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Comment by spicyusername | Hacker News Reader

This reminds me of that quote from Anna Karenina.

> All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

One thing I think isn't being emphasized is that those authors aren't saying "parenting doesn't matter" as much as they're saying "you have little control over what kind of parental environment you provide, so relax and do the best you can".

You don't control your genes, your kids genes, and you don't control your environment. Those are the (super overly simplistic) factors that comprise parenting.

Another way to look at it is that, given your genes and the way you were raised, you're going to be a certain kind of parent. Given your kids genes, the way you raise them, and their experiences, they're going to be a certain kind of adult. You don't have control over any of that as a parent, so relax and enjoy the ride.

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> Given your kids genes, the way you raise them, and their experiences, they're going to be a certain kind of adult. You don't have control over any of that as a parent, so relax and enjoy the ride.

you have control over TONS of that as a parent, specifically "the way you raise them" and a ton of their experiences.

your kid won't become an asshole due to "asshole genes" they might inherit from you, but if you act like an asshole around any kid, eventually they'll learn to become more of an asshole

likewise, nice personalities aren't inherited, they're developed after birth (ever hear a newborn say "thank you for my existence"? so rude!)

> if you act like an asshole around any kid, eventually they'll learn to become more of an asshole

Exactly true. But the thing is, you, based on your genes and lived experiences, are already going to be the kind of parent who will be an asshole, or you won't.

You are already either the kind of parent who will worry about being the right kind of parent, or you aren't.

Those choices are dictated by who you are, and who you are is already defined by your genes and lived experiences.

How your kids respond to you is also already defined by _their_ genes and lived experiences.

> Exactly true. But the thing is, you, based on your genes and lived experiences, are already going to be the kind of parent who will be an asshole, or you won't.

I have not seen any evidence to indicate that people have no control over their behavior and cannot change it based on the circumstances. It seems like a ridiculous example of fatalism taken to the extreme: "Your honor, yes, I killed that man, but based on my genes and lived experiences, I was already either going to kill him or not"

The decisions are determined by an intelligent creature weighing the choices and making a decision, which is often different when you have a kid around. I wouldn't be saying "asshole" if there was a young kid here, for example, mine or otherwise. Indeed, many the "experiences" you have as an adult, which continue to mold your personality, are consciously chosen by you.

I think the key is the way everything is connected. Should you hit your kids? Probably not, but if you’re the type of person who believes in Corporal punishment you’re probably not the type of person who is self reflective about it.

If you’re really conciencious chances are you’re probably doing the right things to improve yourself and obsessing about it isn’t going to help. If you’re not conociencious then your not opening yourself to the kind of experiences that are going to make you a better parent so it’s a self fulfilling prophecy.

> if you’re the type of person who believes in Corporal punishment you’re probably not the type of person who is self reflective about it.

Where are you getting your data from for all these assumptions you're throwing out?

Like, one could say "If you're the type of person who swears a lot, you're probably not the type of person who is self reflective about it" with the exact same amount of confidence, yet be just as wrong (I myself volunteer to be the example which disproves the rule).

Often people are MOST self-reflective about their perceived flaws (before you potentially say that anyone with a flaw won't perceive it as one, I again volunteer to be the counterexample which disproves such a hypothetic rule)

I didn’t say do you accidentally engage in corporal punishment, I said if you believe in corporal punishment, implying a difference between a flaw and a belief not shared by all that may still damage a child. Sure you can change your beliefs but it’s not like a flaw that your self reflective about.

> Often people are MOST self-reflective about their perceived flaws

And yet often they continue to engage in them. I don’t know that we’re disagreeing all that much except perhaps on the definition of “control”. I don’t think most people have the self discipline to control their own behavior so much as influence it, but maybe that’s just one of my flaws.

> I said if you believe in corporal punishment [...then you definitely wont ever stop engaging in it to any degree]

Again, where are you getting the data for these assumptions of yours?

>> Often people are MOST self-reflective about their perceived flaws

> And yet often they continue to engage in them

Here we see the goalpost shift: *"OFTEN"* being added.

If the rule isn't always true, then the advice, ("parenting doesn't matter") which depends on it always being true, is wrong. If people can, in fact, consciously better themselves, then the advice to not even try, because _we can only do what our genes and environment tell us to do_, is wrong.

So again, I'll be the counterexample which proves this rule wrong, for the third time in a row: I quit drinking to excess entirely, after previously being someone who, as you put it, _"believed"_ in drinking to excess. Should I not have tried? Before I did, you may have told me, "drinking to excess is just who you are due to your genes and your environment".

I don’t think I’m saying anything remotely controversial so I think the correct answer here is “Ok, you’re right.” (To be honest I think this is the correct answer because I believe you to be arguing in good faith and our disagreement is subtle)

I don't think you're saying anything remotely _controversial_ either (unsupported is a different matter), and I haven't seen anyone offended or anything, so I hope I didn't give you that idea simply by disproving the hypotheses that "parenting doesn't matter" and the corollaries necessary for that narrowly-held hypothesis to be true.

Itching for a fight? I don’t think I need data because my argument is a=b because a=b. People who do t think they need to change don’t think they need to change. People who do think they need to change do think they need to change. I’m open to the possibility that Mthese categories don’t exis. They are certainly not binary and not persistent over time. A person who didn’t need to change could become a person who does think they need to change and give versa. But maybe I’m completely wrong and there’s only one type of person I. This world, the type who knows all their faults.

It’s also subjective, what person A sees as one category or the other person B sees as the opposite

At some point this becomes an argument of “what is free will” and I don’t think we have the time to answer that one.

Remember, the premise we're discussing is "parenting doesn't matter", so if you're the type who DOES think you need to change, this premise says, don't worry about changing, even then, because it won't matter.

If you've previously engaged in corporal punishment with your kid, and you think, "maybe I shouldn't do this anymore", the "parenting doesn't matter" premise I'm arguing against says, "hey, don't worry about that! hit your kids! in fact, hit them harder if you want! it doesn't matter, because parenting doesn't matter!"

so yeah, the "parenting doesn't matter" premise that most people here have said sounds ridiculous, does indeed sound ridiculous.

By this logic you don't control anything in your life, as your choices are always defined by your past and experiences. I think it's very fair to assume room for free will in a discussion like this.

Speaking as a partially reformed asshole, I believe we do have some control over this. It may not be possible to just decide to stop being an asshole and flip a switch, but with some self-awareness and consistent effort, it is possible to make progress.

> likewise, nice personalities aren't inherited, they're developed after birth

Arguing against my own article here, but what makes you sure? There's no gene for saying thank you, but there are very likely to be genes that affect broader dimensions of personality. In fact, the Big 5 are highly heritable. I'd say "genetics don't matter" is too strong, just lik "parenting doesn't matter".

Because there is far more evidence, both formal, and lived experience for everybody, multiple times per day, that people's environment (including who they surround themselves with) affect their personality, than there is evidence that it does not.

The "newborn saying thank you" comment was a joke, as they generally don't say much when newborn, but illustrative of the point: newborns do not have any expressed personality to speak of, because genetics alone cannot create one. Your newborn has zero personality, but with the right upbringing, and perhaps the right genes, it will have a great one. With just the genes... probably not.

tl;dr the claim I am arguing against is TFA's "environment doesn't matter", but I don't claim that genetics don't.

> and you don't control your environment

Surely you do control your environment, at least to some degree. E.g. when we were house-hunting, one of the factors that weighed pretty heavily was the environment (neighbourhood, schools, etc.) that we'd be putting our kids in by choosing a given home.

Right, but the kinds of choices you are going to make are dictated by the kind of person you are.

The kind of person you are is dictated by your genes are your past experiences.

All those factors are out of your control.

You were (are) only ever going to do the kinds of things you're going to do. So, in the context of parenting, stressing about what kind of parent you should be is meaningless. You're always only ever going to be the kind of parent you're going to be and your kids are only ever going to respond to that parenting in the way that they respond.

Amusingly, this also means that parents who are going to stress about being the right kind of parent are always going to do that anyways.

This denies the effect of exogenous information on choices, and conflates objective determinism with subjective free will.

What if telling someone they had free will to make a choice affected the choices they deterministically made?

What if saying something is out of your control changed what you did versus saying something is in your control?

Even within the theory that things are "out of your control" due to some automatic mechanism, that mechanism is still triggered by exogenous information input.

> This denies the effect of exogenous information on choices

It doesn't though.

Some parents, on reading one of these author's books on genetics, may alter the way they behave.

Some parents may not.

The way that either parent reacts to reading this "exogenous information" is dictated by their genes and lived experiences.

You appear to hold a strongly mechanistic view of humanity (and perhaps of the world as a whole?). Not everyone shares that view. So if you're going to argue from that as a basis, you must expect we won't all share your conclusions.

(But of course this is just my genes and experiences dictating my words...)

> Originally proposed by Judith Rich Harris in The Nurture Assumption, and promoted by popsci big shots like Matt Ridley and Stephen Pinker, the idea got another push from Robert Plomin in his 2018 book Blueprint. The latest proponent is economist Bryan Caplan on the 80,000 Hours podcast. Their argument is backed by heavyweight research, but simple at heart.

I'm just outlining the arguments related to this discussion from most of those author's works.

This podcast "Final Thoughts on Free Will" by Sam Harris presents some compelling arguments, if you're interested.

https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/241...

I think the fundamental flaw in the "we are who we are when we're born and can never change it so don't try" hypothesis, which posits this because "we can only do what our genes and lived experiences tell us to do",

is that those genes and lived experiences give us the ability to change our programming, IE make a choice in changing how we behave, by adding new experiences of our choosing.

Regarding environment, you do control it to a big extent. You pick where to live. You pick what your kid is exposed to in early years, like playground, youtube, things you do together. You pick childcare (or to skip it). And lots of other small things along the road. And, most importantly, you control yourself which kid takes as baseline and role model.

Of course, it’s not 100% clean room. But parents do have control of massive portion of stuff in early years.

But how does that environment affect who they are? It affects certain measures of happiness, in the short term, but does it affect their long term future?

Yes.

Living creatures tend to mimick, primates especially.

A primate surrounded by bad personalities will mimick them and develop a bad personality.

I think we both understand how a bad personality can affect one's long-term future.

That sets baseline what the kid will take as normal. E.g. partying vs solo silent entertainment, food habits, substances abuse, relationship with peers and opposite sex, money management habits…

It’s not exactly affecting happiness. It’s just laying foundation for personality and lifestyle.

If it leads to „happiness“, it depends on culture at the time of him growing up. And wether he will feel a need to fit in or rebel.

But you do control your kids genes massively through mate choice. This is what Plomin captures with parents matter, but they don’t make a difference.

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