Meh. It seems to me that these people just allow their kids what they themselves had. It's not a principled decision, it's just nostalgia. Example. No tablets, great. But they can have a game boy. What's the difference? The difference is the parents had game boys growing up so they have good memories. Then they rationalize this as "only has two buttons so requires patience". Surely you can find games on a tablet that only have two buttons and require patience...? No, the actual explanation is nostalgia, with an a posteriori rationalisation.
Interesting. This kind of dont-understand-therefore-fill-in-the-gaps-with-magic is the same mental shortcut that would lead you to believe that cryptocurrency is a good thing.
This is, I fear to tell you, IMPOSSIBLE to explain by other than methaphysics, it is an uncloseable "gap" that humanity will never solve. As far as I know, it's not about gaps, it's more about the unreasonable stance that everything is explainable by reductionist physics that corrupts the modern thinking, it is more safe for you to assume people's religious beliefs come from "gaps" rather from their own rationality. In reality, you just turned science into your own religion.
Well of course Shakespeare got it wrong with ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’. At least, that's seems to be the acceptably prevalent view.
That was Hamlet, wanting to believe in ghosts, so that his dead dad could reveal that he'd been poisoned in the ear, for the purpose of the plot. So yeah, in the original context it was some paranormal investigator or Scooby Doo level of crap. But subsequently people have picked it up and made it deep and meaningful due to having been wrote by The Bard. Even so, what do we want it to mean? That just about anything could maybe be discovered one day, therefore we can imagine arbitrary things right now and say they're real? Doesn't follow.
I trust the source code and decentralized network of miners doing 1 thing - securing the network with predictable emissions policy - over the central bank and politicians
Hardly any actual physical simulations simulate every possible moment in time. We just calculate consequences of current events and put them in the queue to happen sometime in the future. And there's evidence that the real world works in a similar way.
Bonds jiggle and wiggle with characteristic times in femtoseconds, and most people believe it's not necessary to simulate at higher frequencies than that.
Yes, I agree with that. My point was just that stimulating a rudimentary model of reality is hard work, but reality is way more complex than even that.
It makes my blood boil that my kid comes from the nursery saying things like "I did an ouchie". Kids don't naturally speak like this, they are taught like this. He's 3. At home he speaks his parents languages and he sounds like a 5 year old because we don't dumb it down for him. In English he sounds like every other English 3 year old in the nursery.
As someone who has a 2.5 year old learning multiple languages, I think a problem with English is that it's very verbose; we use full sentences to express things that can be expressed in other languages with only 1-2 words. And of course shorter sentences are easier for children as there's less grammar to be learned.
And specifically for expressing you hurt yourself, we teach children to express that they're hurt far earlier than they learn actual speech. So from ~1 we teach them to say "Ow" (or some variation), but then the words change from that to "hurt", and into a full sentence "I hurt myself", which is also redundant (myself and I imply the same thing, so why do we use both in that sentence in English?).
Anyhow just a thought as I'm feeding my son breakfast. "Would you like some breakfast" in English turns into 2 words in his second language.
Your understanding of how formality levels in English function is perhaps not entirely complete: native speakers of English convey usually convey the sentiment with as little as "Breakfast?" or "Hungry?" when talking with family. In the child's second language, would the maitre'd at the restaurant of a fine hotel ask a two word question, or rather bury those in respectful filler?
"Ow" and friends, by the way, are interjections to express sudden pain, functioning analogously to an adult's swearing. They're not full sentences about the pain and its source.
> Your understanding of how formality levels in English function is perhaps not entirely complete: native speakers of English convey usually convey
It's kind of hilarious that you assume I'm not a native English speaker because I speak more languages... I'm a native English speaker who just happens to have grown up with 2 other languages and have a wife that speaks 4+ languages. On top of that I've taken a bunch of university level English courses.
Yes, I'm aware that people shorten sentences into statements when speaking to those they're familiar with. I do it as well.
Here's a thought experiment:
- If a toddler speaks in short statements it's "baby talk"
- If an immigrant speaks in short statements it's "broken English"
- If a native speaker speaks in short statements it's vernacular or slang
Or:
- If a toddler makes up words it's "baby talk"
- If an immigrant makes up words they're uneducated
- If a native speaker makes up words it's a dialect
Most of those incorrectly use the linguistic terminology (in particular, "dialect", "baby talk", "slang") but, yes, congratulations on discovering that context plays a role in communication.
"Would you like some breakfast" isn't quite so overly wordy that I'd say it sounds unnatural, but it absolutely is not the bare minimum for idiomatic English.
"Do you want breakfast?" is perfectly grammatical, and "Want breakfast?" would be a totally normal phrasing, even if some might argue that eliding the subject isn't technically correct.
No it doesn't. I don't ask my colleague "Would you care to go to the bar and drink a beer after work?" I say "Grab a beer later?" As does every other normal person I know. "Get lunch?" Etc.
Baby Todd is a real phenomenon caused by kids not being able to say complex words. You want to say those complex words to them and they will repeat them back and they may make a baby version of it which is fine but it’s good to for you to keep using the complex words and the correct pronunciation so they learn.
Every one of my kids has a name that is hard for a baby to pronounce so they have a baby nickname, but we let them grow out of it.
How does this have anything to do with the culture war? This is just a discussion of culture and how its changing unrelated to what you are referring to.
I'm not denying the phenomenon exists. But to try to say that adults would be upset if teachers spoke to their children like they weren't developmentally challenged is completely ridiculous.
It is just a different sound for the same thing. There is nothing dumber about "I did an ouchie" then "I got hurt". Ouchie is more infantile, but not stupider.
"I did [a noun]" is 'stupider', i.e. not grammatically correct English, i.e. a formulation that people will look down on you for using as you age. Sometimes you have to teach children things they'll eventually have to unlearn, but this is not one of those occasions.
“I did [a noun]” is grammatically correct English object-verb-direct-object sentence structure.
Depending on the noun, it may not the most idiomatic way of expressing the sentiment it intends to communicate, but that is a different issue. (On the other hand, idiom is context dependent, and the objection here seems to be that it is idiomatic in at least one context, but that people prefer that children exclusively learn some other preferred idiom. But if you don't have this diversity, children don't get to learn and practice context switching as early, and that's an important skill, too.)
"I did a runner" British idiom means I ran away without paying. The only problem with "I did a water" is I don't know what "a water" is without context. If person A said "I did a shot" and person B said "I did a water", it would make perfect sense.
Feel free to teach your child whatever you’d like, language is totally fungible.
The reason I’d suggest not to is because speaking in this way will, in fact, cause people to think less highly of you.
It’s not a matter of principle and “formal correctness” is pretty meaningless in human language, but “don’t speak in a way that a substantial number of people regard as incorrect” is a meaningful goal!
I would argue that people who think less of a three or five years old because the kid said "I did an ouchie" are simultaneously irrelevant and frankly dumb themselves. Kids life wont be affected at all.
Your claim is really based on fairly absurd notion that a sentence normally used in relation to the kids will somehow set the kid apart from their peers ... who listen to the exact same sentences. As in, the problem of kids speech somehow damaging kids long term is literally non existent in real world.
Miniscule percentage of parents takes offense on it and nobody else cares.
Obviously we’re talking about kids acquiring language, I.e. should the response be to nudge them toward more accepted language as they develop, or make up silly overintellectualized arguments like “hmm, well I can understand what they mean! [insightful face emoji]”
“Aww cute!” responses to incorrect language is how kids develop speech impediments.
I agree. I recently asked if a certain GPU would fit in a certain computer... And it understood that fit could mean physically inside by could also mean that the interface is compatible, and answered both.
It did. It mentioned PCIe connectors, what connects to what, and said this computer has motherboard with such and such PCIe, the card needs such and such, so it's compatible. Regarding physical size it, it said that it depends on the physical size of the case (implying that it understood that the size of the card is known but the size of the computer isn't know to it)
It's quite insulting that you just assume I don't know how to read specs. You're either assuming based on nothing, or you're inferring from my comment in which case I worry for your reading comprehension. At no point did I say I didn't know how to find the answer or indeed that I didn't know the answer.
Thanks for sharing, nice read. RMS is such an interesting person. He is a good person, and in addition the strength of his convictions is incredible, I think humanity would benefit from having more people like this around.
