Intelligent disobedience
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
I really don't think this is rare. People do crappy things all the time, especially when they imagine they know what is best for someone else. This is the default assumption of most adults in how they relate to any children in their lives.
Obviously that should include letting the young person stretch, learn and exercise their own judgement, but within bounds set by the parent and with the parent there to help with any consequences.
An event that helped cement my commitment to respecting their boundaries as much as possible is where I made my son eat lunch because he wasn't eating and he tended to be skinny and I worried that I would end up charged with neglect for not feeding him enough. About thirty minutes later, he threw up all over my jacket which I actively encouraged to keep it off the cloth truck seat.
After that, I doubled down on trying to make sure there was food available that he liked and that I felt was sufficiently healthy, but I left it up to him to decide to eat.
He likely has two conditions that can each lead to requiring hospitalization to treat aversion to eating by mouth. He's never developed any such issues.
So, unbeknownst to me, I had some serious challenges to deal with. Respecting his boundaries paid off.
Kids like mine frequently end up seriously abused because the parents just keep increasing their attempts to control the kid and force the kid to do as they are told rather than coming at the issue from another angle as I chose to do.
I am on my third parenting blog, still trying to figure out how to talk at folks about such things in a way that is helpful and doesn't sound too accusatory. The intent is to offer options, not criticism per se, for people dealing with challenging children.
You would stop them running into the road, as an extreme example. Good parents know well enough to communicate with their child, and provide an environment in which they can learn and grow, and also when to intervene because there is danger.
It's overly simplistic to say that parents don't have "know better" as part of the job description.
I mostly agree with you. But I also know there is a blurry line there. For example, I did some stupid stuff as a kid and it is a good things parents were there to intervene. I would not call their concern for my risk taking in that instance to be arrogant today.
But that is my perception of my individual upbringing. I have no real knowledge how parenting looks 'on average'. I know I was lucky in some ways; unlucky in others.
This is where it gets complicated, because the advice we get for parenting is a generic advice for a typically specific issue.
I am writing this as an expecting parent so take my musings as just that.
Yes, it is part of it, absolutely. But in the early years there's more to it that that.
When a four year old wants to eat ice cream all day and nothing else, are you asserting that they know better?
> I don't see the evidence that most parents know what's best for their child
That's not my assertion, my assertion is that it's their job, not that they're always good at it.
Like a kid will come and say "I need a stick", and the parent is "what, you'll just hit someone", and refuse it. And the kid will cry.
Later you discover the kid needs to make a school project, with a stick, and without the stick they simply did not do the project, and failed.
And they were just not able to explain this to you.
(This isn't a real story, but it's similar to the kind of thing that happens.)
You also get "I need a dollar", and you give it to them, and later discover they had some kind of bet going with another kid (which you would have never approved of), and needed the dollar to pay the other kid.
Upshot: You have to ask the kid what's up, there is a lot of knowledge they have that you don't.
So a lot of problem parent behavior is ... a problem. The main way something like this "Children's Rights Education" tries to resemble the other situation is teaching kids that there are few circumstances of abuse where they legally refuse/resist. Of course, there are lot of abusive situations that the child can't legally resist and of course being a child navigating such an overall situation presents many minefields. Which is to say this approach has to subscribe to the fiction (derived from the law) that there is a fixed line between abuse and non-abuse where in fact the line is fuzzy indeed.
https://theconversation.com/the-us-is-stingier-with-child-ca...
The US is on a short list of countries that don't provide maternity leave. All the others are dirt poor. We have no such excuses.
We have terrible healthcare policies. At one time, it was somewhat common for dad to be the primary breadwinner and have a decent job with benefits, including healthcare for the wife and kids. Mom worked part time or was a homemaker.
Now, even if both parents work, the kids may not be automatically covered on either parent's healthcare policy from work. They may have to pay extra for that. (Though I'm not clear how much Obamacere changed that.)
In much of Europe, it is still somewhat common for the extended family to help raise the kids, daycare is generally more readily available, maternity leave is the norm, etc.
You don't have to try hard at all to find countries with better family-friendly policies than the US, even without having sophisticated, well-thought-out ideas about what that should mean.
Also known as: it doesn't take money out of my pocket to pay for your kids.
This is a penny wise, pound foolish attitude. If you want to be a "stingy bastard," the "stingy bastard" option is to take care of the kids so they don't become bigger problems down the line.
(Not intended to name call. Just intended to characterize a certain position.)
They read about a child friendly policy and think about "other people". Somehow their mind doesn't click in such a way that they can generalise and understand that such measures might be universal and benefit every future person[1]. And that they would have helped them too.
[1] At least, those lucky enough to have families.
Obviously I know everyone was a kid. But we agree as a society that parents are responsible for the financial burdens of their offspring. It isn't fair to make people who choose not to have kids to pay for those who do.
And maternity leave isn't really a benefit for the child--it's a benefit to the parent. No one will ever remember their first 8 weeks of life.
Just like it isn't fair to make people who don't take vacations to pay for those who do.
I don't believe one has a right to have children in the same sense that one has a right to fair trial or healthcare. If you cannot afford to skip work for 8 weeks, then save money or don't have a kid.
My perspective is that universal worker's rights (like the 40hr week, paid maternity leave, minimum yearly vacation weeks) help prevent the "trap of moloch" (context: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/). The kind of system traps that ends up screwing human beings. The purpose of work, money, capitalism, government is to benefit human beings. When the pursuit of system goals ends up getting in the way of human needs then the system is broken and needs to be fixed. When we define good baselines there is no competitive penalty for organisations that provide sane benefits.
Taking vacations as an example, we need laws to define some vacation minimum because it seems self evident that all human beings need some level of downtime in their life. If we don't define a minimum then competitive pressure will squeeze this out such that only the well off ever get time off.
Our systems need human-shaped holes carved out in them to prevent the things that make life good from being optimized away.
My perspective is slightly different than yours; I suppose I believe that every child has the right to enjoy their first few weeks of life in as peaceful an environment as can practically be arranged and that all parents deserve time to physically and mentally recover from childbirth and have time to adjust to the reality of a new child.
I think this is absolutely beneficial to the child and I still maintain that in the steady state it is not actually redistributive because everyone receives the benefit and everyone pays for every other person to get it.
You can't make an employer pay for your leave. Market competition is already ensuring that all the money he could give you, he is giving you through competition. Making a 'paid leave' law does not reduce his profit margin.
Basically, I don't think it's a given that there will be huge dividends down the line if you just provide free child care to people.
While always a risk the fact remains many parents who would like to do better for their kids cannot. Finances are a huge part of that. Taking off some of that pressure means the would-be-better parents can be better.
And for those who would game the system or prove unfit there is CPS. Obviously CPS cannot be perfect itself. Still we should try our best to get as close as we can; individually, as institutions, and as a society.
It is also whether you are so overworked and tired that you cant think of kids problems vs you had time to think through kids behavior and figure out there is an issue. It is whether you are isolated in bubble of own head or whether you get to meet variety of people to understand how society works and have experience with it.
It is whether you are high confidence and mentally ok to discuss issues with kids friends parents, or whether you are low confidence on end of rope generally so you cant (or botches it).
It's especially the following part that I'm curious about as that has not been my experience but if you have statistics then I would be happy too look at them.
"In much of Europe, it is still somewhat common for the extended family to help raise the kids...."
In the United States, 24% of children under five have been cared for by grandparents in the previous month (Laughlin, 2013), and a study of 11 European countries showed that 58% of grandmothers and 49% of grandfathers looked after at least one of their grandchildren aged under 16 in the preceding year in the absence of parents
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4681534/
I've read extensively on such topics over the years. Sometimes, my stats are a little out of date because I did a lot more such reading in my twenties and I'm now 54.
But, overall, my understanding is that what I read about differences between women's rights and family-friendly policies between the US and Europe when I was a homemaker in my twenties trying to figure out why the hell I didn't magically end up with the two career couple family I had imagined would happen has not really changed all that much. The gap in some things is less wide, but it's mostly a matter of degree, not kind.
Having lived in several countries including the US, the UK, and Switzerland, there doesn’t seem to be much difference. It’s pretty common for older kids to visit grandparents everywhere, and somewhat less common for grandparents to look out for younger kids while the parents go do something.
Odds of an adult knowing what's best for another adult: Low to Medium
Odds of an adult knowing what's best for a child: Medium to High
You don't have to boss the kid around and treat them like a puppet you control to help them make better decisions.
Obviously (and it should go without saying, but I will say it anyway): Emergency situations are an exception. You can and should stop a child from sticking their hand in the fire without trying to nicely and at length talk them out of it while they are in the midst of doing so anyway.
You will also de facto be making a fair number of decisions on their behalf when they are below a certain age. Infants can cry to let you know something is wrong, but they can't tell you they need to be fed, etc. Adults have to do their best to figure out what the issue is and address it.
Good parents typically don't have a policy of "Oh, just let them cry it out." They typically feel that a crying child requires parental intervention to solve whatever their problem is.
(Exception: It's okay for them to just cry for emotional reasons. I never tried to convince my kids to stop crying about being told "no" or whatever. If you know they are crying because small kids have big feels, let them cry. No big deal.
But babies don't typically cry for emotional reasons. They cry because they have a problem that needs to be addressed.)
Odds of knowing better than the adult/child in question though, sure, those ranges sound right.
Odds of an adult knowing what's best for a child: Medium
First born boys routinely got little "extras." They got their favorite food just because it was their favorite. The got taken to the doctor a bit quicker, like tonight instead waiting until morning to see how they felt. That sort of thing.
This was not article document horrifying abuse of little girls. It just documented boys, especially first-born boys, getting a little extra care and attention.
The difference could be measured in mortality. Boys, especially first-born boys, had lower death rates than girls.
I don't think there is a deep line at all between the two things. I think if there is a line between them at all, it's pretty darn fuzzy.
Back to the original topic, yours also serves as an example of how easily damage can be delivered through being systemic. I'm confident it's not hard to produce many cases that qualify as systemic traumatic abuse, but it's an exercise I'd rather not do today.
No longer on Netflix, but you can find it on Amazon Prime here: https://amzn.to/3gttRxt
If you are a dog lover, this movie will tug at your heart strings. If you are not into dogs, it’s still a wonderful character study in perseverance & human-animal symbiosis.
For programmers, you’ll start to realize that even reaching dog-like AI would be quite an accomplishment and open up a lot of possibilities for humanity.
On a lighter note, whenever I hear the term Intelligent Disobedience now, I always also think of one of my favorite organizational psychology terms, Malicious Compliance.
One thing I wonder, though, what's going on in this part:
>The animal understands that this contradicts the learned behavior to respond to the owner's instructions: instead it makes an alternative decision because the human is not in a position to decide safely.[5] The dog in this case has the capacity to understand that it is performing such an action for the welfare of the person.[6]
I think that's a very bold and categorical claim to make. Not necessarily because it's wrong, but animal cognition is a charged subject where it's easy to become motivated to make claims, and I think it's fair to say it's a sphere where untrue claims abound.
It wasn't clear to me that the source for [6] is sufficiently authoritative. It seems to be derived from interviews with dog owners. Here's a quote from [6] on the cited page:
>"The competent guide dog can recognize dangerous situations and, even when commanded to engage in a articular action, can decide to disobdy in order to protect the owner's welfare.. All of the interviewees spoke of their dogs as regularly involved in behaviors that were not understandable if one were only to see dogs merely as automatons responding to instinct or behavioral conditioning."
Anyway, I bring this up because that sentence stuck out to me as something that felt highly motivated, and in general it's a feature I think you see sometimes in wiki articles - bold claims, almost vulgar in their simplicity, that just go ahead and declare a truth and don't try to couch the language in terms of earned institutional understanding that fully merit the claim. Again, not saying it's wrong, it just stuck out.
i.e. it's not about cognition, it's about the tool (in this case, the dog) having certain behaviour.
For instance, consider a hypothetical system with pop up dialog boxes requesting confirmation (yes undo is better, etc.). A user hits Del signaling they wish to delete an entry from a list, and a popup is displayed requesting confirmation. The user hits Enter within 10 ms of the appearance of the popup but the system ignores the input. One might describe this as "The program understands that the user did not actually confirm since they did not have sufficient time to do so" and not actually mean "The program acquired sapience within 10 ms and proceeded to overrule the human".
The rules of the game there are basically, if you can source something to a published book or newspaper, even if idiotic; it's game. Trying to change anything in case of a conflict takes time, effort and allies. And the corporation that owns Wikipedia not being hostile ("Framgate" has been publicized about).
And this is one of the few good Wikipedia's, where at least some important articles will receive due care from capable and benevolent editors. Try checking out the "Croatian Wikipedia", or some of the other Wikipedia's relevant to a smaller country.
"Blink, Think, Choice, Voice" is a pretty poor mnemonic though. They compare it to "Stop, Drop, and Roll", but those instructions make sense even before you read anything else about it.
"Blink, Think, Make a Stink"
or, the classic, "Question Authority"
I also think "blink" in the first place is a bad term. I understand what they're going for, but it's not an intuitive instruction.
The best analogy I can come up with that many Americans would relate to would be slavery, when slave owners would insist on dehumanizing them. They were both financially and emotionally invested in the idea that slaves could be used and abused.
Intelligent disobedience is effectively a formalization of the way informal language-interactions often work. When you ask a person to do something, the response is can easily be a request for clarification, a comment on possible negative results, some suggestions about alternative approaches and so-forth. Often, you get a decision after a few rounds of this. Basically, a good portion of language interactions involve a bargaining and clarification process.
Now, consider the average "AI goes wrong" argument. The classic scenario is someone asks a general AI to "build a lot of paperclips" and, like Disney's Sorcerers Apprentice, the AI converts the entire earth into a paperclip factory. Here, the interactions between AI and human fail to be anything like human-to-human informal interactions. And this hypothetical scenario seems implausible just given that the scenario also posits vast understanding in the AI, an understanding which would seem to encompass language understanding such that AI could do that back-and-forth bargaining approach (the human might ask for such behavior to be avoided but theoretically we're talking the human that invented the AI and also has this sort of meta-understanding).
I also think the paperclip concept could be rehabilitated and treated with a charitable/steelman interpretation, where it's regarded as a toy example of unanticipated adverse outcomes.
Arguing that a strong AI would have to be smart enough not to make a mistake like that is really the purpose of the example.
'The way to get rid of an undesireable superior is to do only what you are ordered to do.'
The supervisor's task will fail in some way, and new leadership will be needed.
I've kept this in mind, not as a way to undermine leadership, but as a lesson in what good leaders need to know — that getting things done requires everyone to be be empowered and act in some degree at their own inititive.
I think you’re putting the cart before the horse here
I feel like this is obvious, and, therefore, if you agree with me, pls don't upvote. I feel like recently there's been an emphasis on individual responsibility which is at the very least not sustainable in the long term. I'd wrap my point up but I feel the original poster hasn't really put in the effort :-)
Now get back to work.