Adults today care too much what young people think | Hacker News Reader

Adults today care too much what young people think

persuasion.community

84 pointsjseliger69 comments

What a bizarre mish-mash of arguments. We open with an appeal to Dr. Drew "Celebrity Rehab" Pinsky, who has spent the last 20 years beclowning himself at every opportunity. Then on to Mad Men, a show whose thru-line over 7 seasons was the pathology of the deferential culture this article is talking about. Then a doctor who points out the fascinating new observation that people want to seem younger (a topic Mad Men visits every other episode). Then: this just in: grandparents come up with stupid alternative names for "grandparent"!. A professor gives a talk at a university and is met with protests: why does he care what young protesters think? Under-investigated corollary: why did he bother giving a talk to a bunch of youths in the first place? A governor informs a crowd of young citizens that they will need to deal with the decisions made by seniors today (what with mortality and all). Then, the military, a system where deference is definitely organized by age and not, you know, a formal hierarchy of ranks. Nope: oldest person in the room wins, that's what I always hear! Continuing, only one of this person's teachers knew what a Pokemon was, and they didn't pronounce it right. Those were the good old days! Older adults these days are too reluctant to assert authority. You know, besides determining the outcome of almost every election.

There's no need for Henderson to debate me on any of this; I'm 46 years old, roughly 10 years his senior, and hereby do assert my authority. Take notes, kid.

I have the benefit of never having heard of Pinsky nor having seen one episode of “Mad Men”, so I experienced the article as containing a few insights that resonated well with me, as I’ve observed the same things, at least in the US.

I thought it was clear that the professor did pronounce Pokémon correctly, thereby confirming his coolness.

The point about the military, I assumed, was that rank is a proxy for age in civilian life, and indicates experience within the uniformed world.

The professor gave the talk, presumably, in order to educate or enlighten the privileged brats who should have (I say this with no trace of irony) shut up and learned rather than protesting.

Mad Men argument doesn't hold up either, Michael from Vsauce did a recent video on exactly this, we simply perceive images of young people in the past decades as older than they are https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjqt8T3tJIE

> Then on to Mad Men, a show whose thru-line over 7 seasons was the pathology of the deferential culture this article is talking about

I agree it was a mistake for Henderson to rely on a work created by the cultural arsonists in Hollywood.

> Older people in this category are now reluctant to say that they have accrued some useful knowledge to share and wisdom to impart

> Other cultures figured out that older people are generally wiser. The more days you live, the more things you know. When you’re young you have beauty and when you’re old you have wisdom. Only this dumb country wants to posit wisdom and beauty in youth.

Being old doesn't guarantee a person has any wisdom, likewise being young doesn't guarantee beauty.

Ironically, I think the assumption of wisdom in the old is the reason so many old people lack it, because it encourages them to think that aging is enough to gain it, instead of actively cultivating lifelong habits of: going outside their comfort zone, reflecting on their experiences, articulating and organizing those learnings, etc.

I'm older, and I have always thought likewise, even when young.

However, if a person IS older and wise, it is very much in a younger person's best interests to find someone like that and learn from them - have a mentor.

Being young doesn't mean you are beautiful compared to others, but it sure does mean that most people (not all) are more beautiful when they are younger...a LOT more beautiful. I look at people from high school and want to throw up in my mouth they are so ugly, and then I always realize that I am that old and want throw up some more.

As far as the last paragraph goes, some people stop actively cultivating those habits when they are 6-years-old. Generally, what people are like at 6 is what they are like at 66. I've known a friend for 55 years, and he's the same dude as when we were 10. Same everything. Not saying everyone is like this, but you know...most of us are, let's get real.

Personally, I think most of us respect the age because of maybe genetic, maybe culture, whatever it is, but first, we had to listen to our parents who were ANCIENT HUGE PEOPLE who knew everything when we were small, and then our teachers and other adults until we are,oh, maybe 12 when we reach puberty and start making our own way in the world. But even then, our older teachers literally know stuff we don't up to 12 grade and in university.

Those remnants of the proper respect that we had when we were 1 or 2 or 10 years old of older people stays with us - not just us but our parents, their parents, our children, our children's children.

It's different with different people. Some people believe everything told to them by their parents, as soon as my parents told me about religion when I was 4-years-old, I figured it out it was 100% bullshit, so I always had a problem with authority. But, why do 96% of people believe in a god? Because someone older than them told them to do that, and people don't change their minds once it is embedded in there. Same with authority and age.

Furthermore, in days gone by, before universal education and book printing, there was no way to "store knowledge" like there is in books. And computers. So a 15-year-old couldn't go to the internet and look up stuff his parent or teachers don't know. It didn't exist. So I don't know if listening is in our DNA = those who listened to their elders tended to survive and reproduce because they learned how to look out for the lion or bear or whatever. Nobody could look up online how to watch out for lions and know instantly. Tradition is strong. We still use a calendar that was originally put together 2000 years ago, with only one update in all that time. We are using 60 minutes and 60 seconds from the Sumerians of 3,500 years ago.

That's what I say. Does that sound wise of full of shit stupid, as I'm older? Or just boring and obvious? Doesn't matter, I mainly wrote it for myself.

I don't see this dynamic where I am in my station in life at the age of 45. To be forthright my station is just a part time employee at a cool grocery store but besides one other coworker everyone is younger than myself. I'm actually very impressed with some of the so called minors that work with me. They seem fairly well grown up in respect to my own maturity at least in what limited interaction I can have with them at work. There is no pettiness, everyone is very kind and helpful to each other and the customers.

Perhaps that was a meaningless paragraph in comparison to the environments found at universities of prestige. I've never studied at one and I can't say how they have evolved.

Basically though if a kid is raised by two parents of the following attributes: full commitment to the partnership, not letting work interfere too often with child development, and a father who takes honor seriously; there should not be any problem with feeling comfortable in further stages of life for either parents or children.

The woman is usually the spiritual leader of the family and becoming grandma is a sacred thing that grownups wish to become. Not having grandpa means not having so many years of experience and mistakes not to know about.

I never met my granddad and all I have of him are some photos. But I have audio interviews my dad made that I cherish for knowing the kinds of problems he had.

My parents passed away years ago and they raised me starting at a later than average age.

Because my parents could not repair their relationship they got divorced and although dad always stressed I could call him anytime, I rarely did because I feared him. Not because he was abusive or mean, but i didn't always take his wisdom well unless I was with him in person. I saw him on weekends. After I returned to my home town I was with him as often as I could until he passed of a difficult cancer, cancer of the pancreas.

I feel that I may have matured much faster if I followed dad's advice more often, but I feel like it would have been hammered on me daily, if he were around with mom every day till they passed.

At 45, I feel about as mature as the so called minors I work with. In most cultures, by the age of 16 or less, you are pretty much an adult and have all the capacity to be one in society.

The more time you spend with your kids, the more respect they will have for you, and also if you treat everyone with respect, your kids will emulate you for it.

Lovely insights; thanks.

I wish it was far more common for parents to model treating people with respect for their children.

“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.” - Socrates

Complaining about "kids these days" is as old as humanity.

There's also Socrates on writing:

> If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks.

That one is somewhat true. Before literacy was common people would pass stories and information orally. This meant they could orally recite thousands of lines of poetry and stories that they had memorized throughout their lives. Some living a nomadic sort of life, like some aboriginals, still pass on these stories by retelling. But most literate people never train their memory to such a degree.

That's not a real quote.

I like what little I know about Socrates. Poor bugger was accused of corrupting the youth saying things like democracy wasn't as good of an idea as it sounded. Then he was condemned to death by a simple majority. At least he stayed fast to what he believed to the end.

Diogenes was a cool guy too. He used his dad's mint to debase his own coins for profits, got condemned to slavery, escaped to Athens and lived in a jar, and slighted Alexander. He made a little money as a tutor. Those Greeks were awesome.

I think a big part of why children and young people are coddled so much today is because we have very small families compared to previous generations. Each child is so incredibly precious and all the eggs are in 1 or 2 baskets that parents are:

- able to be hyper involved in their life

- act more like friends than the leaders of a clan

- fiercely defend their children from judgement or discipline of other adults since it’s taken personally now when you hade so few kids. Young people have picked up on this and know they rule.

It’s complex but I don’t think kids were better off because of corporal punishment or being unheard simply because they were kids. When families had more kids on average the parents didn’t have as much time for each kid.

I think people making observations about how different generations act should steer clear of comparisons to fictional characters. Don Draper isn't an actual, typical person from the 60s, he's what dramatic writers of today think an exceptionally interesting character from the 60s would be like.

The person who wrote this, Rob Henderson, is young to me. He looks to be in his late 30's, early 40's so he is starting the transition from young to old. It's appropriate to care what young people think at his age because it's good that parents care about what their teenagers think.

Now that I'm in my 60's I'm aware that I don't know what young people think because they have grown up in a completely different environment than me. I had long periods of quiet as a child where I had to entertain myself and if I wanted to engage with friends I had to wait for school. I can't imagine growing up in an always connected world with an overload of entertainment distractions. I'm pretty sure I would think differently if I had.

I was having a conversation with someone around my age about remote work and young workers. I made the comment that I couldn't have imagined graduating from school and not having an office to go into--though I'd have appreciated an office with more flexibility around commuting.

My friend's response--which I certainly agree with--is that in addition to the changes in technology (I didn't even have non-internal email and that was fairly advanced for the time) younger people are just a lot more used to living to a significant degree in a digital environment than we were.

And, yes, as a child I lived in a fairly rural environment without neighbors so didn't really do much in the way of socializing outside of school.

> It's appropriate to care what young people think at his age because it's good that parents care about what their teenagers think.

Why? You should be kind to your teenagers the same as you’re kind to your toddler. But they’re ur-humans whose brains won’t be fully developed for another decade. They have little to teach you, but you have lots to teach them. After all, you’ve been in their shoes but they haven’t been in your’s.

> Why?

Because teenagers can go off the rails pretty quickly if you're not paying attention to what they think. They could be influenced by a malicious peer or get caught up in some thought cloud which you know is damaging and dangerous. Teenagers are susceptible to social contagions, like self-harm or suicide.

I think teenagers have a lot to learn that we can only teach in theory or with fundamentals. Once they figure it out, we can learn from them.

I never grew up in a world where:

- we had ‘hide from an armed attacker’ drills in school.

- what I said as a 16 year old could jeopardize my career a dozen plus years later (thank god Usenet is dead.)

- marijuana was considered genuinely harmless and pseudo-legal.

- getting a ~5.0 weighted GPA and perfect SAT scores wasn’t enough to get you into any state school.

- even the most chaste kids are desensitized to porn as teenagers

Marijuana affects brain development in teenagers. Just FYI.

Did you think I was suggesting it didn’t?

I have learned a lot from my kids. They have their own personalities and perspectives to contribute, and the world today is different than when I was a kid. They are not really at all like a blank program that you just need to run through the same boot up procedure that you went through. At least in my opinion.

30 year old male. Everyone I know does hard drugs. I don't have friends.

Sounds rough... I work and deal with a lot of 20 years olds and I find them quite dry, restrained and conservative to what I was doing at their age. Could be a regional thing?

There's the fentanyl class and the PMC class, and the two rarely meet

Off track a little, but 30s and 40s isn't old IMO. 60 and over IMO is what is classed as old or mature or whatever people want to call it.. I would say 30 to 59 is middle aged or what ever modern term is used these days. Under 30 is young.

Might be simple, but I definitely don't consider 30s old

The title is 'adults' though, not 'old people'. Those in their 30s are definitely adults.

To me it's clear that even 'young people' as used throughout the article is intended as euphemism for 'children' (i.e. non-adults) that's perceived to be less condescending. (Perhaps the author cares too much what children think!)

A good example of what happens when older people in charge of organizations defer to the young and naive instead of using their role to socialize young people into institutional values: https://theintercept.com/2022/06/13/progressive-organizing-i...

This article is so bad on so many levels. Did he pay attention to Mad Men at all? The whole point of the show is that Don Draper is not acting like an adult at the beginning of the series. He is impulsive and selfish and has to learn to be a better person who cares about the needs of others.

Dr. Drew is a clown and I shouldn't waste any part of my life responding to anything he says but I will say this; if you think "asserting your authority" and shutting other people down is acting like an adult, you are the one who has some maturing to do emotionally and intellectually regardless of your biological age.

So many problems with this article.

1. The article title appears, at least to me, to contradict its subtitle.

2. The article talks about adults, but then seems to define adults as aging baby boomers, which at this point are generally considered elderly and mostly are out of work.

As somebody hardly middle-aged (barely not a millennial) with adult children perhaps my perspective is unique. In my career over the past few years I have had the frequent pleasure of working with young adults with a thirst of learning and eager to listen and expand their perspectives, and for these talented young adults I will happily make as much time as they want for learning. Young people generally, though, I really can't be bothered to impart any guidance at all. I really don't care if they are living in squalor of ignorance and our society is doomed to destruction when handed over to that next generation, and I didn't used to think this way. Most people my age I know think the same way.

The reason why my perspective is shaped in this way is because of the pervasiveness of expertise in young people. I say that tongue in cheek. I have encountered many occasions, both online and in the real world, of young people wanting to prove their knowledge dominance like its some kind of battle. Winning, it seems, is critically important to their self-esteem more than food or finance. It is not worth it to spend my time with helpful guidance, that anybody can easily discard without issue or conflict, to people who want to use the opportunity as ammunition for a fight.

Don't cast pearls before swine..

What rites of passage do young people have now? What can they be inducted into? What prescriptions can be made for them? What traditions are reinforced? Isn't 'wisdom' a dirty word? Young people are told they are able to do anything they want. Nobody really believes that do they? There are still underlying rules and it's pointless believing we can exist without acknowledging them. At some point people take on responsibilities or there is just endless finger pointing. Being nice can be cruel.

Didn’t read it. Just know that adults across the ages and especially today very much care about shaping and influencing how the next generation thinks.

What does it mean to 'act your age'? The author says people used to act older than their age and now they act younger. Maybe people prefer informality to the Mad Men pretense of charm and authority.

They also say older people are reluctant now to assert their authority.

This just seems like a call for a more rigid hierarchical society based on age that I don't want. I agree that people try to hard to please others, but I don't think using age or 'seriousness' as an organizing principle is the solution.

The rigid hierarchical society based on age is literally what created all the prosperity that surrounds you. Silicon Valley in its heyday the 1970s and 1980s was the product of people who grew up in the 1950s.

Society is now transitioning to being run by millennials, the first generation to be raised by parents who wanted to be their friends instead of authority figures. How’s that working out? As far as I can tell it’s all going off the rails.

I don’t think the parent child relationship style is the single most important factor in all the changes that have happened since then.

It’s not just that. It’s a generation of adults who are uncomfortable with the notion of being adults and in charge.

Being an adult and in charge are two different things. Further, it only takes 1 person to steer a ship, plenty of people don't need to be in charge for society to function well.

That still doesn’t seem like the main issue to me.

Stagnant growth in wages? Huge increases in costs of housing, education, medicine? Globalization? Change in social customs regarding relationships, marriage, etc? Political shifts?

Or conversely, was post-wwii prosperity in the US directly attributable to a rigid hierarchical age-oriented society? I am not sure that’s entirely clear either.

A lot of those problems can be traced back to the failure of the older generation to teach the next generation to preserve the customs and institutions that served them well. E.g. college has replaced several traditional institutions not just for training workers, but in social functions. People go to college to socialize and find marriage partners the way they used to rely on churches. The difference is that college costs a lot more money.

That's such a huge reach, its hilarious.

That is some really strong post rationalization. Capitalism is a system that eventually fails so it needs to be reset in a war. Anyone who lives in a post war era has an easier time because currency collapse wipes out debt and widespread destruction of real estate makes land worthless for the purpose of extracting ground rent.

The fact that problems are popping up exactly 80 years after world war 2 isn't some coincidence. That is in fact completely normal. What is new is that central bankers this time didn't insist on tightening the money supply which means the collapse gets to be delayed again. This means there is now time to experiment and find a solution than start world war three.

> the first generation to be raised by parents who wanted to be their friends instead of authority figures

The first?

Written history goes back 5.5k years. Modern humans appeared about 200k years ago. I very much doubt that “parents trying to be friends rather than authority figures” were never tried even once during that time.

> As far as I can tell it’s all going off the rails.

I agree with that. The economy is in the gutter. Chance of nuclear war is non-zero. The climate is fckd. Huge amount of hate. Democratic processes in danger.

On the other hand what does any of that have to do with “milenials”?

>Society is now transitioning to being run by millennials... As far as I can tell it’s all going off the rails.

I would argue what is pushing us off the rails is that millennials (and other youngish people) aren't transitioning into power positions. The average age of our politicians for example is constantly creeping upwards as boomers are consistently refusing to step aside for younger generations.

On the contrary. Society remains largely being run by ever older and ever more out of touch people.

We're likely decades from any serious level of "society being run by millennials".

This thread touches on some good examples of how we've basically had a blockade of the boomer generation in leadership for the past 20 years or so.

https://mobile.twitter.com/p_millerd/status/1220728129737707...

The oldest millennials are about 40 years today.

To the extent they’re running anything its in a handful of cases over the past couple of years.

So the fact that you think it’s going off the rails it’s almost entirely because of Boomers, which basically disproves your thesis.

Also, with boomers living and working longer than ever, there’s a huge issue where millennials are getting screwed since they’re unable to enter positions of power since the boomers will just not leave.

This is a massive problem in companies whose middle management has simply not changed and has fossilized for example.

> As far as I can tell it’s all going off the rails.

What exactly is "going off the rails" and how has that been millennials' fault? Be more specific, please.

Where are millenials in charge and sending things off the rails? I am sincerely curious, I haven’t noticed power has really been transitioned to them in any major way yet, for various reasons.

If anything it seems like there is a much older generation or two that is aging but never giving up control. Every ten years the average age of those in power seems to increase by about ten years.

I found a way to put those two together. Theoretically. The people ‘really’ in power prioritise staying in power and morph to whatever shape that requires. The strats don’t really change so the avg goes up 10 years every 10 years. “Don’t you worry about blank, let me worry about blank” where blank is whatever ever those who would have power want.

So the people who control are taking their cues from millennials, (maybe because they care too much about what young people think?), and therefore the youngins can be driving things without being driver.

How’s that? Obvious next question is where did millennials take their cues from then?

In Europe, especially Spain, the problem is that the old people aren't willing to give up their posts to their young successors.

Because old people are harder to fire and unwilling to quit, companies hire and fire young adults with extremely flexible work contracts which means it is much harder for them to live off their own work and basically their best option is to live off the work off their parents or grandparents. They are literally waiting for the old people to die so they get a spot at work.

Also, I don't own a significant portion of the wealth that surrounds me, in fact I have to pay the owners of the "wealth" that surrounds me and give up a non significant portion of my income so that they can pretend to provide more prosperity than me. Having an opportunity to replace them and get rid of their prosperity would actually make my life easier.

>Maybe people prefer informality to the Mad Men pretense of charm and authority.

It's crazy that you can take the cultural conventions of respect and formality that have existed around the world and distill it down to "man men pretense". Some might say those cultural conventions have some value, and that's why they existed in the first place. I think people just have so little experience with these things that they totally forgot the purpose. I don't believe civility is out of fashion.

The mad men model I meant isn't just civility and manners. It is a veneer of manners and charm but pushing off responsibility and externalities onto others because you have prestige. There is plenty of abusive behavior, adultery, and lying to family by the Mad Men characters.

They also care about the effects of drug abuse. Why can't we go back to forcing young people to submit and doing lines of coke

This is a really weakly supported argument. Ascribing the habits, attitudes and trends of older people as solely belonging to a level of maturity is absurd. Does the author think it’s just a matter of aging before we all start saying ‘golly gee that’s swell mister?’

Not everything is progress, but (by my estimation,) young people today tend to be much more aware of things like passive-aggressiveness or toxic/abusive behavior. My boomer relatives and acquaintances try to pull manipulative behaviors that the gen z people I know are likely to call out.

Being old as a pejorative isn’t so much about work ethic, grit, or maturity as it’s about simply being rigid and judgmental. Maybe I don’t like hyperpop, but I know better than to say some dumb line like ‘when I was young we had real music, with melodies and lyrics you could understand!’ in response.

This pitting of one generation against another is silly. I'm old (late 70's) and I care about what everybody thinks, young or old. The various crises and problems we face affect everybody, and we all need to work together as best we can to help solve them.

Certainly there are some people who are selfish and exclusive, and like to discriminate against one group or another, whether based on age, class, sex, race, nationality, or whatever. Those people are idiots. If the human race destroys itself, it will be because of tribalism.

I think too much what young people care about.

Adult > 18yrs?

This is a silly thing to write about.

One of my biggest pet peeves with modern culture is how frequently you hear some hand-wavey opinion presented by some always-online voice as if it was some simple obvious fact.

I understand the allure of "truth", especially so in an age where everything feels so incomprehensible and out of control, but we, as a civilization, need to start moving away from outsourcing our worldviews to these kind of voices and get back to thinking for ourselves from the first-principals of our lived experiences.

Yeah American adults care way too much about the thoughts of young people, which is why this is not the oldest congress in history, the current and previous presidents did not start office in their 70s, and millennials are never accused of eating too much avocado toast or killing any cultural institutions beloved by older generations. … Oh wait!

FWIW the famous "avocado toast" comment was from Tim Gurner who, having been born in 1982, is (just) a millenial.

It was originally from Australian demographer/writer Bernard Salt, a boomer, and it was intended to be mocking of himself and his generation [1]. But people missed the joke and got upset about it. It was Gurner who later promoted it as a serious thing as part of his real estate business marketing.

[1] https://www.pedestrian.tv/news/bernard-salt-says-his-smashed...

Hah! I just googled it because I'd seen "avocado toast" referenced enough times I finally got curious where it came from. I didn't realise there was another level to it.

It's funny what gets people riled up sometimes.

Hey you are forgetting how the concern for the millennials ended all the nimbyist housing policy in the states, finally letting the younger generations get a meaningful foothold in the housing market.

> Don Draper is around thirty-five at the start of the series and carries himself in a more adult manner than many 45-year-olds today.

I can already tell this is going to be an awful take.

That's about the point I dropped off.

Besides Don Draper being a fictional character that the author is using as a foil, I can't imagine the type of person who would watch season 1 of Mad Men and think that Don Draper is a well-adjusted adult man who people should emulate.

Nothing more mature than living your life in a drunken stupor, ignoring your family, jumping from one adulterous relationship to another, occasionally disappearing for weeks from your job without telling anyone, and refusing to truthfully examine why you behave like this. But I guess more 45 year olds today wear hoodies instead of suits so Don Draper is more grown-up.

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