic arithmetic (even basic addition) which was at least several years behind our proceduralist.
I found out later that some leading child psychologists recognise different brain types in very young children (exactly as I found). An Internet search on brain types of children will show some high profile child psychologists who talk about this in depth, despite some strong "opinions" (ie. devoid of evidence) that oppose these studies.
Our linguist, with minimal pressure, has developed into a strong mathematician (at least grades wise) but to this day has never demonstrated anywhere near the natural ability of our proceduralist.
I have drawn the same conclusions with my own siblings and my wife's siblings. At a very young age, our own strengths become apparent without intervention. I am very glad I never pushed my kids to be equal (or even close to equal) in all skills. I consider most uses of the word "equal" worrisome (except for equal opportunity, a concept frequently downplayed in the last decade or so. Even Zuckerberg's famous open letter was unclear on such a fundamental concept).
OBS: when I asked our linguist to step through basic math, they understood the concept but could not do the work independently. Someone in this thread described a similar story for their child and attributed this to a lack of "confidence". For my child, I wholly reject that it was confidence related. When things clicked for our linguist, they clicked. If anything, our linguist's ability to crack the basics took patience on my part. I wanted my child to succeed quickly but I restrained myself (thankfully).
People need to realise that not all kids are the same. We have innate strengths. We have different learning styles, different learning rates, and different interests and motivations. I strongly reject the modern populist theory that we are all equal in ability and I believe we do significant harm because of this factoid. The motives behind this factoid concern me deeply.
If I could offer one piece of advice, your child(ren) are unique. Don't ever let anybody tell you that your child's strength or weakness comes from social conditioning. The only social conditioning cones from extreme behaviour (eg. Heavy handed forcing of "equality" under the banner of political correctness is extremely harmful, rather than focussing on potential and opportunity. This heavy handedness is also driving some extremely destructive social engineering under the banner of "equality". If you are watching academic trends you should be horrified as a patent).
I always encourage(d) play at a young age (physical activity, math games, language games). However, if you make this more than games (if you call this teaching and you start to measure), you set kids up for failure, especially when many children need patience and time.
According to PISA rankings, most western countries (especially English speaking) are not the top performers. I have hinted my beliefs of the root cause of this in this post. I predict most western countries will slip in ranking even further (especially English speaking countries). If things play as I expect, the slip will be significant in the next 10 years.