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Comment by ErroneousBosh | Hacker News Reader

"But it's okay if a battery goes on fire daddy, I'll put carbon dioxide on it!" - EBv2.0, aged 3 and a half

More people should read Oliver Sacks' book Uncle Tungsten. As a kid he was allowed to buy real chemicals for his chemistry set and was told things like "can you make slightly less hydrogen peroxide next time". Minors buying pitchblende (Uranium ore) at the local drugstore for experiments? Sure, might encourage them to be scientists.

You have to show people (not just kids, also up to college students and adults) what can go wrong so they know the appropriate amount of respect for it. Kids don't have enough fear of some things, college students have too much because they learned their fear was too little before.

I hear it's traditional in some parts to start an electronics lab semester by blowing up one of every component to show how it goes, and I had a similar experience in metal shop when I was too afraid to crash a lathe and the teacher did it himself, showing me how close you can get the tool to the part before it's a problem.

I think the first time my son said the 'f' word, he got the tone and the body language exactly right for the context in which he used it (a frustrated/resigned "fuck's sake", with roll-eyes and throw-head-back, look up to the sky). He might have been five years old at the time. And back then, I really didn't say it around them very much (out of an attempt to be somewhat responsible).

They're absorbing everything. They're scraping the entirety of your personality to build their own.

Tiny language models.

I never quite understood the obsession with keeping some language away from children that everyone uses themselves. The words are there because they are needed. Walking the euphemism treadmill is a Sisyphus effort.

Let them build a decent vocabulary before exposing them to the words that replace all sorts of other words ;)

I want them to be clever with how they use language. Or at least have the knowledge to be clever, if they apply themselves.

I heard of a study [1] claiming that people that swear more have a larger vocabulary in general, so your efforts might be counter-intuitive to your goal.

Don't see how deprivation of some words leads to the knowledge of other words, either. Maybe if you interject and correct swear word usage by providing other words that would be a better fit.

> Taboo word fluency is correlated with general fluency.

> Taboo words comprise pejoratives and slurs.

> Taboo fluency is correlated with neuroticism and openness.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03880...

That's probably true for people who know the words but is it true for people who don't? I expect most people use most common words at about the same level of fluency.

I know the word "computer". I expect people's "computer" fluency is correlated with their general fluency. Would teaching Victorian peasants "computer" increase their general fluency?

When EBv2.0 was tiny, like could walk but not really talk tiny, and I was WFH Because Coronapocalypse, he one day did a straight deadass impersonation of me.

Picked up a cordless mouse and held it up to his little ear like a phone, "Hello? Yeah? Yeah..." and started wandering around the living room with it, occasionally scowling and holding his other hand up to his ear, "yeah... yeah... well yeah, yeah? Naja, yeah... nah, nein! <waving expansively> Nein nein nein... Yeah, 'kay, bye."

Put the mouse down on the table.

"Uuuuuurgh....."

Absolutely nailed it, Gary Oldman level precision.

Absolutely golden moments.

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