Hacker News Reader

Comment by sorcerer-mar | Hacker News Reader

No but the living conditions were atrocious, dangerous, unsanitary, and probably quite psychologically traumatizing (e.g. kids growing up in households where adults would have sex in the same room have all sorts of problems)

Edit: Since HN contrarians who'd never want their children living in some particular conditions find it so confusing how others might not too:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01452...

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3805127/

Overcrowded living quarters is a well known vector for a huge array of problems. Academic underachievement, sexual abuse, substance abuse, mood disorders, abusive relationships, the list goes on. Even after controlling for socioeconomic status!

View on HN

  … traumatizing (e.g. kids growing up in households where adults would have sex in the same room have all sorts of problems

Sure, to my western/puritanical upbringing that is weird, but I suspect for the majority of human history: parents have being having sex in very close proximity to their children. Separate bedrooms, even separate beds are a modern luxury.

> but I suspect for the majority of human history: parents have being having sex in very close proximity to their children.

Putting aside how true such a claim is... just because something was a thing for most of human history doesn't mean it doesn't cause issues.

> just because something was a thing for most of human history doesn't mean it doesn't cause issues

I suspect they had far more important things to worry about - like getting enough food.

One can have more than one problem.

If children were traumatized by witnessing their parents having sex, I expect the human race would have failed millennia ago.

You can be traumatized and carry on with life. For example, your terrible arguments in this thread are traumatizing me, and I'm somehow soldiering on. Satan give me strength, oh dark lord.

I am well pleased that my arguments are traumatizing you!

Your boos mean nothing; I've seen what makes you cheer! :p

I'm not sure I follow your logic.

Do you think that rape and slavery is also not going to affect people? Because those were both pretty prevalent in most of human history too, yet here the human race is - alive, with different views on those things as we did in the past.

Are you really comparing rape and slavery to seeing your parents having sex?

Are you really comparing a living arrangement where adults regularly have sex in front of you due to overcrowding to "seeing your parents having sex?"

The issue is that we raise kids into this world, and not a different time and place. They grow up to be maladapted to this world.

You are suggesting it’s maladapted if they go and do the same thing in their own families later? Why should they care about what the majority thinks is good and normal?

Because if you need to spend time in a classroom, or a workplace, or form romantic relationships, it's important that you have attitudes that are somewhat in line with meaningful portions of the society around you. Obviously.

i always drag this one out: For a lot of modern history, public hangings were a family affair. Pack up a picnic and go downtown to watch a man hang.

> then exposing people to violence in their daily life is bad

Oh my god yes, and we’re doing such a great job of that aren’t we? We have gratuitous violence on demand now.

Public hangings are fine compared to what I see on TV/Netflix.

They don't care about people being desensitized to violence. Need a new generation of soldiers, after all.

But sex? Other people being able to see sexual depictions literally gets people's panties in a twist.

[flagged]

Yes, and that was bad. If you prefer a society free of violence (I do), then exposing people to violence in their daily life is bad.

> If you prefer a society free of violence

I would prefer to ride a Unicorn to work. This is pure fantasy. There will always be human violence. Preparing children for it is a lost art in sections of the world.

In many civilized/industrialized places, these children (sometimes already matured) are immediately traumatized or pretend it is of no consequence through various rationalizations. It's a cycle that repeats in throughout history.

We’re currently witnessing what happens when people who know violence works encounter people who think vibes and peaceful protest are effective. I think kids would do well to understand that violence is part of life and how to handle (or use) it.

I think this is about as well as this can be said--failing to teach kids about bad stuff about humanity isn't protecting them, it's failing them.

My wife grew up in a very sheltered church environment where everyone at school and in her life pretty much followed the rules. It didn’t teach her how to handle real life and the real world was a rude awakening.

Similarly my older relatives keep saying “but they can’t do that!” About a lot of what’s happening in the US without realising that they very much can. Because nobody is physically stopping them. The exception is my grandfather, who is an honest guy but says he got in some fights in his navy days and ended up better for it.

Maybe we need to bring back superheroes who beat the shit out of the bad guys.

I want my own daughters to know how to protect themselves with diplomacy-or- violence if the former fails.

> Maybe we need to bring back superheroes who beat the shit out of the bad guys.

Superheroes don't exist and never have. People who work tirelessly to chip away -- often imperceptibly -- at sources of badness exist. That's it.

I meant the fictional characters.

Is public hanging "teaching kids about bad stuff?"

No.

There's at least a little space between "a world free of violence" and "public hanging".

I said we should want a world free of violence, and not purposely exposing people to violence as a matter of daily life (such as public hangings) is an important step towards that. Both in the direct sense that public violence is obviously violence, and indirectly in that there's good evidence that exposure to violence increases proclivity to violence.

Two simple questions:

1. Do we want a world without violence?

2. If yes, is public hanging a step towards that world, or away from it?

There will never be a world without violence. The minute such a world existed, bad people would realize they could conquer it.. through violence. And as someone who was raised by parents who were kind and goodhearted and thought flower power and peaceful protest was how things changed I discovered the real world is, in fact, a good deal more cruel than the bubble they raised me in.

1. I don't think this is possible. I think it's better to pursue a world where violence is unnecessary and aberrant.

2. I'm refusing to indulge your strawman. Let's use something like "is teaching your kid how to deal with bullies a step towards that world or away from it"

> I don't think this is possible. I think it's better to pursue a world where violence is unnecessary and aberrant.

I didn't say it was possible. I said it's worth striving for, and then you stated the same thing with different words. We agree.

Ah so you think societies that did public hangings tended to have a strong and reasonable sense of justice.

You are wrong.

Justice in the sense of "punishing people who are legitimately antisocial" tends to yield less indulgent punishments because they recognize that true justice must be dealt cold and with solemnity.

Or do you think it's only a coincidence that the most abhorrent justice systems on the planet do public executions and "civilized" justice systems do not?

I think we're talking past each other so I'm bowing out.

https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/deterren...

Sounds good

Spoken like someone who lives in the least violent era of human history.

Does the fact that you can't ride a unicorn to work compel you to settle for walking 7 miles barefoot? Or is the sensible thing to do to constantly chip away at sources of badness in the world, even if you can't achieve unicorns?

It cracks me up how you try to assert the "realist" position while holding an opinion that only makes sense in a university ethics course. Public hangings don't "prepare" a child for a world with non-zero levels of violence, obviously. Living 4 adults and 8 children to a single-room household doesn't "prepare" a child for anything you'd willingly sign them up to do.

Bad things are bad. They should be avoided. You actually think this too and will take action to avoid most bad things that you can. But alas, the Internet comment box is here for you to wisely consider: Maybe bad things are not bad. Very smart, lol.

Everything is traumatizing to these people. Their mother told them to hold the bottle for their baby sister. Oh no, what is this? Is this Parentification, the Source of More Trauma? Despite the fact that the elder sibling would prefer to sleep, perchance to dream-- and there lies the rub! For in that sleep, what trauma comes!

Do you want your kids to grow up in a single-room household with 4 adults and 8 children?

If this were the only way they would exist, then it would not stop me from bringing them into being. My ancestors made the right choice. I will not deny my genetics their legacy.

If I choose other conditions, it’s not because of trauma but because comfort is good.

Right, you prefer other conditions because they're better.

We have decades of research to show that more space and privacy is not merely a matter of comfort. Or, if it is, that "comfort" affects more things than one would expect.

I've already linked to them above.

I grew up in conditions you would never countenance and I’m incredibly well adjusted. What value are your systems when they lead to your trauma. You are constantly traumatized and I am not, despite facing conditions you could not believe.

Either I am inherently an übermensch or my methods are better. You have your loneliness epidemics, your PTSD, and your therapy. I don’t.

Or to put it evocatively:

https://x.com/pjayevans/status/1612904509575139328?s=46

This would be an excellent rebuttal to the claim that everyone who experiences a specific type of hardship later has a specific outcome.

But for the claim you're responding to, this appears to mostly just be some cringey self-aggrandizement?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com