This seems a good place to point out that the evidence for the harmful effects of corporal punishment is very low quality: https://wyclif.substack.com/p/the-academic-literature-on-sma...
That's not the conclusion I'd draw from that body of evidence.
It can be a simple chain of logic saying: % of children try to test their boundaries. Of those children some get away with it, some don't. Of those who get away with it, they carry on doing it, and it has reprecussions down the line. If you look at the problem this way, it's a rational take on caning - to tighten the net against bullying.
Posted more context here:
But is that research of high quality?
This argument could be applied to anything. I'm glad it is not.
> not hitting kids is much easier than hitting kids
These two are not the alternatives in question, so the following conclusion is invalid.
I will reiterate. If you, or others, want to hit children then that's something you need to justify with cold hard studies. Not me. The default is not hitting people.
Acknowledge the reality: if I do these punishments to another adult man, I will:
1. Probably get my ass handed to me.
2. Go to jail and be prosecuted for assault and battery.
Given that, why then does it magically become okay to do it to kids?
The answer is it doesn't, fucking obviously. So, if you want to do that, justify it. And it better be a good justification backed by science, not some pussy-footing "reasoning" I'm sure you're going to bust out.
I will do that, because as you stated yourself you are planning to ignore arguments you don't like:
> you won't convince me otherwise
For the record, bullying is a complex problem to solve, and no nation or policy or tactic has the silver bullet.
1. Yes, smacking your child on any part of their body, including the wrist, is violence. You're trying to make some kind of "a lot of violence might be wrong but just a little bit of violence can be useful" point? I don't get it.
2. No, I don't agree that "imprisoning children is wrong". Sometimes children commit horrible crimes, like murder, and they need to be imprisoned. If you want to say that grounding your child is also a form of imprisonment, it feels like a stretch, but sure, we can call that imprisonment too. I don't get what the point is, though.
Or you can say what I think many people throughout history would have seen as common sense (rightly or wrongly): violence against children is wrong, but spanking them doesn’t count as “violence”.
My imprisonment analogy was meant to point out that it is not valid to take a common intuition that X is wrong, apply a very extended concept of X (even if you think that the extended concept is the only coherent one), and then expect the intuition to still command universal agreement.
I didn't define "absolutely anything" as violence. I didn't even reach for some contested definition of the word. Just the normal everyday definition that is broadly accepted in western society today.
> Or you can say what I think many people throughout history would have seen as common sense (rightly or wrongly): violence against children is wrong, but spanking them doesn’t count as “violence”.
Just like Putin's war in Ukraine is a "special military operation" or Trump's war in Iran is "just a little skirmish", right? You can play word games all you want, but it won't change the substance of the arguments. The point I made earlier was that some things are inherently good or bad, and that "violence against children" is part of those things. If you want me to say "xzglorb" instead of "violence", sure, we can say "xzglorb", but the substance doesn't change: xzglorb against children is inherently bad.
But maybe you're right. We both agree that killing children, or kicking them in the head, is inherently bad. You also think smacking children is inherently bad. What makes you believe so?
You don’t seem to have answered my second question.
Regarding that second question:
> You also think smacking children is inherently bad. What makes you believe so?
Are you asking me why something is "inherently" bad or good? That question doesn't make sense, because if there was some external reason, then it wouldn't be "inherently" bad or good.
I don't think there's much point in continuing this discussion, because we've now gone several times back and forth where each time I have no idea what you're trying to say.
*edit: maybe you were looking for an answer like this: each person has their own moral foundation (or, most people do, at least). it's shaped by a combination of their genes and cultural influence, and later in life, possibly re-shaped by some introspective moments. some person might feel very strongly that "truth" is valuable in and of itself. another person might feel very strongly that all forms of "violence" are wrong. a third person might not care much about either of those things. everybody has a different set of morals. i don't know what specific causes caused my morals to think "violence against children is wrong", but some combination of genes and cultural influence I guess.
Do we have RCTs for that? Or might we reasonably shape our priors from the hundreds of studies using a dozen different causal methodologies, which all find the same result?