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Comment by 317070 | Hacker News Reader

Overestimate their understanding, underestimate their vocabulary.

Learning a second language is a fantastic way to feel many aspects of being a child again. Having to deal with frustration. Understanding a situation but not be able to fully take part. Being able to communicate but only with the blunt instrument of the words you know.

That's how I feel right now talking in my only language of English.

Yep. So many people have been drifting away into some kind of parallel reality where language is seemingly the same, yet transmits no meaning between our diverging realities.

Language that looks superficially normal but transmits no meaning is called "generative AI output"

That too, but I originally meant literal human output, as in loss of ability to convey meaning with words in communication between people, no AI involved.

I like Lemony Snicket's approach: he gives (obviously) wrong, but technically correct, definitions for hard words. These definitions are usually hyper-specific, or satirical. Children, who are still very familiar with learning vocabulary from context, can find this much more amusing than adults who have given up on learning new words except via dictionaries.

> The word “briskly” here means “quickly, so as to get the Baudelaire children to leave the house.”

> “Wipi!” Sunny shrieked, which meant “I’d much prefer gardening to sitting around watching my siblings struggle through law books.”

Kids are so much smarter and more capable than adults give them credit for, and it is stunting society as a whole

I think infantilisation is a huge part of the reason we're where we are today - kids 100 years ago were working harder jobs than most adults today (not implying child slave labour is a good thing, just making a point)

Kids today, though, are given exactly 0 responsibility and treated like babies the whole way through their prime learning years

I feel so sorry for the next generation

One of the first emails from the school when my small son was in Primary 1 was that they'd been making some pancakes in class and he'd picked up a Big Sharp Knife and began slicing some strawberries to put on them, and this was Very Much Not Allowed!

Children should not be touching the Big Sharp Knives!

Yeah, did he cut himself? No? Was he holding the knife and the strawberries carefully, so he didn't cut himself? Yes?

Want to take a guess as to why?

He's five. He knows how to chop vegetables. My parents taught me how to cook from a young age, I am teaching him how to cook from a young age. I'm raising a *man* here, not a perma-infant.

Although, between you and me, I think he could stand to use a bit less oregano in his pizza sauce. I'd never criticise his choices, I think he'll figure it out in time.

Terry Pratchett:

"You can't give her that!' she screamed. 'It's not safe!'

IT'S A SWORD, said the Hogfather. THEY'RE NOT MEANT TO BE SAFE.

'She's a child!' shouted Crumley.

IT'S EDUCATIONAL.

'What if she cuts herself?'

THAT WILL BE AN IMPORTANT LESSON"

Only Death speaks like that in (GNU) Terry Pratchett's books. I assume he is disguised as "the Hogfather" and the other character is unaware even though it's known to the reader. And I assume Death is there because the girl is about to kill herself with the sword.

Death is there because he is no longer Death, he is the Hogfather.

Someone else has to be Death while he's moonlighting.

Bloody irresponsible thing to do, that, just wander off and work out of scope and expect others to pick up the slack, I don't know, personifications of abstract concepts going off-map just because they feel like it, what's the Disc coming to, eh?

"But it's okay if a battery goes on fire daddy, I'll put carbon dioxide on it!" - EBv2.0, aged 3 and a half

I think the first time my son said the 'f' word, he got the tone and the body language exactly right for the context in which he used it (a frustrated/resigned "fuck's sake", with roll-eyes and throw-head-back, look up to the sky). He might have been five years old at the time. And back then, I really didn't say it around them very much (out of an attempt to be somewhat responsible).

They're absorbing everything. They're scraping the entirety of your personality to build their own.

Tiny language models.

I never quite understood the obsession with keeping some language away from children that everyone uses themselves. The words are there because they are needed. Walking the euphemism treadmill is a Sisyphus effort.

Let them build a decent vocabulary before exposing them to the words that replace all sorts of other words ;)

I want them to be clever with how they use language. Or at least have the knowledge to be clever, if they apply themselves.

I heard of a study [1] claiming that people that swear more have a larger vocabulary in general, so your efforts might be counter-intuitive to your goal.

Don't see how deprivation of some words leads to the knowledge of other words, either. Maybe if you interject and correct swear word usage by providing other words that would be a better fit.

> Taboo word fluency is correlated with general fluency.

> Taboo words comprise pejoratives and slurs.

> Taboo fluency is correlated with neuroticism and openness.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03880...

That's probably true for people who know the words but is it true for people who don't? I expect most people use most common words at about the same level of fluency.

I know the word "computer". I expect people's "computer" fluency is correlated with their general fluency. Would teaching Victorian peasants "computer" increase their general fluency?

When EBv2.0 was tiny, like could walk but not really talk tiny, and I was WFH Because Coronapocalypse, he one day did a straight deadass impersonation of me.

Picked up a cordless mouse and held it up to his little ear like a phone, "Hello? Yeah? Yeah..." and started wandering around the living room with it, occasionally scowling and holding his other hand up to his ear, "yeah... yeah... well yeah, yeah? Naja, yeah... nah, nein! <waving expansively> Nein nein nein... Yeah, 'kay, bye."

Put the mouse down on the table.

"Uuuuuurgh....."

Absolutely nailed it, Gary Oldman level precision.

Absolutely golden moments.

More people should read Oliver Sacks' book Uncle Tungsten. As a kid he was allowed to buy real chemicals for his chemistry set and was told things like "can you make slightly less hydrogen peroxide next time". Minors buying pitchblende (Uranium ore) at the local drugstore for experiments? Sure, might encourage them to be scientists.

You have to show people (not just kids, also up to college students and adults) what can go wrong so they know the appropriate amount of respect for it. Kids don't have enough fear of some things, college students have too much because they learned their fear was too little before.

I hear it's traditional in some parts to start an electronics lab semester by blowing up one of every component to show how it goes, and I had a similar experience in metal shop when I was too afraid to crash a lathe and the teacher did it himself, showing me how close you can get the tool to the part before it's a problem.

I'm not sure whether to interpret this as a statement about what we currently over/under-estimate, or as command that we should try what feels like over/under-estimation in order to counter our own biases.

No, it was really helpful advice I read somewhere. That when explaining something, always overestimate someones understanding, and underestimate their vocabulary.

Edit: apparently it's a vsauce thing. I do think it's right, it helped me a lot in life.

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