We Are Not Adults Just Because We Say So | Hacker News Reader

We Are Not Adults Just Because We Say So

misc-stuff.terraaeon.com

17 pointsonemoresoop23 comments

Ehhh, could have written this post and nixed the anecdote at the beginning, I feel like that weakened the insight. When you're married, there's certain gives and takes that you participate in. It doesn't make you childish for not crossing a boundary, however arbitrary it is.

For instance, my wife enjoys pollinator gardens. No, I do not allow noxious or quick spreading weeds despite how well they work for pollinators, and pull those up when I see them. She doesn't allow servers in the master bedroom closet. I keep her geology equipment in the garage. We've worked out non-negotiable boundaries so that we can stay sane, and created workarounds called compromises. I keep my servers upstairs, she cuts rock slabs in an A/C cooled area in the garage, I weed the flower beds and she plants less aggressive native pollinating flowers. If I were to tell someone about my servers, I might let slip that my wife doesn't let me keep them in my closet. Understanding boundaries in a relationship and compromising is probably one of the most adult things there is.

You two seem a lot more interesting than everyone else i know. :(

I covered years of hobby projects in the space of a couple sentences! Don't neglect the missing story, which is the days and days of staring at a television while I wait for inspiration.

I'm positive the people you know are interesting, just not in ways that can be waved around on a social media post. Dive into a meetup group, hacker space, or even a volunteer group. Some of the coolest projects are found when cross-pollinating between tech and <insert field here>.

> Another example of childish thinking is that most people believe they need the government's permission to be married.

There’s a bunch of legal stuff that unfortunately gets bundled with marriage so I’d have to disagree with this one.

It has implications on taxation, estate planning, government benefits, employment benefits, medical decision making and visitation, burial arrangement rights, joint adoption, foster care rights, property rights in divorce, child support, and more.

Exactly this. The government is not granting permission, it is merely acknowledging the change of status. Something that is important for all the legal ramifications you mentioned.

> The government is not granting permission

No. The government limits who can be married. And how many of them can. And what age. Et al.

You need as much permission to be married as you need permission for a visa. The government doesn't acknowledge the status, it grants it by legal authority. Being in love doesn't give you visitation rights or tax benefits, and being married doesn't mean you're in love.

Married is a legal status.

You can also participate in whatever non-civil marriage activity with whom- or what-ever you like. If you want to marry 2 guys, 3 gals, and a tractor - go for it! It just won't be considered a legal marriage.

Both the need for permission and all of your listed implications are true of legal marriage.

> Governments did not invent this; therefore, they do not need to be consulted when two people enter into an agreement.

This is what I call argument soup. Stuff that sounds like logic but is nonsense intended to fool people who like the feeling of logic without actually applying it.

Yeah, I mean, that's true, and also...the statement is false.

All government originally started out as theocracy, and the "traditional definition" of marriage is a union for the purpose of exchanging property (as women were generally regarded) sanctioned by the local religious leader, who had absolute power.

Argument soup is a great description. I’ll be using this from now on.

I've always wondered what the reasoning was, and now, still is they do have to be included tho. Besides "that's how it is"

Marriage in some countries comes with a bunch of legal rights and obligations, so you do need the government to agree if you also want it to enforce those things.

In New Zealand, marriage has no legal value as far as I know. All the law that I know of, such as for property rights, immigration, and social welfare that would usually be about marriage is instead about being in a "relationship of the nature of marriage". That's kind of scary because you can sleepwalk into becoming effectively married and then suddenly you lose some of your property rights.

The core of this argument is that dependency == child. But when you really think about it, even radical dependency is implied by civilization [1]. Do what distinguishes the parent-child relationship then? Dependency, yes, but a mutual depend informed by love. An adult is not an adult because of some notion of radical independence, but because the adult accepts responsibility for things that they don’t necessarily control. They provide the space to make systems less strongly coupled.

[1] https://mobile.twitter.com/TechEmails/status/156771298597970...

This feels like a half-thought-out rant.

> Adults do not allow others to make their decisions for them. They make their own decisions and benefit or suffer from the consequences of them. Those who do not are children.

… not everyone has choice available to them.

> He said his wife would not "let" him use a full-sized computer, which strongly suggests that he believed he had no say in the matter.

Based on what? This is a common phrase along my parent’s generation. The author has an axe to grind and is looking for targets.

If it smells like MRA whistling...

Agreed, it doesn't strike me as very coherent.

Coincidentally, I was thinking about this very subject the other day. What makes an adult? I think it's multi-dimensional - not just a few but perhaps dozens. All of us mature in various ways, and what we call our "flaws" are merely those dimensions which we have not yet matured to adulthood.

For instance, I've always been a hard worker. I started working at my family's restaurant when I was 10, washing dishes. Along the "don't be lazy" dimension of the childhood/adulthood spectrum, I've been an adult since I was 10. But on the other hand, I still have a very hard time eating vegetables, and in that sense I'm still a child in a 38 year olds body.

"Another example of childish thinking is that most people believe they need the government's permission to be married."

The writer ignores the legal apparatus around marriage, which creates a variety of rights and duties. I don't, for example, have the government's permission to get married just now, for I am already married. Getting married again without divorcing my wife would be called bigamy. And there are matters such as next of kin status, inheritance, and so on tied up with it.

"Of course, nuances apply in all these areas."

Yes, but considering them up front would thin out the post considerably.

<< Most of us who call ourselves adults still look to those around us for approval in nearly everything we do.

I am mildly confused by the article in general, but this kinda put it into overdrive. Is an adult someone, who does not need approval? I can maybe understand the reasoning behind it, but I am not sure I agree.

If the goal was making Iron John look appealing in comparison, it worked.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/122600.Iron_John

> Employers have parent/child relationships with many of their employees.

And customers have parent/child relationships with employers?

Have you ever been to a Walmart?

If you are not in the U.S., have you ever seen YouTube videos of Walmart?

I am an adult because I get treated like one. If you treat a toddler like an adult then so he is. "We are children inside" just means the adult stuff is layered ontop of the child stuff, it does not mean in our essence we are children but rather the sum of our whole life as we remember it from childhood to old age is who we are as opposed to a snapshot of how we appear today or in the past.

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