"Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" wrote:
> Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> >
> > Baseball? I can't think of what instills /better/ values in
> > young minds. Patience and urgency, individual effort and teamwork,
> > strategy and chance, humility and hubris, capitalism and sacrifice,
> > tradition and novelty, honesty and deception. I can't think of a
> > better way for a child to learn about all those things than to go
> > outside, pick up a glove and experience them directly. (Well,
> > poker works pretty well too, but you don't get as much exercise).
> > I suppose I can forgive a non-American for the slight.
>
> Throwing rocks instead of thinking, the "them and us" social pattern,
> and, above all, vast emotional investments in something so incredibly
> trivial that I don't even have a word for it. Death to baseball. Teach
> the kiddies how to program a computer. (My little brother just wrote
> his first function! In Python, BTW - it really is the best language for
> learning these things.)
On the contrary Eli, teaching competition is of utmost importance, as is motivating people to invest in things of 'trivial importance' (in the minds of the 'rational' person), its what got us automobiles, the space program, computers, graphical interfaces and VR, and a bazillion other things that were leaps ahead.
--
TANSTAAFL!!!
Michael S. Lorrey
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Member, National Rifle Association
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"Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils."
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