There's something about this that stands out as very concerning for me.
This, clearly very clever, young man is 14 years old. The article says: "Wu had always been fascinated with the ancient Japanese art of origami, but he really began indulging in it as a hobby about six years ago."
At eight. He was *indulging* in a hobby at eight years old. Indulging in a hobby should be a pre-retirement activity. What an incredible weight the attitude of the writer puts on kids.
I've heard/read the expression "to indulge in a hobby" many times and never thought it was pejorative or paints hobbies as extravagancies. If you google indulge hobby, there's plenty of hits. Strangely though, ChatGPT says it does sound negative. It had never occurred to me, and probably not to the author.
Just because ChatGPT says it sounds negative doesn’t mean it is. I didn’t think of it negatively either.
Who knows how ChatGPT made that suggestion [this time around]. Maybe 30% of the English-speaking population thinks it’s negative, or 60%, or perhaps someone simply wrote a high-profile negative op-ed that included the phrase in its title.
Anyways, not that you did this, but we need to be careful not to use LLMs as the deciding factor in how to feel about things. :) It gives too much power in swaying our thought to those who build the models.
Same with me. It's just an expression. One definition of "indulge" is "to take unrestrained pleasure in" (MW). I just read it as an activity the kid really really enjoys.
I apologise for you misunderstanding my example as a strict definition?
For anyone who hasn't understood my meaning:
Indulge is a word that implies that you're allowing yourself something that you might not ordinarily. The point being: it is (or should be) silly to suggest that a child can be said to indulge in a hobby. This is because the further implication is that an eight year old might show some restraint and focus on their book learning and networking.
I'd argue that kids should be generalist, as in learning diverse set of experiences rather than spending years honing a single craft. This is peak time where brain can quick adapt to new novel problems (like language learning) and spending this time to perfect a single niche feels counter-productive if not straight unethical. Kids should only specialize when they become grown enough to idependently decide on what they want to do.
I think about this sometimes. On one hand, is it really "right" or net positive for adults to guide children into some specialized craft at a young age? Even if the kid shows some prodigal predilection (haha) for it, maybe it is the responsibility of their guardians to expose them to a number of alternative interests/possibilities?
It's interesting because the approach of encouraging your kid to foster highly specific skills fails to satisfy the categorical imperative: if everybody did it, nothing would work. Or at least it seems that way... it's probably a safe bet that having a sizable majority of adolescents who are somewhat flexible/aimless and can respond to a variety of market demands in terms of career specialization is a good thing if not a necessary one.
On the other hand, manipulating (not to be taken with a necessary pejorative connotation) a child into this kind of specialization is almost certainly a necessary precondition for greatness. If you aren't a competent musician by the time you're 8 years old it is vanishingly unlikely you are ever going to be a true orchestral soloist. Ditto for something like chess. So if we want a world with those heights of greatness in it, we need to accept that some people are going to compel or allow their kids to be specialists rather than generalists.
> If you aren't a competent musician by the time you're 8 years old it is vanishingly unlikely you are ever going to be a true orchestral soloist. Ditto for something like chess
To me this sounds like an exception to the rule than rule itself. Our society would be perfectly fine to not have this type of entertainer "greatness". I mean, we got rid of castrados because it went too far but the line between cutting kids testicles off vs making them play some useless game 12 hours a day for a decade is quite blury.
I'd argue this extreme specialization of children is fundamentally unethical and should be shunned or even made illegal but it'll take decades if not centuries for our society to realize this because we just value this type "greatness" too highly.
Ok sure but in this sense it is already a rule (most people do not either prescribe these things to their kids or allow them to indulge in them) and what we're debating is how firm that rule.
As it happens, I think I disagree with you. I do value greatness. I value a culture that lauds greatness. The point of virtuosic musicianship isn't entertainment, or at least not a banal thoughtless kind (a symphony is not a substitute good for ragebait podcast clips with a subway surfers overlay), it's inspirational art. The examples I chose are particularly evocative, but there's no real difference between that and a parent who compels or allows their child to become ridiculously capable in some kind of mathematics or literature. Imagine if Terrence Tao's parents had insisted that he carry on with a typical pre-university series of broad survey courses for the sake of making him a generalist! Imagine all the less high-profile examples who were maybe even more important to pushing some practical effort forward.
Making it illegal is a nonstarter because I think it runs afoul of the categorical imperative in exactly the same way. I'm a strong believer in the idea that most progress (again, not intended to have a positive connotation) is made by a small group of people who were almost never generalists. Einstein was not a generalist. Kant, who I've been referencing throughout this conversation, was really not a generalist. The possibility of greatness is just as necessary as a certain number of pliable generalists.
What would the point of living in a world without greatness be? Since I meant that question rhetorically: is there a way to allow such greatness to be achieved without manipulating young people into obsession?
I think we have different undersrand of what greatness is. Being the best paperclip making machine is hardly meaningful. True greatness is in balance and virtue. A truly great person is well rounded and plays to true human strength- adaptability.
I'd be willing to bet everything I have that our society on average would be better at every single specialized thing if everyone was well rounded generalist with minor specialization instead of niche expert and it's incredibly easy to see why given the era of technology were living through right now. After all, all best in anything are finally defeated by a few years of collective technological progress.
Now what's the meaning of life if we have no treadmill to run on indefinitely? Well that's for each to figure out but what a sad meaning it would be if it was just to be slightly better at one niche activity for a very short while?
That last line was humor. Those are recognised "productive" activities. I guess if I had to really explain it, I was trying to offer a rephrased take on what I saw as the meaning of that line in the article. And so highlight that expecting children to do strictly productive things is silly. Dunno. Does that make sense now? I guess I've learned my lesson about my sense of humor not travelling well.
But you didn't say that. You just said I didn't know what 'indulge' means. Although I'm sure the irony of your final quip has escaped you, you have editorialised it into a valid criticism of my take, which I totally accept. Not everyone reads and uses the word with the tone it conveys in my vernacular, and which I'm sure must be, at least implied, in any respectable dictionary definition. Fair enough. Out of curiosity, do you think this is a geo-cultural difference? I am Australian. I imagine most commonwealth and formerly commonwealth countries read it the same way. Where are you from?
> But you didn't say that. You just said I didn't know what 'indulge' means.
Right. My objection was that you projected a negative meaning, which in my view was not demanded by the author. I could be wrong about what the author meant, but I didn't pick up any hint of "incredible weight the attitude of the writer puts on kids". So yes from my perspective that suggested that you probably didn't know the meaning of the word or didn't consider that there was another way to interpret it.
> Although I'm sure the irony of your final quip has escaped you
No, that was the point. The word can be used more than one way.
> Out of curiosity, do you think this is a geo-cultural difference?
This, clearly very clever, young man is 14 years old. The article says: "Wu had always been fascinated with the ancient Japanese art of origami, but he really began indulging in it as a hobby about six years ago."
At eight. He was *indulging* in a hobby at eight years old. Indulging in a hobby should be a pre-retirement activity. What an incredible weight the attitude of the writer puts on kids.