The Kids (Aren't) Alright - World Happiness Report

[Brisketexan 106,984]

Oh, and one of the best things we ever did (not really knowing how well it would turn out) was to buy the boy a "project" go-kart for his birthday when he was 13 or so.  It ran, and he could drive it around and have fun with it.  But it needed work and tuning (it really was a homemade kart, so some aspects of it did not perform optimally).  We went to Harbor Freight, and I bought him his own set of tools.  And then told him and his friends that they were free to work on it to their hearts' content.  He started out griping about it, but eventually really got into it.  He's now 21, and when he and his friends come home of Christmas and such, one of the things they do is get together to tinker with the go-kart, which they have turned into a semi-armored car.  One of his friends SO got into it that he now has a side hustle of buying busted up go-karts, rehabbing them, then flipping them for a profit.  They get their knuckles scraped and hands oily and dirty, and know how to take apart small engines, all kinds of stuff.  AND, it provided them a fun diversion for years.

Give a kid a project that they can have fun with, and sometimes, they'll run with it.  Maybe we got lucky, but it turned out to be a good thing.  I'm fucking sick of the kart and all the parts and shit taking up half my garage, though.

[utee94 16,091]

17 hours ago, SydneyCarton said:

. Of course, if he had, I'd have bitched and moaned the entire time and probably not appreciated anything I learned now that I'm older. Funny how some situations can create regret no matter what. 

I think you'd have appreciated it.  My dad was incredibly self-sufficient, and he DID force me to help him change the oil, the brakes, repair drywall, repair plumbing, and all of that other stuff. Naturally I was an ungrateful surly little shit of a child, but now, decades later, I really do appreciate it.  Not only for the knowledge, but for the time I shared with my dad, that I didn't even realize was so meaningful.  He was always extremely busy at work, so the times he took to slow down and repair something at home, were some of the rare times we got to spend a lot of time together.

 

[Nivek 17,420]

The apex of physical conditioning.  Minus the weight cutting part.  Another soccer dad, his youngest is a wrestler.  Like a little chimp.  He F's people up.  Eyeing Ok State - which has a beast of a program.  
Have you watched Vision Quest with him yet....

Did someone say Chimp?

[Nivek 17,420]

My father was extremely handy, and could fix and work on anything. And he didn't make do any of it with him, or force me, and I'm sure he thought he was being a good dad and not an asshole by letting me just play. But as I got older, I suck at repairing anything, and I really wish he'd forced me to learn some of his skills. Of course, if he had, I'd have bitched and moaned the entire time and probably not appreciated anything I learned now that I'm older. Funny how some situations can create regret no matter what. 

My Dad is mostly useless at repairs. My learning started with inheriting a car with a blown engine, buying a book and getting to work with my brother (he blew the engine).

When my computer’s power supply failed my father and brother did nothing for months and we went back to our old 286 processor. A friend came over and we diagnosed the problem fixed it for $1 and had a computer running by the end of the day.

Motivation is what is needed. Also working on something that is already broken helps. If you mess it up, its still broke.

[BabaYaga 15,631]

19 minutes ago, Nivek said:

Also working on something that is already broken helps. If you mess it up, its still broke.

Mike Elko 2024 Aggie Football motto?

[SydneyCarton 49,520]

46 minutes ago, Nivek said:

My Dad is mostly useless at repairs. My learning started with inheriting a car with a blown engine, buying a book and getting to work with my brother (he blew the engine).

When my computer’s power supply failed my father and brother did nothing for months and we went back to our old 286 processor. A friend came over and we diagnosed the problem fixed it for $1 and had a computer running by the end of the day.

Motivation is what is needed. Also working on something that is already broken helps. If you mess it up, its still broke.

I’m at the point of my life where my time is more valuable than the extra money it costs for me to have other people fix things. By the time I get supplies, watch the requisite videos, still manage to fuck up several times, something that takes someone else 30 minutes takes me 4 hours. And is probably half assed. Practice makes perfect but how many times will I need to learn now to replace a ceiling fan or a sink fixture in my life at this point? 2, maybe 3 more?
 

There’s a baseline of knowledge and intuition and understanding handy people have acquired over a lifetime that I don’t have, and at this point it’s a conscious choice for me to not spending the time to acquire it. Maybe when I retire. But I somewhat view it as along to learning a language when you’re young versus old. 
 

When I was a kid I built my own computers and messed with all that stuff. I understand that all it takes is motivation. 

[utee94 16,091]

11 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

I’m at the point of my life where my time is more valuable than the extra money it costs for me to have other people fix things. By the time I get supplies, watch the requisite videos, still manage to fuck up several times, something that takes someone else 30 minutes takes me 4 hours. And is probably half assed. Practice makes perfect but how many times will I need to learn now to replace a ceiling fan or a sink fixture in my life at this point? 2, maybe 3 more?
 

There’s a baseline of knowledge and intuition and understanding handy people have acquired over a lifetime that I don’t have, and at this point it’s a conscious choice for me to not spending the time to acquire it. Maybe when I retire. But I somewhat view it as along to learning a language when you’re young versus old. 
 

When I was a kid I built my own computers and messed with all that stuff. I understand that all it takes is motivation. 

Absolutely get it.  There are some things I choose to do on my own, because for me they are easy and quick, and I also enjoy the DIY aspect of a lot of things.

But there are also things I know how to do, that I still hire out.  For example I no longer change my own oil because the time it takes me to do the work, and then dispose of the waste, isn't worth it.  The shop can do it more efficiently than I can and I'm happy to spend the money and let them do so.

[UTGrad98 2,343]

On 3/27/2024 at 5:04 PM, Tailgate said:

What’s a Raid Leader (World of Warcraft) and should you hire them?

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/whats-raid-leader-should-you-hire-them-peter-clarke/?trackingId=t%2B5cwCdJSIuZXir5uVxpBQ%3D%3D

“When I applied for my first job back in 2008, the skills required to get my foot in the professional world's door were vastly different from what is needed today.

I was applying to a local MGA in my hometown for a role that I later called a CSO role (Chief Scanning Officer), with a side role of 1 Sugar No Milk duties. The main skills required and developed were scanning policy documents and spotting empty coffee cups. We would receive the documents via Fax and Royal Mail from our brokers, and it was my job to scan them in and file them accordingly in our sophisticated Microsoft filing system.

We were at a point where going "paperless" was the main innovation happening in the market, and the fact that the Underwriters could access the pdf version of documents in a searchable format from their computer was revolutionary.

Fourteen years on, and I am now the one hiring young market entrants. The thought of setting them a task such as scanning seems not only belittling to them but also baffling, let alone the thought of trying to explain what a fax is and why it is useful.

The market has, without a doubt, progressed from those days (although paperless is still beyond the reach of some companies). With this progress comes the need for new skills and a different type of CV to what I pulled together all those years ago.

Being captain of the rugby team and on the debating society were considered great extra-curricular activities to mention, they still are—however, the thought of putting down my Zelda or Golden Eye gaming skills would have been laughable.

While I am in no shape or form a 'Gamer' myself, I am more and more admiring the skills of those who play these games and what they can bring to the professional world.

Being able to network online and successfully perform collaborative tasks while never having had face-to-face contact, develops skills that are not only more relevant but will be invaluable to organisations going forward as we adopt a more digital way of working and networking.

After a recent conversation with a young professional who happens to be a "Raid Leader" in World of Warcraft, I'll share some of what I found fascinating about the skills that they have developed and that I desperately want in my team.

To start with, I will explain what World of Warcraft and a Raid Leader actually is as I had no idea until a couple of months ago, and I am sure the majority of my audience are the same. World of Warcraft is an MMORPG (massively-multiplayer online role-playing game), which I am sure means as much to you as it did to me. This acronym really means that it's an online game with lots of people interacting in a continuous world.

What are they doing? They are trying to improve their in-game character by completing collaborative tasks in exchange for rewards and the chance to take on more challenging collaborative tasks. There is plenty more going on, apparently, but that is the gist of it. Raid Leaders are the people who manage and coordinate the teams performing these collaborative tasks.

Managing a rugby team seems like a piece of cake compared to what these raid leaders are achieving. As a further bit of background, Raid Leaders organise and guide around 25 people from all over the world through collaborative tasks, where they all work together with distinct roles and responsibilities to take down large-scale encounters (bosses)…”

 

I was a raid leader in WoW for a Mythic guild for about 10 years. This is all true. I developed some wonderful managerial skills that I have used and continue to use on a daily basis. I have been a pharmacy director managing upward of 20 people both in person and remote. Every time I look at a resume I hope to see something like this. I would be intrigued. But they better not lie about it because I will call that shit out in 1 question.

Edited March 29 by UTGrad98
FOR A MYTHIC GUILD, FUCKERS

[Frank Drebin 5,840]

30 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

I’m at the point of my life where my time is more valuable than the extra money it costs for me to have other people fix things. By the time I get supplies, watch the requisite videos, still manage to fuck up several times, something that takes someone else 30 minutes takes me 4 hours. And is probably half assed. Practice makes perfect but how many times will I need to learn now to replace a ceiling fan or a sink fixture in my life at this point? 2, maybe 3 more?
 

There’s a baseline of knowledge and intuition and understanding handy people have acquired over a lifetime that I don’t have, and at this point it’s a conscious choice for me to not spending the time to acquire it. Maybe when I retire. But I somewhat view it as along to learning a language when you’re young versus old. 
 

When I was a kid I built my own computers and messed with all that stuff. I understand that all it takes is motivation. 

If you only live in the city, I get it.  But if you live in a rural area or have a ranch/hunting lease, the equation is much different.  Getting a plumber, mechanic, or electrician to come out from 25 or so miles from Pearsall or Cotulla is expensive and you may not get them.  You have to know or learn how to do a lot of stuff if you do not live in the city.  Youtube makes this so much easier. 

[Frank Drebin 5,840]

12 minutes ago, UTGrad98 said:

I was a raid leader in WoW for a Mythic guild for about 10 years. This is all true. I developed some wonderful managerial skills that I have used and continue to use on a daily basis. I have been a pharmacy director managing upward of 20 people both in person and remote. Every time I look at a resume I hope to see something like this. I would be intrigued. But they better not lie about it because I will call that shit out in 1 question.

Is this a troll?

[F250 29,204]

19 minutes ago, UTGrad98 said:

I was a raid leader in WoW for a Mythic guild for about 10 years. This is all true. I developed some wonderful managerial skills that I have used and continue to use on a daily basis. I have been a pharmacy director managing upward of 20 people both in person and remote. Every time I look at a resume I hope to see something like this. I would be intrigued. But they better not lie about it because I will call that shit out in 1 question.

[YGIFS 19,458]

2 hours ago, Frank Drebin said:

Is this a troll?

Yeah, I'm not one to judge but this seems weird as fuck to bring up on a thread about kids.  

to the last several posts though, it's a tight-wire act.  My wife and I were raised as working-class kids in the midwest.  We do most shit ourselves-electric, lawncare, plumbing, trees, etc-even though we can easily afford some undocumented fellow to do it for us.  At some point, yes-it's obviously not cost-effective for our time as professionals to spend hours doing shit around the house/yard.  But you also want to show your kids self-reliance and getting shit done on your own.  You know in the end you can probably use that time better and make money to give them more opportunity later in life.  But sometimes, you want them to know how to get some shit done.  Just a few days ago, we finally had to say goodbye to one of loquat trees that had been basically dead since last year.  And I could have called a tree crew or used my chainsaw.  But I took it down by hand, including the root structure with manual tools.  And the girls watched most of it because I wanted them to see what elbow grease looks like.  And it took this 47 year old fart awhile to get it done and then broken down and put into the compost bin/craft bags.... bit by bit.  You want them to be efficient with their time, and you want to have time to spend with them goofing around or teaching them.  But every now and again, you just need to buckle down and do some choring or electrical work or pruning by hand and have them learn it.  Because this whole thing can come to an end and right quick.  And the people trying to keep girls from having any kind of life aren't taking a day off so I can't either.  

Edited March 29 by YGIFS

[utee94 16,091]

30 minutes ago, YGIFS said:

Yeah, I'm not one to judge but this seems weird as fuck to bring up on a thread about kids.  

to the last several posts though, it's a tight-wire act.  My wife and I were raised as working-class kids in the midwest.  We do most shit ourselves-electric, lawncare, plumbing, trees, etc-even though we can easily afford some undocumented fellow to do it for us.  At some point, yes-it's obviously not cost-effective for our time as professionals to spend hours doing shit around the house/yard.  But you also want to show your kids self-reliance and getting shit done on your own.  You know in the end you can probably use that time better and make money to give them more opportunity later in life.  But sometimes, you want them to know how to get some shit done.  Just a few days ago, we finally had to say goodbye to one of loquat trees that had been basically dead since last year.  And I could have called a tree crew or used my chainsaw.  But I took it down by hand, including the root structure with manual tools.  And the girls watched most of it because I wanted them to see what elbow grease looks like.  And it took this 47 year old fart awhile to get it done and then broken down and put into the compost bin/craft bags.... bit by bit.  You want them to be efficient with their time, and you want to have time to spend with them goofing around or teaching them.  But every now and again, you just need to buckle down and do some choring or electrical work or pruning by hand and have them learn it.  Because this whole thing can come to an end and right quick.  And the people trying to keep girls from having any kind of life aren't taking a day off so I can't either.  

Dude you're crazy.  There's self-reliance and then there's pure stubbornness.  I lost two loquats to the various freezes, took 'em down with my chainsaw in about 20 seconds each, and taught my kids the valuable lesson of-- don't fuck around and find out with a chainsaw.  That tool means business.

 

[BabaYaga 15,631]

3 hours ago, UTGrad98 said:

I was a raid leader in WoW for a Mythic guild for about 10 years. This is all true. I developed some wonderful managerial skills that I have used and continue to use on a daily basis. I have been a pharmacy director managing upward of 20 people both in person and remote. Every time I look at a resume I hope to see something like this. I would be intrigued. But they better not lie about it because I will call that shit out in 1 question.

[Biff Tannen 46,192]

I was wondering how this thread was still going and am quite pleased as to where it has devolved.

[YGIFS 19,458]

25 minutes ago, utee94 said:

Dude you're crazy.  There's self-reliance and then there's pure stubbornness.  I lost two loquats to the various freezes, took 'em down with my chainsaw in about 20 seconds each, and taught my kids the valuable lesson of-- don't fuck around and find out with a chainsaw.  That tool means business.

 

Yes, I'm crazy.  But because my arbor skills.  We've lost two now due the past draught/freeze cycles.  We have one that's still doing okay, but not great.  It yielded such great fruit and butterflies during the first two Springs of Covid which gave the kids something to do out of doors.  And yes, I am admittedly very stubborn.  But I also need the physical exertion so I do a lotta shit by hand (that's what she said) to work out my own shit.  My girls are too young to fuck around with chainsaws, but they are at least starting to help out in the yard and take pride in their patch of Earth.  I dunno.  I'm probably parenting wrong.  But sometimes, on a nice Spring day, I could be raking in cash and calling a service crew...but there's just a moment where your kids are out there with you and you're choring away and we're listening to music and you see 'em putting their little work gloves on and breathing the fresh air and the engine just gleams.  5 minutes later they're bitching about bugs and needing a snack...but for a tiny window...you feel like a decent parent for once in your life.  

[956 Worldwide 35,600]

I am super sympathetic to interviewees especially entry level stuff where the background and resume is all shit from school and service type jobs. It’s hard to flesh something out and stand out. I generally end up hiring based on if they seem smart and together.

If someone brought up WoW it would super high-risk/high-reward. Emphasis on risk. It would play better than some bullshit volunteering resume padder though. 

[Brisketexan 106,984]

5 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

I am super sympathetic to interviewees especially entry level stuff where the background and resume is all shit from school and service type jobs. It’s hard to flesh something out and stand out. I generally end up hiring based on if they seem smart and together.

If someone brought up WoW it would super high-risk/high-reward. Emphasis on risk. It would play better than some bullshit volunteering resume padder though. 

In retrospect, putting "Really good at Leisure Suit Larry" on my first resumes was a mis-step.  You don't have to rub it in.

[F250 29,204]

42 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

I am super sympathetic to interviewees especially entry level stuff where the background and resume is all shit from school and service type jobs. It’s hard to flesh something out and stand out. I generally end up hiring based on if they seem smart and together.

If someone brought up WoW it would super high-risk/high-reward. Emphasis on risk. It would play better than some bullshit volunteering resume padder though. 

My experience with employees that played WoW was something like this.

Me: A network incident is being reported with the data center in Phoenix. Someone get Jeff to take a look.

Worker: Jeff called in sick.

Other worker: I saw Jeff running a 25 man raid at 2 AM when I logged off WoW. They hadn't even started yet so who knows how long he was up last night.

 

Jeff playing WoW.

[956 Worldwide 35,600]

5 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

In retrospect, putting "Really good at Leisure Suit Larry" on my first resumes was a mis-step.  You don't have to rub it in.

I would hire anyone who listed a Leisure Suit Larry score on his resume on the spot.

[hookem2010 2,700]

Haidt was on hidden brain today. I only caught a little bit of it, but sounded like a good interview. He talked about how college kids were asked how much they would have to be paid to quit social media for a month, with an average response being something like $50. When asked what if we got everyone else on your school off social media at the same time, they said they would pay to quit, along with everyone else. 

[MissingInAction 25,568]

15 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

I would hire anyone who listed a Leisure Suit Larry score on his resume on the spot.

Game recognize game.

[Goredho 17,663]

16 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

I would hire anyone who listed a Leisure Suit Larry score on his resume on the spot.

obligatory...

[Js1 87,225]

58 minutes ago, hookem2010 said:

Haidt was on hidden brain today. I only caught a little bit of it, but sounded like a good interview. He talked about how college kids were asked how much they would have to be paid to quit social media for a month, with an average response being something like $50. When asked what if we got everyone else on your school off social media at the same time, they said they would pay to quit, along with everyone else. 

$50 for the month or $50 per day??

[HenryJames 67,444]

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00902-2

Two things need to be said after reading The Anxious Generation. First, this book is going to sell a lot of copies, because Jonathan Haidt is telling a scary story about children’s development that many parents are primed to believe. Second, the book’s repeated suggestion that digital technologies are rewiring our children’s brains and causing an epidemic of mental illness is not supported by science. Worse, the bold proposal that social media is to blame might distract us from effectively responding to the real causes of the current mental-health crisis in young people.

[Captainant 28,589]

2 hours ago, HenryJames said:

Worse, the bold proposal that social media is to blame might distract us from effectively responding to the real causes of the current mental-health crisis in young people.

This is why it's so popular for the surly IDW folks. It's a reason to tell everyone to shut up and stop complaining 

[Brisketexan 106,984]

This is why it's so popular for the surly IDW folks. It's a reason to tell everyone to shut up and stop complaining 

Shut up and stop comping because everything is better than ever…except of course, for the narrative their chosen political “side” sells, which is what we’re living in a hellscape of immigrants murdering us all and DEI making us hate each other etc etc etc ad infintium. Don’t forget that.

[Anastasis 23,724]

3 hours ago, HenryJames said:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00902-2

Two things need to be said after reading The Anxious Generation. First, this book is going to sell a lot of copies, because Jonathan Haidt is telling a scary story about children’s development that many parents are primed to believe. Second, the book’s repeated suggestion that digital technologies are rewiring our children’s brains and causing an epidemic of mental illness is not supported by science. Worse, the bold proposal that social media is to blame might distract us from effectively responding to the real causes of the current mental-health crisis in young people.

Weird book review tbh.

[Anastasis 23,724]

On 3/29/2024 at 11:56 AM, SydneyCarton said:

I’m at the point of my life where my time is more valuable than the extra money it costs for me to have other people fix things. By the time I get supplies, watch the requisite videos, still manage to fuck up several times, something that takes someone else 30 minutes takes me 4 hours. And is probably half assed. Practice makes perfect but how many times will I need to learn now to replace a ceiling fan or a sink fixture in my life at this point? 2, maybe 3 more?
 

There’s a baseline of knowledge and intuition and understanding handy people have acquired over a lifetime that I don’t have, and at this point it’s a conscious choice for me to not spending the time to acquire it. Maybe when I retire. But I somewhat view it as along to learning a language when you’re young versus old. 
 

When I was a kid I built my own computers and messed with all that stuff. I understand that all it takes is motivation. 

Trade "secrets" are a real thing. There is value in the lessons learned, the little tweaks and tricks that get a job done and done right. There is also a lot of very basic incompetence among some trades and some jobs if you want done right, you got to dig in. I also smell like power steering fluid right now. 

[Anastasis 23,724]

On 3/30/2024 at 8:34 PM, HenryJames said:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00902-2

Two things need to be said after reading The Anxious Generation. First, this book is going to sell a lot of copies, because Jonathan Haidt is telling a scary story about children’s development that many parents are primed to believe. Second, the book’s repeated suggestion that digital technologies are rewiring our children’s brains and causing an epidemic of mental illness is not supported by science. Worse, the bold proposal that social media is to blame might distract us from effectively responding to the real causes of the current mental-health crisis in young people.

Haidt's response. "Ironically" via social media. 

 

Quote

 

A review in Nature, by

@candice_odgers

, asserts that I have mistaken correlation for causation and that “there is no evidence that using these platforms is rewiring children’s brains or driving an epidemic of mental illness.” Both of these assertions are untrue. https://nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00902-2…

@zachmrausch

and I have been collecting the published studies on both sides since 2019, organizing them, and making them available for public viewing and commenting, in multiple Google docs available here: https://anxiousgeneration.com/resources/collaborative-review-docs… In the “social media and mental health” doc, we currently list 22 experimental studies (16 of which found significant evidence of harm) and 9 quasi-experiments (8 of which found evidence of harm. Odgers cited only the 9th one.) We also examine the many meta-analyses and review papers. I lay out the evidence for causality (not just correlation) and walk the reader through the Google doc in this post at After Babel: https://afterbabel.com/p/social-media-mental-illness-epidemic… People really need to stop saying that the evidence is “just correlational.” Sure, there are a lot of correlational studies (79 in our Google doc, of which 64 found significant correlations with variables related to poor mental health.) But there are also many experiments supporting my claims of causation. I’ll write a post at http://Afterbabel.com in April responding more fully to the arguments of the skeptics (including Odgers). For now, I point interested readers to a post in which I laid out 6 problems with the way that the skeptics have conceptualized the debate: https://afterbabel.com/p/why-some-researchers-think-im-wrong… I just want to note two more problems with Odgers’ review. First: She says that I am offering a simplistic one-factor explanation: it’s social media! But I am not. My story is about two major factors (end of the play-based childhood, rise of the phone-based childhood), each of which has many components that bring a variety of harms to different children in different ways. My book is full of lists of causal pathways. There is no one causal pathway that, on its own, explains “the kind of large effects suggested by Haidt.” Yet when you add up all the different ways that the phone-based childhood is harming different kids, some of which we learned about in that Senate hearing on January 31, you end up with a lot of kids being harmed in many ways, and these many harms combined can easily explain the “large effects” even though most pathways affect only a subset of kids. Yet Odgers and the other skeptics focus intently on studies that operationalize social media in one crude way (total # of hours per day), and then correlate that number with some measure of anxiety, depression, or other mental ailment. When the correlations turn out to be around r = .15 for girls (which is actually a number we agree on, as I explain in the previous link), the skeptics conclude that this is not large enough--by itself--to explain the epidemic, so social media must be only a trivial contributor to the epidemic. This is an error caused by an overly narrow operationalization of a complex phenomenon: the radical transformation of daily life that happened for teens between 2010 and 2015. Only a sliver of the story is captured by the crude measure of “hours per day” on social media. The skeptics’ skepticism would be more compelling if they had an alternative explanation for the multi-national decline in mental health that happened in the early 2010s, but they do not. Odgers claims that the “real causes” of the crisis, from which my book “might distract us from effectively responding,” are the lingering effects of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, which had lasting effects on “families in the bottom 20% of the income distribution,” who were “also growing up at the time of an opioid crisis, school shootings, and increasing unrest because of racial and sexual discrimination and violence.” I agree that those things are all bad for human development, but Odgers’ theory cannot explain why rates of anxiety and depression were generally flat in the 2000s and then suddenly shot upward roughly four years after the start of the Global Financial Crisis. Did life in America suddenly get that much worse during President Obama’s 2nd term, as the economy was steadily improving? Her theory also cannot explain why adolescent mental health collapsed in similar ways around the same time in Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, as Zach and I have shown: https://afterbabel.com/p/international-mental-illness-part-one… Nor can she explain why it also happened in the Nordic countries, which lack most of the social pathologies on Odgers’ list: https://afterbabel.com/p/international-mental-illness-part-two… Nor why it also happened in much of Western Europe: https://afterbabel.com/p/international-crisis-europe… Nor why suicide rates for Gen Z girls (but not alway boys) are at record levels across the Anglosphere: https://afterbabel.com/p/anglo-teen-suicide… I just can’t see a causal path by which America’s school shootings, lockdown drills, inequality, or racism caused girls in Australia to suddenly start self-harming or dying by suicide at the same time as American girls. In short: There is a great deal of evidence for my claims that something terrible is happening to teens in many countries, and that a major contributing factor is the sudden international arrival of the phone-based childhood. I lay out this evidence––with hundreds of footnotes––in chapters 1, 5, 6, and 7 of The Anxious Generation. I have also laid it out in many posts at http://AfterBabel.com. All along, Zach and I have “shown our work” in public Google Docs and Substack posts, and we have invited others to critique it. Zach has made supplemental files for every chapter in The Anxious Generation, which give links to the datasets and data points that he used to create the graphs in the book. We invite you to check our work: https://anxiousgeneration.com/resources/supplements-for-each-chapter… Our work has benefited from cordial, normal, academic debates with the skeptics. We will continue to welcome their critiques. But please, everyone, stop saying that the evidence is “just correlational.”

 

 

Edited April 1 by Anastasis

[F250 29,204]

When the hard scientists in psychology argue.

[wildcat09 29,597]

I have a feeling we're going to get an Andrew Huberman-esque story about Haidt in a few years revealing what a dishonest shithead he is.  

[Hate 20,250]

On 3/29/2024 at 12:16 PM, UTGrad98 said:

I was a raid leader in WoW for a Mythic guild for about 10 years. This is all true. I developed some wonderful managerial skills that I have used and continue to use on a daily basis. I have been a pharmacy director managing upward of 20 people both in person and remote. Every time I look at a resume I hope to see something like this. I would be intrigued. But they better not lie about it because I will call that shit out in 1 question.

And that one question…are you a massive dork?

[Brisketexan 106,984]

42 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

I have a feeling we're going to get an Andrew Huberman-esque story about Haidt in a few years revealing what a dishonest shithead he is.  

I suspect he has relatively good intentions, he just indulged in the "flying to close to the sun/loving the smell of your own farts" failing.  He has reached a point that if he thinks it, it must be true and brilliant, because he thought it and everything that emanates from Haidt is perfection.

[Smax 3,800]

On 3/29/2024 at 12:30 PM, Frank Drebin said:

Is this a troll?

no, its an elf silly

[wildcat09 29,597]

56 minutes ago, BeardIP said:

Why do you have that feeling? Because you want him to be wrong and there seems to be some professional disagreement at the moment (along with professional agreement)?

And if so, why do you so want him to be wrong?

I love how often you try to impute certain beliefs to me whenever I observe than an obvious bullshit artist is obviously a bullshit artist (or even when it's actually someone else entirely whom you mistook for me).  

[UTGrad98 2,343]

1 hour ago, Hate said:

And that one question…are you a massive dork?

 

Edited April 1 by UTGrad98
...

[tbone_ 14,460]

Oh, and one of the best things we ever did (not really knowing how well it would turn out) was to buy the boy a "project" go-kart for his birthday when he was 13 or so.  It ran, and he could drive it around and have fun with it.  But it needed work and tuning (it really was a homemade kart, so some aspects of it did not perform optimally).  We went to Harbor Freight, and I bought him his own set of tools.  And then told him and his friends that they were free to work on it to their hearts' content.  He started out griping about it, but eventually really got into it.  He's now 21, and when he and his friends come home of Christmas and such, one of the things they do is get together to tinker with the go-kart, which they have turned into a semi-armored car.  One of his friends SO got into it that he now has a side hustle of buying busted up go-karts, rehabbing them, then flipping them for a profit.  They get their knuckles scraped and hands oily and dirty, and know how to take apart small engines, all kinds of stuff.  AND, it provided them a fun diversion for years.
Give a kid a project that they can have fun with, and sometimes, they'll run with it.  Maybe we got lucky, but it turned out to be a good thing.  I'm fucking sick of the kart and all the parts and shit taking up half my garage, though.

I for one would gladly swap space currently reserved in my garage for Christmas shit for a bunch of fixer upper go karts.

[fattyflattie 4,640]

3 hours ago, tbone_ said:

I for one would gladly swap space currently reserved in my garage for Christmas shit for a bunch of fixer upper go karts.

No shit. I’ve been hunting a good project cart for awhile now.  

[Anastasis 23,724]

1 hour ago, fattyflattie said:

No shit. I’ve been hunting a good project cart for awhile now.  

See few really cool vintage ones on bringatrailer every once in a while. 

https://bringatrailer.com/go-kart/

 

 

[Surly Bevo 25,777]

This seems like a good spot for this.  Pretty compelling and uncomfortable 18 minutes whether you have kids or not

 

[immamac 44,391]

10 minutes ago, Surly Bevo said:

This seems like a good spot for this.  Pretty compelling and uncomfortable 18 minutes whether you have kids or not

 

YouTube has been trying to get me to watch this video for the better part of a week. Was gonna watch it tonight. 

[F250 29,204]

1 hour ago, Surly Bevo said:

This seems like a good spot for this.  Pretty compelling and uncomfortable 18 minutes whether you have kids or not

 

I just finished watching it. He had a lot of interesting ideas but it's mostly pie in the sky ideas that's not going to happen.

[fattyflattie 4,640]

Guy who attended UCLA and Berkeley , “everyone should be able to”.  Ok, how? 

[tbone_ 14,460]

I thought that was pretty damn good

[staboner 5,098]

the jews boomers did this

[crash_davis 23,470]

 I agreed with much of the things he said about how rigged the system is against the younger generation. They are proper fucked.

[YGIFS 19,458]

9 minutes ago, crash_davis said:

 I agreed with much of the things he said about how rigged the system is against the younger generation. They are proper fucked.

Yeah, there's a lot of hyperbole in there.  I used to tell our first gen students, "There is no room full of people conspiring against you.  There is no 'system.'  it's just you and a pile of books.  Make of it what you can."  But this current generation of young people and likely the one after it (my two girls) are being dealt an absolutely shit-deck.  

And what are they going to do about it and give a middle finger to the institutions that have blockaded them?  They're going to not vote.  Way to go, dumb asses!  

[immamac 44,391]

14 hours ago, F250 said:

I just finished watching it. He had a lot of interesting ideas but it's mostly pie in the sky ideas that's not going to happen.

Same, just finished. He's not trying to sell you on the fix, he's trying to say that there are things that are possible to get us to unfuck this, but someone has to do something that isn't the exact same shit that we've been doing that got us here. It's a salient point he makes over and over again. 

14 hours ago, BeardIP said:

Take it with a grain of salt. Galloway is very polarizing in that a lot of intelligent professionals think he's a mucky muck pop business artist versus a real thought leader and public intellectual. He's more Robert Kiyosaki and Jim Cramer than, like a real social scientist.

He isn't trying to implement any of these things, he's trying to bring attention to them so someone a lot smarter than him can actually get them implemented. He's not really shy about that.

14 hours ago, fattyflattie said:

Guy who attended UCLA and Berkeley , “everyone should be able to”.  Ok, how? 

Spend the money they make in tuition on, wait for it, admitting more students and educating them. I swear something happened to you where your brain doesn't process the most basic shit anymore. Be better.

2 hours ago, crash_davis said:

 I agreed with much of the things he said about how rigged the system is against the younger generation. They are proper fucked.

The takeaway isn't that they are proper fucked, but that the capital exists to fix this problem, it's about wanting to fix the problem that is going to lead to the proper fucking. Right now there is a wild and deranged detachment from reality on multiple fronts:
1) The investor class

2) The aged 50+ average American consumer

3) The US Government (wholistically at all levels and all branches)

The investors are only concerned about themselves, but don't realize that they've rigged the game to where they have a special set of rules that allows them to "score" more than anyone else, even if they "lose" relative to another investor class they've outscored fucking everyone else. It would be like them playing foosball and keeping foosball scores vs having to play real soccer where the scores are in the very low single digits over 90 minutes (idk bad example?). 

The boomer consumer are completely irrational morons who are fueled by an unrelenting and insatiable thirst for debt funded lifestyles instead of quality value and innovation in their products. They actually love being ripped off/grifted. it's insane.

The US Government is enabling everything to go to shit by doing nothing. There has not been an amendment to the constitution in the longest period of time since the constitution was created. We have legislation by executive action and legislation from the bench happening rampantly. No one fucking votes, taxes are out of control in the respect that no one knows what the fuck we are spending them on, because despite bigger budgets the services delivered/rendered are shittier and shittier. Corruption is at an all time high, nepotism is rampant, political fundraising outpaces venture capital investment on a like for like election vs startup cycle. There has been large scale inaction on clear violations of SEC, FTC, FCC, FDA, EPA laws/rules for fear of it being tied up in the completely fucking useless judiciary branch. The list goes on...

 

 

[fattyflattie 4,640]

14 minutes ago, immamac said:

Spend the money they make in tuition on, wait for it, admitting more students and educating them. I swear something happened to you where your brain doesn't process the most basic shit anymore. Be better.

Maybe I should have been more clear.  His bitch was the forced stagnant enrollment at elite universities.  I'd be interested to know if UCLA was as elite when he was there as now (assuming not), same as UT, and many others. He had UH grades and was able to attend a university that became more highly regarded after his departure, and magically thinks that's how things should work now.  It's not.  The universities have gotten better because they have cherry picked the best kids.  Can a 2.3 become an outlier, of course.  How many brilliant kids should they pass on to take the 2.3's of the world?  Where are those passed over brilliant kids going to study?  Or is he suggesting there should be no limit to enrollment at any "elite" university?  We have a glaring example within a 100 mile radius of home.  There is a pretty stark difference between top 6% and top 10%, and another between the top 10% down to having acceptance letters you never requested mailed to you ala Tech.   You can be fucking brilliant and if you choose UH over Cambridge, well, you got yourself a UH degree. If Harvard quadrupled their class size tomorrow, it would still be made up of valedictorians and the like, not 2.3's that might make something of themselves 20 years down the line.   

I did like several of his other ideas.  But a Berkeley grad fussing about why everyone can't have elite degrees is just showboating, or bullshit.   Really groundbreaking stuff with the stocks, too.  You mean to tell me someone at the height of their career earnings bought in on some stocks that did well 20 years later? Crazy.  I bet that's never happened in the history of the market.   I'm sure there was never someone who was in the height of their earnings when (name any dow 50) stock was getting started and they bought in cheap - nope, just Gen X.