Steven Pinker - The Blank Slate

[dennisgorelik]

Back in 2003 Steven Pinker demonstrated that human mind at birth is NOT a blank slate and our behavior depends a lot from the gene set that we got.
Pinker also explained Elite/Liberal Arts decline and showed why most of parenting advise (from parenting industrial complex) is plain wrong.
http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_chalks_it_up_to_the_blank_slate
"Identical twins or any siblings separated at birth are no less similar than if they have grown up together. Everything that happens to you in a given home over all these years appears to leave no permanent stamp on your personality or intellect".

Comments

[anspa.livejournal.com]

So, parenting is useless?

[dennisgorelik]

Most of parenting is useless.
The part that instills the culture (leading by example) is somewhat helpful.

Did you notice that long term kids do pretty much what they want anyway?

[anspa.livejournal.com]

Yes, but feeding them sweets instead of normal food would not be a good parenting, for example.

[dennisgorelik]

You would not eat sweets yourself, wouldn't you?

That's part of leading by example.

[anspa.livejournal.com]

Well. Let me try to reverse that example. For instance, you have a child with particular condition. She would not benefit from what normal people (yourself included) would benefit. Your efforts in that regard is what? Parenting, imho, and not by example. Then there are more situations, as kids need to learn certain stuff and be mature before they are ready to try certain experiences. That's not leading by example, either. In fact that's leading by counter-example - as one man was saying "Do as I say, not as I do".

[dennisgorelik]

1) "Particular condition" in a child is a relatively rare thing.
It makes sense to make an exception in parenting to accommodate for that.

2) > before they are ready to try certain experiences.

Could you please give me an example of such situation?

> "Do as I say, not as I do"

That's a satire, isn't it?

[anspa.livejournal.com]

#2 - drinking alcohol, for example. Or, driving a car.. or, lifting heavy stuff.

[dennisgorelik]

I do teach by example:
I rarely drive, never drink alcohol and rarely lift heavy stuff.
So it's pretty much "Do as I do".

Why do you drink alcohol?

[alleukemist.livejournal.com]

Надо почитать, Пинкера я уважаю.

[dennisgorelik]

Думаете книга будет намного интереснее, чем TED-презентация?

[alleukemist.livejournal.com]

Она будет полнее.

[dennisgorelik]

"Полнее" - это лучше или хуже?
Ответ для меня неочевиден, потому что мы перенасыщены информацией.

[hobober.livejournal.com]

http://cont.ws/post/98885

[dennisgorelik]

The posting you link to is a misleading description of what these images actually represent.
Here's the original:
---
http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2015/06/inceptionism-going-deeper-into-neural.html
We ask the network: “Whatever you see there, I want more of it!” This creates a feedback loop: if a cloud looks a little bit like a bird, the network will make it look more like a bird. This in turn will make the network recognize the bird even more strongly on the next pass and so forth, until a highly detailed bird appears, seemingly out of nowhere.
---