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Comment by 0xcafefood | Hacker News Reader

This is an overly dour take on children's books.

I don't disagree that young people (at least in the US) are told a lie like "Do what you love and the money will follow." I fell for that and tried to become research scientist, getting a far as receiving a PhD only to find that the funnel from there to a tenured research job was _extremely_ narrow. That's a giant waste of many motivated people's time. And it does need to be fixed.

But is the source of all this Richard Scarry books? I really doubt it. It's okay to give a rosy view of the world to children. Childhood is the longest and best vacation you'll ever take. But there does need to be an incrementally higher dose of "real talk" as children grow into young adults.

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Maybe I should have been more clear: I see this as a problem with the real world, not with children’s books. The books are good. What’s busted is that so many adults don’t see such a world as worth building and working towards.

The story is right, but reality is wrong?

Perhaps you have an issue with interpretation here. The pleasant story was the illusion here.

PS - I too loved the Richard Scarry books as a child and bought them for my children - and I'm not even from the US.

All I’m saying is that we ought to make a conscious effort to build the world that is more aligned with the world we’d like to explain to our kids.

I think stories that describe better possibilities than what we have are useful cognitive and social tools.

Yes, but I'm not sure that the job is to 'change the world' - I don't want to fend off those who think they know what I need. I think it's more about changing oneself to align with what one finds here, whilst trying to remain true to oneself.

That's a good way to look at it. However, our actions influence (even if infinitesimal) the direction of the world around us, so the consequences of our choices are worth some thought.

Adults correctly see there's nothing they can individually do that would have detectable effect toward such a goal. So, the cost/benefit ratio is a loser.

I used to think this way too. My outlook on life transformed when I found out about this amazing concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action

But you see, the marginal benefit of individual action is always low, even if there are others that are collectively acting. It pays to defect and let those other people do the job.

That's easily resolved by being a kind of person who experiences empathy involuntarily, and finds it hard to ignore injustice let alone participate in it. This makes defection more expensive than cooperation.

No, that doesn't easily resolve it. Resolving it would require everyone else (or, at least, a large fraction of them) to be like that. This is basically solving social problems by imagining humanity is other than it is.

The only way to solve collective action problems in the real world is via coercion. That is, government.

I can think of several other approaches. Duty, honour, artificial incentives, constructive competition… People do work together without being forced to, you know.

They could vote for better leaders to achieve something closer to that world, but in many places these days (esp. the US lately), they actively vote for the opposite.

Fully agree.

Even though the children's books lack nuance. There are no problems with pollution and climate change in Scarry's world. There are no jobs that people do not like to do. Malice and greed is very limited, sickness never really frightening.

But still, the overall vision of goodness from the perspective of a child's innocence is valid and accurate. Adults at some point either just give up or mechanically hold on to dystopic beliefs because they feel it is part of their identity.

But it might just be a lack of imagination. Which is why hope and change always come from new generations, and the best elders can do is gently support them and step out of their way.

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