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Comment by hackerpolicy | Hacker News Reader

What can the child do once he starts to ask himself what the hell is wrong with him, and little by little, starts to associate some wrongs with his childhood? Is it possible to revert bad parenting?

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I read about a different study some time ago (apologies, I've completely forgotten the title, authors or even field) which basically said that twins separated at birth ended up with relatively similar abilities and personalities regardless of whether they were raised in different households with different income levels, parenting styles, diets, etc.

In other words, much of it comes down to genetics. I have no idea the relevance of this idea or even of its validity, but it makes me wonder if the causation they speak of here between parents of a certain personality and their children has any ties to the inherited genetic characteristics rather than the nurturing of the child.

And yes, some of your personality traits may have been affected, but you will be a different person every 5 years anyway; walk in that direction and you will get closer to where you want to be.

As far as I know, the answer is "No, but".

No, you're never going to able to have no effects from your formative years with your parents. BUT, it's rarely impossible to deal with this productively. I suspect such a child will always be asking zirself what's wrong with zir, but hopefully ze can also develop an answer to that question, usually in the form of a reliable support network.

After having read your comment, I googled "zirself"... Is is a commonly used pronoun, or more of a quirk/very new feature of the language that gets used rarely? Interesting concept though!

It's an idea that comes from linguistic relativity, i.e. the philosophy that the language we use to talk about a subject defines the way we think about it. Thus, by using "he" as the gender-neutral pronoun, we're prejudiced towards a male-centred society.

No, "zirself" is not commonly used, but obviously proponents want to change that.

At the end of the day, it's just another branch of political correctness.

Is there anything wrong with them, they and themselves?

Using those doesn't give you a chance to talk about your political views.

It's bad grammar. 'He/she' is singular, 'they' is plural. On the other hand, I consider it a significantly lesser transgression than just introducing new words (with poor aesthetics, IMO).

No, it's not. It was made-up in the 1740s, and has never really been followed as a rule that closely.[1]

Or from Geoff Pullum[2]:

>"Avoid singular they if you want to; nobody is making you use it. But don't ever think that it is new (it goes back to early English centuries ago), or that it is illogical (there is no logical conflict between being syntactically singular and semantically plural), or that it is ungrammatical (it is used by the finest writers who ever used English, writers who uncontroversially knew what they were doing)."

1: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112896/tyranny-pronouns-f...

2: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=89

It's ambiguous.

"You are in a dark forest. A disembodied voice speaks to you. They want you to follow."

How many voices? Would it have been more correct to say "They wants you to follow"? Should you contort the sentence to drop agency, saying "You should follow"? Is the pronoun referring to some group of people not included in this paragraph?

s/They want/Ze wants/ solves all of these questions immediately and simply.

In most cases, it comes down to stylistic preference. Some people like to use "it". Some people like to alternate "he" and "she". My preference is ze/zir/zirself. Some people feel threatened by it, as if someone else coding in a new language means their old standby of C90 is not good enough.

> s/They want/Ze wants/ solves all of these questions immediately and simply.

Hardly 'simply', as it prompted the GGGP to go and Google the term. You're changing some very significant terms in the language, and it's only simple if everybody is on board with the change.

And he understood it immediately after Googling the definition, just like any other neologism.

The alternative is not having any solution at all.

> And he understood

You mean "ze"?

I'm pretty sure you're male.

"It". A disembodied voice in a dark forest, regardless of whether you can deduce gender, is most definitely an "it". An "it" I would run away from.

No, it's not common. Language drift happens through usage, though. I happen to like gender-neutral pronouns, because I like messing with linguistics and conlangs, so I use them in hopes that other people will use them, just like any other neologism.

Albert Ellis has already proven the answer to this is "yes". In short, we are the ones typically responsible for our own neurosis as we maintain flawed thinking or understandings of reality. People with loving parents have turned out screwed up kids, just the same.

I’m sorry, but your comment is quite confusing. Would you mind clarifying your points?

My point is, if you had bad parents, or no parents, you can change your behavior and thinking patterns and end up better off than kids who had good parents.

"People with loving parents have turned out screwed up kids, just the same."

This simply does not matter if there is a statistically valid conclusion saying the opposite.

There will always be outliers and anecdotes. You should be looking at the statistical trend, not individual cases.

I'd say it's valid if science says otherwise

Now you're just being silly.

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