You know, rats can have more offspring than your sister in just a month. I don't see what's admirable about fulfilling one's biological destiny. And who cares about law school or baseball teams? If she had gotten a PhD in Quantum Field Theory while raising 6 kids, then...
I think you've got it wrong. I think the point he was trying top make is the time management aspect (as parents know, kids are a huge time sink, god bless'em). I've got only one, and he's making it extremely hard to put extra time on anything. So, actually having N kids is nothing to boast about, doing so while being able to do anything meaningful is.
I know a medical doctor who had 14 kids (oh, those catholics). And she still managed to practise medicine when she was not spreading her legs to launch another baby in this world. Sounds much more impressive than managing a baseball team, imho. The OP wants the HN crowd to assure him of what a special and unique snowflake his sister is, when she's merely doing something that is the norm in some parts of the world.
"Intellectual pursuits are more respectable and rewarding than non-intellectual ones". Personally, I'd say it might be okay to run a little baseball team and make a few dozen people's lives more interesting. Even doing a phd in QFT, as you note, might help some people in the long run. But are you trying to define a heuristic that proposes that one human is better than the other solely due to the field of work?
I find this trend rather disturbing. It's almost parallel to the "nerds don't get laid" paradigm. For the record, I'm a physics major. And I'd any-day prefer to be a little-league team manager than troll on comment threads.
"But are you trying to define a heuristic that proposes that one human is better than the other solely due to the field of work?"
No. I am merely stating that having kids is not an accomplishment, it's one's biological programming. One should admire people who do things that are challenging and difficult, like proving hard theorems or sailing around the world solo. It's not about status nor academic pedigree, it's simpler: if everything is admirable, then nothing is.
"I'd any-day prefer to be a little-league team manager than troll on comment threads."
Just because I am being downvoted, that doesn't make me a troll. But thanks for the remark. Now you can be all happy that you're on the side of the "moral majority". You're a self-righteous sheep. Be proud.
I didn't _disagree_ with what you said. Yes there are certain people who have spent a good amount of their time working towards noble and challenging causes who have my utmost respect. I fully agree with your first point.
By saying things like "And who cares about law school or baseball teams", you are belittling a whole set of people. Saying "sailing solo is more admirable than working towards law school" might be accurate, but the way I read it - "law school? You haven't sailed solo around the world, hence your existence is invalidated".
As for the troll remark, you're a new user with no real identity making relatively controversial and somewhat personal statements with a relatively disrespectful tone. I'm not too sure what the textbook definition of a troll is, but this is the closest one I've seen over here.
In families with such large numbers of kids, it seems it is often the older kids who at some point start to be charged with looking after the younger ones so, yeah it's "doable" but the parents aren't doing it all.
That article you linked to was not written by Scott Locklin, in case you haven't noticed. Does the fact that an article is hosted at a crypto-racist website invalidate its thesis? Rhetorical. By the way, weeks ago Locklin's post on nanotech was upvoted to the upper stratosphere here on HN.
"That particular article may not have been written by Scott Locklin, but a quick browse of his other works on the same site validates ahoyhere's point."
Oh, really? The burden of proof lies on your shoulders. More to the point: citation needed.
A couple of Scott's archived articles turned my stomach, Watermelon. Such as this piece, where he details his preference for foreign women, because they're more submissive, easily-flattered, and wear skirts:
It's extremely revealing that he suggests Mel Gibson's attitude toward women as exemplary.
His articles on class structure expose a rather violent imagination about how best to conduct social intercourse:
"There are two ways of getting along with a lower class person at least to a limited extent. The first way is to beat the [expletive] out of them. They deserve it anyway, and most people lick the boots that kick them."
I saw that you've been reading his articles for a year, so it makes sense that your views reflect his misogyny and subscription to the violent totalitarian credo that might makes right. You wouldn't tolerate him otherwise.
Locklin was no more making a defense for the skirt than I was making a criticism of it. His position is that the proper state of a woman is to wear dresses and skirts, and that the only possible reason for wearing pants is that she's ashamed of her gender. His position, in other words, is that women should be easily identifiable by a uniform. This is part of his preference for women who are subservient and can be kept in what he feels is their proper place.
That you attempt to frame this in terms of liberty reveals that you recognize the shamefulness of this attitude. Well, shame on you.
On class wars: Locklin proposes to "get along with a lower class person" by beating them until they "lick the boots that kick them". Even if class warfare were inescapable, Locklin's views offer no insight except into the violence of his own imagination, and my point was simply that.
You may think your views are legitimatized in seeing them written by someone who claims intellectual authority (even while railing against the institutions who credit it), but the rest of us recognize them for what they truly are: crude, violent, and misogynistic. You are right on this much: I'm not convinced we can fairly add racism to that list, but I'd hardly be surprised to be proven wrong.
Considering he gave you 100% of the means you required to investigate it yourself, one can only come to the conclusion that you are a troll, not interested in truth, but only in gaining attention.
That's not "crypto" anything. You can't spell out "I'm racist" any more clearly than "But the real black is not on television, and you pull your purse closer when you see him..."
Or, by the direct author (and not the one wholly quoted), "It is clear that the few who purchased Black slaves in their day made a lamentable choice." -- and he doesn't mean that, oh, I don't know, slavery is immoral. He means it was a lamentable choice because the goods were bad apples that now will spoil the bunch.
Does this article's presence on the same site invalidate the thesis of another article? No. But does it put everything argued into question? Yes. Because there's no such thing as "the facts." You cannot ever have all the facts. The map is not the territory.
Therefore, you must the consider the motives of anyone who presents "facts" to you -- because they had to pick and choose, and could not represent all facts (map, territory), and why did they pick the ones they picked?
Dry-humping the idea of pure logic doesn't work in a non-platonic world where you can never, ever have all the facts. Context matters. Source matters. Motive, intent, and background matter -- a lot.
