On the Care and Feeding of Young Rationalists -- Revisited[Draft] [Request for Feedback]

Encourage curiosity

In the book Brain Rules John Medina writes:

from dinosaurs to atheism

I remember, when I was 3 years old, obtaining a sudden interest in dinosaurs. I had no idea that my mother had been waiting for it. That very day, the house began its transformation into all things Jurassic. And Triassic. And Cretaceous. Pictures of dinosaurs would go up on the wall. I would begin to find books about dinosaurs strewn on the floor and sofas. Mom would even couch dinner as "dinosaur food," and we would spend hours laughing our heads off trying to make dinosaur sounds. And then, suddenly, I would lose interest in dinosaurs, because some friend at school acquired an interest in spaceships and rockets and galaxies. Extraordinarily, my mother was waiting. Just as quickly as my whim changed, the house would begin its transformation from big dinosaurs to Big Bang. The reptilian posters came down, and in their places, planets would begin to hang from the walls. I would find little pictures of satellites in the bathroom. Mom even got "space coins" from bags of potato chips, and I eventually gathered all of them into a collector's book.

This happened over and over again in my childhood. I got an interest in Greek mythology, and she transformed the house into Mount Olympus. My interests careened into geometry, and the house became Euclidean, then cubist. Rocks, airplanes. By the time I was 8 or 9, I was creating my own house transformations.

One day, around age 14, I declared to my mother that I was an atheist. She was a devoutly religious person, and I thought this announcement would crush her. Instead, she said something like, "That's nice, dear," as if I had just declared I no longer liked nachos. The next day, she sat me down by the kitchen table, a wrapped package in her lap. She said calmly, "So, I hear you are now an atheist. Is that true?" I nodded yes, and she smiled. She placed the package in my hands. "The man's name is Friedrich Nietzsche, and the book is called Twilight of the Idols," she said. "If you are going to be an atheist, be the best one out there! Bon appetit!"

I was stunned. But I understood a powerful message: Curiosity itself was the most important thing. And what I was interested in mattered. I have never been able to turn off this fire hose of curiosity.

"Negative reinforcement" refers to reinforcement by removing an undesired stimulus. The opposite of "reinforcement" is "punishment".

As Luke helpfully taught us, negative reinforcement doesn't seem to work as well as positive. Spanking, in particular, is right out.

I've seen this claim all over the comments to Luke's post, and I don't see Luke as asserting it (or being able to). In fact, there are only two things in Luke's post that even slightly resemble this claim:

First is a warning against punishing people in a way such that the punishment could negatively incentivize the effort instead of the failure. This is a good point, but doesn't apply in a lot of cases - for example, punishing a child for hitting a sibling.

Second is the following quote:

When trying to maintain order in a class, ignore unruly behavior and praise good behavior (Madsen et al. 1968; McNamara 1987).

So I looked up McNamara 1987. It's a book chapter that reports a few studies on students getting better when praised, then says they're very weak, no one's been able to replicate them, and then goes into how a better study McNamara clearly finds more credible shows that students do worse with the sort of hokey planned praise used in the previous studies.

Then I looked up Madsen et all 1968. It's a study on three problem children, Cliff, Frank and Stan. The relevant conditions were Rules, where the teachers wrote some rules on the blackboard and made the children repeat them a bunch of times, and Praise, in which the teachers praised the students for following the rules. There was no punishment condition. Writing the rules on the blackboard didn't help much, but Cliff and Frank seemed to get better after being praised a lot (Stan was equivocal).

Poor Cliff and Frank are not a sufficient basis on which to assert incredibly broad psychological theories about how you should always reward and never punish all humans in all cases.

In the case of positive behavior/reinforcement, there's nothing particularly problematic about this, but for the negative case, you're also punishing being caught/noticed/seen, which can be problematic.

This is a kind-of-sounds-good argument, but one could make equally kind-of-sounds-good arguments on the other side. For example, rewards decrease intrisic motivation by replacing them with extrinsic motivation. Or anything Alfie Kohn ever said (I'm not necessarily endorsing him, just holding him up as an example of arguments that rewards too have their problems).

Finally, I am very suspicious of the studies in this area. Not only is developmental psych generally a minefield, but "rewards work better than punishments" is so in tune with modern sensibilities that I would be really surprised if the average researcher doesn't go out gunning for that result and quietly file anything that shows punishments are better than rewards into a file drawer never to see the light of day.

(one counterexample is a recent study that shows spanking children generally gives them better life outcomes. I've seen a zillion studies that say the opposite, and I consider the entire project of observational studies of spanking totally useless because of the confounding effects of parental choice - ie parents who decide to spank or not spank their children are probably different in many other correlated ways which are much more important - but the study exists and I don't consider the spanking field nearly as settled as you do)

To speak to goal 1 first, Bryan Caplan claims flat outcomes for goal #1 under commonly tried parenting interventions, which seems counter-intuitive. More explanation of what exactly the studies in question proved would be welcome.

I've never read Caplan, but I'm working my way through The Nurture Assumption which is probably what Caplan's working off of. Nurture Assumption claims pretty much everything is flat for pretty much all kinds of parenting and we need to drop the assumption (hence the name) that parenting matters much beyond just not starving or abusing your kid. The books presents lots of complicated evidence but the strongest is adoption studies, where children raised together aren't much more similar than children raised apart (with degree of genetic relatedness held constant). Right now I believe her about 60%.

One thing I noticed worked well with my cousin's daughter was teaching her sign language before she could speak. It was really cool that she could communicate what she wanted instead of crying. I'm not sure if there are any long term effects. One minor side effect is that when she started talking, she had to be encouraged to vocalize instead of signing.

Some random thoughts to consider:

1) The hardest part about reinforcement and punishment is determining what stimuli is reinforcing. Sometimes, attention is reinforcing - and that's really hard to keep in mind. I've let my son tantrum in public because I didn't want to reinforce his behavior, and that's very uncomfortable - especially if you haven't decided ahead of time to do that.

2) I personally don't believe in spanking, but you discuss the issue quite flippantly, and many people have strong opinions about the topic and could be offended by your flippancy. In general, you might want to discuss some more about how to decide what boundaries to set, by age. Further, physical discipline is not the only (or even the majority) of punishment of children. I shout at my son (2.25 yrs old) to stop whenever he walks into the road or away from me in a parking lot - that's punishing the behavior.

3) Talk more about children modeling your own behavior. It is a substantial drain on oneself to regulate constantly.

4) Even though negative stimuli (punishment) is sometimes the most appropriate response, negative instruction ("Don't throw your toys") is miles less effective than positive instruction ("We only throw balls.")

5) Consistency between parents - children will arbitrage discrepancies in rules between the parents, so try talk with you partner to minimize differences.

Don't forget the classic "praise effort, not talent".

Here's my anecdote of what awesome things my parents did for me as a kid to inspire any parents out there:

My sister and I had adventures for birthday parties. These were not your typical go-to-ChuckECHeese's parties and never involved going anywhere other than our own house and yard - but that house had been transformed by my parents into a wild and glorious place. Starting weeks in advance, my parents would prepare a storyline and set of challenges for us and the party guests to face. Rooms would be locked up or door knobs removed, and windows concealed as they went about decorating. And on the morning of the party, mysterious objects would appear throughout the house and more places were closed off. When the guests arrived, the presents would be intercepted from them and spirited away somewhere and the children would gather in the starting room, gazing at the streamers and decorations that revealed this years theme; an adventure in space, a medieval castle, dense jungles. When all had arrived, the event began.

Always something happens to the presents - stolen by pirates, taken away by wild animals, hidden by the traitor who murdered the king. Our goal was to solve the mystery and recover the presents. Now, the party took form - a message left behind or a trail leading us into another room. There we might encounter a familiar party game but always, always in the theme of the party. Often some small reward for all the guests who made it to through the trial (which was always everyone) - a small animal or cheap toy, but immediately cherished for the work that went into getting it. And everywhere, there were mysteries. Coded messages revealed by dropping some liquid into a sequence of beakers and watching what colors they turned. Mysterious recordings left for us to listen to and figure out where next to go. A chess board that we were slowly given moves to make until finally we found the piece that had killed the king. Cards scattered across the house revealing a message.

And special effects worthy, in the mind of a child, of any film. Moody colored lighting (fun to play with after the party was over), dry ice for fog, and the cakes! The cakes were always a thing of wonder; hidden compartments revealing the next clue only after we had eaten; frothing volcanoes; dragons with flaming nostrils.

Until finally we would reach the last room, the room that had been locked up for days now. Not a surface in there was undecorated. Dripping jungles and fantastical landscapes made incarnate in that final room so much more so even than in the rest of the party. And if that was not reward enough - the presents at long last recovered and the mysteries solved! But not just for the birthday boy or girl, for there would always be individual miniature pinatas, one for each guest. (To me, this is what pinatas are. Those big things where only one person gets to swing and the slowest kid always feels left out of the candy grad - those are not pinatas.) These gifts had been earned.

As best as I can recall, none of this is an exaggeration. The amount of effort they went through must have been enormous, but oh how we loved it - all of us. I looked forward to my sister's birthdays almost as much as I looked forward to my own. And our friends loved them too. Years later, in college I had a friend come up to me and ask me about my birthday parties, not because I had known him at the time of the parties, but because our mutual friend who had been going to those parties for years had told them about them. They stopped after our tenth birthdays, but we still continued this on many holidays on a much smaller scale - there were inevitably puzzles to solve to get at least one present on Christmas morning.

I doubt this had any bearing on rationality, but in terms of happiness? Unbeatable. Challenge yourselfs; make holidays at least as much fun as a giant Blue Screen of Death blocking off half the house until the intrepid guests tear it down and reveal the adventure beyond.

In my experience, when dealing with an average child, most of the day-to-day problems can be prevented or resolved by being proactive. This means modeling your child's thought process and behavior before it happens and addressing issues before they arise. You will still be blindsided on occasion, but much less so than if you simply react. This advice is fully general when dealing with other people "rationally", but it is much easier to follow with your own child, whom you presumably know better than anyone else.

Just one example: you can see unruly and crying children in a supermarket all the time. The child's mother (usually mother, not father), either ignores the cries and pleas for some item or some entertainment, or occasionally yells at (or even spanks) the child, or occasionally entertains for an instant or two, then goes back to the task of shopping. This behavior is quite predictable (at least after the first trip), so it is possible to prevent it from recurring by, say, having the child occupied by some solitary activity, or fed before the trip, or giving him/her the item they want for the duration of the shopping, or bringing another sibling along, or having a spare dummy or a milk bottle or... As long as you get yourself into the child's shoes, think what they think and feel what they feel, and know what they are likely to do, you are in a position to avert a disaster.

Unfortunately, an average parent often reminds me of this strip.

Julia Galef recently posted a video in which she describes how her parents helped give her an interest in rationality.

We have a nine y/o boy (an only child, by choice), and the one thing that seems to have made a difference specifically with rationality (for some value of "rationality"; children are not the first examples of the attribute that come to mind) has been constantly trying to phrase things in terms of simple scientific method: what do you think? why do you think that? what evidence do you have for that? how would you test that?

It would seem to me that parenting is one of those fields of knowledge where you don't know what you don't know until you've actually had kids yourself. If you find this hard to believe, then imagine how seriously you'd take your younger self if ey were to talk about how to be in a good relationship, before having had a significant other.

So, while I generally dislike discouraging people who are enthusiastic about getting something done, I would like to suggest that perhaps you are not the right person to write this post (or not yet). This is based on my reading of the rubber-ducking sentence as meaning that you have not yet had kids.

Outside of their siblings, American six-year-olds are socialized almost entirely with other six-year-olds. Historically, it has been possible for six-year-olds to be friends with 15-year olds -- to, I suspect, the benefit of both. The older children provide near(er)-term models for the younger children of their future growth, and the older children are thus encouraged to be role-models.

In some societies, it's not uncommon for older children to bully younger children, and I suspect the present-day US is one of the societies where this would happen a lot, if children of different ages were socialized together more. I seem to recall people discussing disadvantages of socializing six-year-olds together with six-year-eleven-month-olds, even.

Bookmarks of mine that may be relevant:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3001025

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_Sigma_Problem

http://lesswrong.com/lw/43w/rationality_quotes_february_2011/3gdr

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0979777755/?ie=UTF8&tag=personalmba-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0979777755

You may wish to look into "un-schooling": http://www.amazon.com/Teenage-Liberation-Handbook-School-Education/dp/0962959103 I was massively more interested in this particular topic as a teenager, for obvious reasons. This essay was highly influential to my younger self: http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html

I'm having trouble tracking down the exact subpage but according to http://www.feynman.com/ Feynman's dad played what was effectively Zendo with him and Feynman considered it to have been a major influence on his life.

Before you criticize helicopter parenting: Remember, there is a strong correlation between parental involvement in a child's life and positive outcomes. Of course, the helicopter parenting and positive outcomes could have a shared cause -- intelligence, higher socioeconomic status, or the like -- and anything can be taken too far, including parental involvement.

But in all, kids of parents like Amy Chua are far more likely to end up successful along most metrics than children of parents who ignore their kids.

Has anyone ever tried the "What Did You See?" activity fictionally described here? (Start near the foot of that page.) Never having had children, or the care of anyone else's, I've never been able to try it out myself.

Give your kid the Marshmallow test (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshmallow_test - you can do it at around 4 1/2 yrs old), and video-record it.

It's a good diagnostic indicator of how good she is at delaying gratification, and more importantly, you can watch her display coping strategies. You may already think you have a sense of how they'll do, but it can be surprising.

It's also fun, in a torment-your-child kind of way.

Firstly, I love that this topic is being revisited. I remember coming to this site and scouring for related information, and being disappointed that I came up mostly empty-handed. I think it's an important, relevant topic, and it's great that you brought it up.

What you have here, though, reminds me of that old adage: "No battle plan survives contact with the enemy." You don't have kids, right? I would like to gently suggest that writing a really useful article of this type would pretty much depend on getting a lot of feedback from parents. Preferably, you should have a parent write it.

Produce thriving, intelligent, rational, happy, good-hearted children who become thriving, intelligent, rational, happy, good-hearted adults.

The cynical and practical guide to have at least one good kid:

Step 1: Choose a good sperm/egg donor. This is by far the most important bit. If you can't get that consider increasing volume, more kids will help you catch that bell curve tail, take some wisdom from the third world, a single successful brainy kid can lift a nentire family from poverty! IQ correlates with everything good except fertility, but hey we aren't optimizing for grandchildren here. If you are ok with abortion, prenatal testing offers a world of possibilities too!

Step 2: Regular middle class upbringing. And don't stress out too much, recognize upper middle class parental status games for what they are! As long as your aren't abusing them and they have decent peer networks statistically you have a pretty minimal influence on your kids life outcomes.

Step 3: Have them read the sequences. We have nothing beyond anecdotal evidence that they help with increasing rationality, but hey even a filter is still useful!

Step 4: Profit!

The easy tongue-in-cheek guide to good children and everything else:

Step 1: Quantum suicide

Produce thriving, intelligent, rational, happy, good-hearted children who become thriving, intelligent, rational, happy, good-hearted adults.

The cynical and practical guide to have at least one good kid (tm):

Step 1: Choose a good sperm/egg donor. This is by far the most important bit. If you can't get that consider increasing volume, more kids will help you catch that bell curve tail, take some wisdom from the third world, a single successful brainy kid can lift a entire family from poverty!

Step 2: Regular middle class upbringing. And don't stress out too much, recognize upper middle class parental status games for what they are! As long as your aren't abusing them and they have decent peer networks statistically you have a pretty minimal influence on their life outcomes.

Step 3: Have them read the sequences.

Step 4: Profit!

The easy tongue-in-cheek guide to good children and everything else:

Step 1: Quantum suicide

If punishment has the problem of punishing being noticed as well as bad behavior, reward also reinforces being noticed rather than good behavior. I don't think this is an airtight argument against either, but you seem asymmetrically down on punishment.

If the singularity is near, doesn't that defeat the purpose of having children somewhat? You do all that work raising them to be adults and then the singularity comes and it's all irrelevant.