Episode 162: Parents Just Don't Understand (with Paul Bloom)

[00:00:00] Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad and psychologist, David Pizarro, having

[00:00:06] an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics.

[00:00:09] Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say, and knowing

[00:00:14] my dad some very inappropriate jokes.

[00:00:17] You keep the faith in me?

[00:00:18] Are you my man?

[00:00:19] You're my favorite man.

[00:00:20] Can you take it baby?

[00:00:21] Look, wait in!

[00:00:31] I'm has spoken!

[00:00:54] I'm a very good man.

[00:01:03] Brains than you have.

[00:01:06] Anybody can have a brain?

[00:01:08] You're a very bad man.

[00:01:10] I'm a very good man.

[00:01:12] Just a very bad wizard.

[00:01:13] Welcome to Very Bad Wizards.

[00:01:14] I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston.

[00:01:18] We have Paul Bloom with us again today.

[00:01:21] Paul, are you going to make us talk about sex robots again?

[00:01:26] All episodes that have me on will have to have about 45 minutes on the sex robots.

[00:01:31] Should we just jump in or do you guys want to...

[00:01:34] You know that mythical claim that if you click on enough Wikipedia links it'll lead

[00:01:38] back to philosophy?

[00:01:40] If you talk long enough to Paul Bloom it'll probably lead back to sex robots.

[00:01:45] I mean like five minutes.

[00:01:46] It really doesn't have to be that long.

[00:01:51] Once you go beyond a pleasantries.

[00:01:52] Look, we're already talking about it.

[00:01:56] You know just in case people are new to this I have no interest in talking about sex

[00:02:00] robots.

[00:02:01] This is just something that you guys have pinned on me.

[00:02:04] It's our shtick but it's you know shtick is sometimes based on facts.

[00:02:10] Yeah so what are we really talking about today?

[00:02:14] So wait let's first say Paul Bloom from Yale University, the Brooks and Suzanne Ronald Reagan

[00:02:20] professor of psychology at Yale University.

[00:02:25] Brooks and Suzanne Reagan professor of psychology.

[00:02:28] You should get a more easy to remember chair ship.

[00:02:31] Yeah that really is how it works.

[00:02:35] Yes, yes.

[00:02:37] I am David Pizarro from Cornell University with zero chair ship and zero potential

[00:02:42] for a chair ship.

[00:02:43] It's easy to remember.

[00:02:44] So since we're talking about academic honors a congratulations is due.

[00:02:49] Tamler has just been promoted to full professor.

[00:02:52] Yeah which is the highest status you can have in academia.

[00:02:55] Yeah this is it.

[00:02:57] Since I don't see a named chair in my future.

[00:03:00] Congratulations Tamler.

[00:03:01] Very well deserved.

[00:03:03] Thank you.

[00:03:04] So now I have to go through my contacts and take out associate from all of the contacts

[00:03:08] where I have you listed and put in full.

[00:03:11] Full.

[00:03:12] Well it's not effective until September 1st so you still have some time.

[00:03:16] Yeah just drop me a text when I.

[00:03:19] Yeah.

[00:03:20] Class second like midnight.

[00:03:23] You know it's the top honors when it just gets removed like you no longer have to specify

[00:03:27] what kind of professor you're just professor.

[00:03:30] And there is something about associate professor that makes it sound like you're not a real

[00:03:34] you're not real professor like.

[00:03:37] I know Paul can't relate it's been too long.

[00:03:40] I think the campus doesn't go far back enough to remember that.

[00:03:44] I've been a full professor last 50 60 years and really really get used to it but you

[00:03:49] know the whole thing is I always want to make a cookbook for academics and call it the

[00:03:53] full professor.

[00:03:56] And this is such a good.

[00:03:58] Good.

[00:03:59] Thank you.

[00:04:00] This has been my Ted talk.

[00:04:04] Yeah are you.

[00:04:07] No I'm a terrible cook.

[00:04:09] I mean I'm I'm I'm an unambitious cook.

[00:04:13] Okay.

[00:04:14] All right so what are we talking about today.

[00:04:16] Two things in the first segment we're going to talk about immoral art or art by immoral

[00:04:22] people just the connection between art and morality it's definitely something we've

[00:04:27] talked about but never with Paul I don't believe and never in a kind of focused way

[00:04:33] not that this will be a focused discussion but no.

[00:04:37] And then in the second segment thanks to our Patreon listeners who voted on this episode

[00:04:45] this is their special episode which we do roughly twice a year where our Patreon members get

[00:04:50] to suggest episodes and then we narrow down to finalists and then they vote and they

[00:04:57] voted for this topic specifically requested Paul Bloom on the effect of parenting.

[00:05:05] Do parents matter.

[00:05:07] We're going to talk about the famous Judith Rich Butler hypothesis.

[00:05:12] Harris.

[00:05:13] Judith Rich Harris.

[00:05:17] Judith Rich Harris hypothesis that off to a good start that your preparation time.

[00:05:23] Parents don't matter at all.

[00:05:26] It's all genes and peers genes and peers.

[00:05:29] So immoral art first like so this has become way more way more of an issue since since Michael

[00:05:40] Jackson and I'll tell you why it's actually started influencing my life and why I actually

[00:05:45] care like people have stopped playing Michael Jackson music just you know when you go

[00:05:51] out and you're in the store and you hear the radio like there's just no more Michael

[00:05:54] Jackson music.

[00:05:55] It's weird if you have a big Michael Jackson shaped hole in my musical heart.

[00:06:00] Yeah, like a black mirror episode.

[00:06:03] Except there is no Michael Jackson exactly we're now in the parallel universe or we've

[00:06:08] just and and I had maybe I'll start off with this I think this could lead to a more general

[00:06:14] discussion one question one.

[00:06:18] Is it okay to play Jackson five stuff like when Michael Jackson was a kid when he

[00:06:24] was being a bit.

[00:06:25] Yeah, I think this will get to the heart of what what I think makes makes it acceptable

[00:06:30] or acceptable.

[00:06:32] And two, did you know that one of Michael Jackson's most famous songs You Are Not Alone

[00:06:39] you know that one yeah was written by R Kelly.

[00:06:44] Is that the ultimate song to never be played again?

[00:06:49] Is that a double is that sucking morality out of the airwaves.

[00:06:55] Actually, we were walking home the other day and PYT was playing in some bar.

[00:07:03] You know is Michael Jackson from Thriller also called Pretty Young Thing.

[00:07:07] So, you know, so I like I guess start with that.

[00:07:13] Is that okay to do in your view?

[00:07:16] And then we can go back to Jackson five.

[00:07:18] Well, I don't know that we've stated I guess whether you know what we think about it.

[00:07:22] Paul, what do you think about this?

[00:07:24] Like just in general.

[00:07:25] Yeah, so in general, I think that the immorality of artists should have very

[00:07:30] little bearing on whether work is played.

[00:07:32] I wouldn't take Michael Jackson off the air.

[00:07:35] I am I think that that and more generally by the way to talk about another debate,

[00:07:40] which maybe you guys touched upon or not, but there's a big question

[00:07:43] about philosophers and philosophers who have been accused of sexual

[00:07:46] harassment or sexual assault, should they stay on the syllabus?

[00:07:50] And maybe many sort of smart people say no, you got to take them out.

[00:07:53] Replace them with people who are more, more decent.

[00:07:56] And I find that I strongly disagree with that.

[00:07:59] However, I mean, one thing we could talk about, I think for certain art forms,

[00:08:03] the morality of an artist makes a difference for how you perceive their art.

[00:08:07] And so I could understand just to shift examples of it.

[00:08:10] People find no longer finding Louis C.K. funny.

[00:08:14] Right. Or interpreting his humor differently.

[00:08:17] But and I can imagine people interpreting the songs of Michael Jackson differently.

[00:08:21] But no, I don't think you take them off there.

[00:08:23] So let me actually just make a quick distinction because I think

[00:08:28] like it matters to me.

[00:08:29] So there's a question of is it immoral to listen to or

[00:08:35] you know, to Michael Jackson or to consume the art of somebody who's

[00:08:39] who's let's just say undoubtedly, I'm sure there's some people who still

[00:08:43] think think MJ is innocent.

[00:08:45] But let's just say there's you know, there's just no debate

[00:08:48] or you you firmly believe that that a person has done something terrible.

[00:08:52] Is it wrong to listen to it?

[00:08:54] And versus is it wrong to.

[00:08:58] Buy it. Yeah.

[00:09:00] And finally, is it wrong to play it if you're a radio station

[00:09:04] or put, you know, play it for an audience?

[00:09:07] Let's impose it on an audience.

[00:09:09] And I I stand firmly in the it shouldn't matter at all.

[00:09:13] Like intrinsically, the art does not.

[00:09:18] It stands on its own, I think.

[00:09:20] I think the only problem to me is a pragmatic one, which is.

[00:09:26] You know, watching Bill Cosby just makes me think of rape now.

[00:09:32] It's just it's it's not even that I perceive the jokes to be less funny.

[00:09:36] It's I mean, I do, but it's only by dint of the fact

[00:09:39] that I have these intrusive thoughts.

[00:09:41] It might happen to Michael Jackson like Tamler just made that quick

[00:09:45] quip about pretty young thing and and how how now the the words

[00:09:51] pretty young thing seemed to mean something else.

[00:09:53] That boom, that just takes me to thinking of Michael Jackson molesting kids

[00:09:57] and so pragmatically, it's just, you know, in a purely hedonistic fashion,

[00:10:01] it's giving me bad feelings.

[00:10:03] So in some cases, I don't care to listen to it.

[00:10:08] Now, other people might be offended.

[00:10:09] So if you're a radio station, I think you have a different problem on your hands.

[00:10:13] Yeah, you might be putting child rape in some people's heads.

[00:10:18] Yeah, involuntarily.

[00:10:20] So I'm with you guys on the first question completely.

[00:10:23] Like, I think there's nothing immoral about listening to it, putting

[00:10:28] there's nothing immoral about reading it, buying it even because, you know,

[00:10:32] but if you if it is getting in the way of you appreciating their art,

[00:10:38] then I don't think there's anything wrong with that either.

[00:10:40] Like, you know, if for some reason what they have done makes it no longer

[00:10:46] possible for you to enjoy their art.

[00:10:49] I don't think you're being PC or pregesh or, you know, it's just that's

[00:10:55] there's all sorts of reasons why I would change our perspective

[00:10:58] about a person's artist and the finding out that they've done horrible things

[00:11:01] could definitely be one of them.

[00:11:04] So my feeling about like playing Michael Jackson on the radio

[00:11:07] or like at this bar where people walking by would hear it.

[00:11:14] I don't know.

[00:11:15] Like, I don't have a problem with it.

[00:11:16] I don't think in that case, even with something like pretty young thing,

[00:11:22] if people if enough people right to complain, maybe practically speaking,

[00:11:27] you might not want to do it.

[00:11:28] But I don't like I'm not with the cancel group where people should

[00:11:35] just ban it from any public so that only people who are voluntarily

[00:11:40] choosing to listen to it have access to it anymore.

[00:11:45] Yeah, I mean, it's it's a weird thing where I think because of the

[00:11:49] I don't know, because of the salience and the what it means for

[00:11:57] our current social world to have Louis CK and Bill Cosby

[00:12:01] associated with what many believe is a is a good movement to try to improve

[00:12:07] the way women have been treated right now.

[00:12:09] It kind of seems important to people.

[00:12:13] They think that that that you are somehow cosigning

[00:12:19] with everything the artist has to do, like in a way that

[00:12:23] I don't think we ever have before like the whole joke growing up

[00:12:28] when people whatever people in my family would talk about Wagner

[00:12:31] was the guy's a fucking Nazi.

[00:12:35] But like, listen to this, right?

[00:12:37] And with enough distance, I think we can start separating it.

[00:12:40] But I don't know if it's a case like Paul was pointing to where

[00:12:45] if if Wagner was writing lyrics that were vaguely anti Semitic

[00:12:51] and I understood them

[00:12:54] or even if his lyrics had were able to be interpreted in a vaguely

[00:12:58] anti Semitic way, I might feel differently.

[00:13:00] There's something about just this music just sounds like like a Nazi

[00:13:04] like a Nazi like Scree.

[00:13:08] Yeah. Well, maybe maybe years from now

[00:13:12] or like our kids or grandkids will be like,

[00:13:15] why are you playing the Lester music?

[00:13:17] Like whenever they hear that sort of thriller funky beats.

[00:13:20] What do you think about the like put on the radio question?

[00:13:24] Paul, I think it's fine.

[00:13:26] I mean, there's another issue which we haven't talked about,

[00:13:29] which is what about music itself, which conveys, you know, racist

[00:13:32] or misogynist messages?

[00:13:35] And I think that's a more difficult problem.

[00:13:39] But I just I just can't get myself.

[00:13:41] I can't bring myself to care that, you know, Wagner was was a Nazi

[00:13:45] that Nietzsche was a Nazi that so-and-so owned slaves and everything.

[00:13:51] It could be neither were Nazis.

[00:13:52] There were no Nazis.

[00:13:53] Yeah, they were they were they were not the ish.

[00:13:56] Proto Nazi. Proto Nazi.

[00:13:58] Yeah.

[00:13:59] Sorry.

[00:14:00] Sorry, Kamler, for offending your your your priority.

[00:14:05] First the cave for Wagner. Never.

[00:14:09] But I, you know, I just I just think it's irrelevant.

[00:14:12] I think there's practice.

[00:14:13] There's two practical concerns.

[00:14:14] One one is that if, you know, if I'm a radio station

[00:14:16] and nobody's going to want to listen to my music,

[00:14:17] that got to be a factor.

[00:14:18] Yeah.

[00:14:19] And then David mentions another pragmatic factor, which is

[00:14:22] I might knowing what I do about Mel Gibson.

[00:14:25] I mean, I want to put money in his pocket.

[00:14:27] Right. And so, you know, I say it won't affect our work.

[00:14:30] I just don't want to want to support him.

[00:14:32] Same with Bill Cosby and like I would I would be less feel less guilty

[00:14:37] bootlegging the work of an immortal.

[00:14:38] Yes, that's right. That's right. Yeah.

[00:14:41] Like just pirate.

[00:14:42] But like you will find any reason to bootleg movies and music.

[00:14:47] Pirate Bay dot org, Passion of the Christ, please.

[00:14:51] But I think of all I think Louis C.K.

[00:14:53] is actually the more interesting case because

[00:14:56] a sort of theory of art and communication I like more generally

[00:15:00] is that when you appreciate an artwork like a comedian,

[00:15:03] you you extract what you believe to be the intentions

[00:15:08] and ideas from their head.

[00:15:09] And that's what you're resonating to not just the words.

[00:15:11] And so it then depends on the person.

[00:15:14] I mean, you will listen to a comedian who's a minority

[00:15:18] or who's rich or who's gay or who's misogynist

[00:15:22] in a very different way.

[00:15:23] And I think that will affect your interpretation of the words

[00:15:27] and it should. There's nothing irrational about it.

[00:15:29] So it depends on the comedian, right?

[00:15:30] If Stephen Wright, it turned out was like just like a racist or.

[00:15:37] So Stephen Wright for those who might not know

[00:15:39] because not everybody is 50 years old.

[00:15:42] Is it including me?

[00:15:44] Who's a famous one liner, one liner comedian

[00:15:47] or is just very witticisms that take the form of one one.

[00:15:52] Could I could I could I tell my state favorite Steve Wright joke?

[00:15:56] I won't try to go.

[00:15:57] I went to I went to a store and they said open 24 hours

[00:16:02] and they said we're closing up and they said you open 24 hours

[00:16:05] and they said not in a row.

[00:16:10] Yeah, so like his his art is disconnected from any.

[00:16:15] But but Louis C.K.'s art isn't disconnected.

[00:16:18] It's very personal.

[00:16:19] And I think part of it was you had to assume

[00:16:24] that he was a good person deep down

[00:16:27] and wrestling with the bad parts of his his personality.

[00:16:32] I mean, I might say we actually said that on our on our

[00:16:36] when we were talking about it and we've been quoted back saying

[00:16:39] like we we think Louis is a good guy, you know.

[00:16:41] And people are like well turns out

[00:16:44] should people be listening to very bad wizards when we are good.

[00:16:47] We are good.

[00:16:48] They're telling good guys.

[00:16:48] Yes.

[00:16:49] If you dig deep enough, I think you can find a kernel of goodness in both of us.

[00:16:55] I mean, that's might be I mean, like also we shouldn't judge Louis C.K.

[00:17:00] just on that like these.

[00:17:01] That's right. On that one thing.

[00:17:03] So I think like listening to him talk about his kids, which he does a lot.

[00:17:08] I think could still be very funny.

[00:17:11] I still played a clip for of a class where he

[00:17:15] gives like the Peter Singer argument in 55 seconds.

[00:17:19] Yeah. And you know, I just I might preface it with it's a little weird now to

[00:17:25] but you know, he's not going to be pulling his dick out in this clip.

[00:17:28] He's going to be explaining Peter Singer.

[00:17:30] But so so that's how that's how you assuage the feelings of discomfort

[00:17:34] among the females.

[00:17:35] Well, I don't think I phrased it that way.

[00:17:38] I don't but I but then I did it.

[00:17:41] I didn't do that one this time, but I had done it an earlier one.

[00:17:44] So I figured, you know, like how many Louis C.K. clips do you are you going to play

[00:17:49] before it starts seems like you're sending a message or something?

[00:17:54] I'm you guys something you guys you guys were mentioning, which is the

[00:17:57] immorality of the art itself might be problematic.

[00:18:00] So so songs that contain lyrics that are about doing bad things.

[00:18:04] And it's weirdly I feel like we've dealt with that as a society already.

[00:18:07] We we've sort of agreed among, especially the the liberal

[00:18:13] side of the nation that that's something that's fine and that ought to even be protected.

[00:18:19] And, you know, I remember when I was coming up and first starting to listen

[00:18:22] to lots of music on my own, that was an issue for a lot of rap albums.

[00:18:27] So so they instituted, you know, Tipper Gord did this thing

[00:18:29] and they instituted this parental advisory stickers on everything.

[00:18:32] And and there was essentially a free speech battle there.

[00:18:36] Nowadays it's like we don't even talk about that.

[00:18:38] You know, I'm constantly shocked at the fact that Obama was such such

[00:18:45] an open friend to Jay Z when if you really wanted to dig through Jay Z's

[00:18:50] back catalog and find lyrics that were misogynistic lyrics where he

[00:18:58] you know essentially admitted to selling lots of crack cocaine

[00:19:01] and using that money to fund his his record label and his first album.

[00:19:06] There is there's a ton that's there.

[00:19:09] Moreover, we we like Jay Z for that and we think that he's an authentic person

[00:19:13] that Jay Z would never lie about that. Right.

[00:19:17] And and yet yet we're OK with that.

[00:19:22] You know, we're OK with violent lyrics.

[00:19:24] We just don't maybe don't pay attention to maybe you don't want your kids

[00:19:26] to play him, but it's not like we're we're maligning the artists.

[00:19:30] I don't know if I agree with you that that there's a liberal consensus on this

[00:19:34] because I hear a lot of liberal discussion about when they're criticizing

[00:19:38] a piece of art, they'll criticize immoral character.

[00:19:41] And this is usually like a movie or a TV show.

[00:19:44] Immoral characters within it that they feel like the point of it isn't

[00:19:49] to expose their immorality and and they criticize it for that.

[00:19:55] So there was a lot of that with three billboards.

[00:19:57] People were mad that Sam Rockwell character who was racist got they

[00:20:03] said that he got redeemed in the end, whereas I don't think that's the right

[00:20:07] reading of the movie.

[00:20:08] But the fact that they were having that conversation at all shows that

[00:20:12] at least for some pieces of art, I don't think that consensus exists

[00:20:16] like it did around rap music.

[00:20:18] I think I think that's I think rap is an unusual case because

[00:20:22] I think liberals were torn, you know, on one hand,

[00:20:25] it's misogynistic and violent and so on, often homophobic.

[00:20:29] Some of it. But but some of it.

[00:20:30] But it's also predominantly African American.

[00:20:33] Yeah. So so so liberals.

[00:20:36] Yeah, so Eminem brought out more wrath from the white people, probably.

[00:20:40] Yes. But but I agree with Tamarite.

[00:20:43] I've seen films castigated for not being diverse enough.

[00:20:46] Yeah. Yeah. But let me clarify.

[00:20:47] I clarify what I meant is that there's nothing close to the sort of

[00:20:49] the cancel like movement, right?

[00:20:52] This is very I feel like at least the debates about free speech

[00:20:56] for these people have been they're done.

[00:20:59] No, no, I think we can talk all day about whether or not this

[00:21:02] was a good message or whether 50 cent is a good guy.

[00:21:06] But it's very nobody says we shouldn't no longer play 50 cent music,

[00:21:11] even though, you know, he's an admittedly very terrible guy

[00:21:15] at one point in his life.

[00:21:16] I was at a wedding.

[00:21:17] I get your guys intuition.

[00:21:18] I was at a wedding a little while ago and you were playing Leonard Skinner,

[00:21:21] sweet home, Alabama and everything.

[00:21:23] I was having a great time.

[00:21:25] But then it occurred to me.

[00:21:25] Is this the kind of people

[00:21:26] who have been blackface 50 years from now?

[00:21:30] Listening to Skinner.

[00:21:31] Yeah. And dancing.

[00:21:33] Senator is going to have to resign because there's a video of him

[00:21:38] all day in sweet home, Alabama to karaoke bars.

[00:21:41] Yeah. Yeah. That'll be the end of them.

[00:21:45] So rap is actually interesting in another way that you alluded to,

[00:21:48] which and I think you mentioned previously where it really is

[00:21:50] a case where the the origin that the sort of person

[00:21:54] the artist is makes a difference.

[00:21:56] You talk a lot about authenticity and what kind of difference it makes

[00:21:59] to know that somebody lives the life you're talking about versus their opposer.

[00:22:04] Yeah, exactly.

[00:22:05] In terms of the the works of art that seem to get a lot of liberal

[00:22:10] criticism for their immorality, there are certain shows

[00:22:15] or movies that seem to get a free pass.

[00:22:18] So like we've talked about South Park forever as an example of this,

[00:22:22] but then also VEEP.

[00:22:24] Oh, man. Yeah.

[00:22:26] I was just watching this season and boy, they're hilarious.

[00:22:30] And goddammit, if they can't get away with jokes that I would never,

[00:22:33] ever think anybody could get away with.

[00:22:35] Yeah. Just the most offensive, most reprehensible there.

[00:22:39] And for some reason, nobody cares about maybe just because it's so

[00:22:43] unbelievably funny, but for some reason like that show

[00:22:48] gets a complete free pass from anybody caring about.

[00:22:52] And, you know, there's racism, there's sexism.

[00:22:54] There's just, I mean, pick the things that get especially liberals

[00:22:59] upset, but also conservatives and it's on that show.

[00:23:02] So how did they get away with it?

[00:23:04] Because you're right, they never occurred to me, but I'm watching

[00:23:06] the show and incredibly racist jokes.

[00:23:08] You know, but reprehensible characters would say these things to one another.

[00:23:12] Yeah. But they're extremely funny and extremely offensive.

[00:23:17] So I like the characters are likeable.

[00:23:19] So that whole thing where you can't make this kind of character likeable,

[00:23:22] they do like every show, every character, except maybe Jonah is likeable on that show.

[00:23:27] Yeah, I was going to say the only way they can get away with this is that

[00:23:33] that the people who are saying those things, everybody understands

[00:23:36] that it is not at all a reflection of those actors as true beliefs.

[00:23:41] If if they were, you know, if even one of those characters was told,

[00:23:45] you know, somebody said that backstage, they were, you know,

[00:23:48] like calling someone the N word, it would be over.

[00:23:52] And I think that the distance between the, you know,

[00:23:56] the committee of writers in the writer's room and the people who finally

[00:24:00] deliver those lines is what keeps them protected.

[00:24:03] Because I was thinking the exact same thing like if Julia Louis-Dreyfus,

[00:24:07] for instance, say any of these things in a standup act.

[00:24:11] And I think the answer is no. Yeah.

[00:24:13] I don't know.

[00:24:15] I think people just love her so much that she can do what she wants.

[00:24:20] But I would say nobody thought Sam Rockwell was a bad guy or a secretly racist.

[00:24:25] And and Vega, he's still he not him, but the movie still got shit for his.

[00:24:31] But the message of VEEP isn't particularly

[00:24:34] after you race and whatever.

[00:24:35] The movie did have a does have movies carry moral messages.

[00:24:39] Yeah.

[00:24:40] I don't think I actually don't think it.

[00:24:42] I think don't think it's a mistake to disapprove of the message.

[00:24:46] A movie is presenting.

[00:24:49] Or approve of it.

[00:24:50] It's part of it's part of a communication.

[00:24:52] You could like it or you don't like it.

[00:24:54] Well, and I mean, we got to distinguish the just mere,

[00:24:57] you know, disapproving from from the like, I don't know, Tamela.

[00:25:01] I never heard anybody really talk about badly about that that movie.

[00:25:06] But that's because in my circles, people just don't watch good movies.

[00:25:11] But I mean, it did get nominated, right?

[00:25:14] For an Academy Award.

[00:25:15] So it can't have been that much of a.

[00:25:17] Well, I mean, I think that was the reason it was the subject

[00:25:21] of so much debate is because it was it was nominated for an Academy Award.

[00:25:27] The movie that won the Academy Award also stirred a lot of debate.

[00:25:32] Fish sex.

[00:25:33] What shape shape of water?

[00:25:36] No, no, no, not the fish sex one from last year.

[00:25:40] The one and now I'm blanking on a name that sort of updated driving this Daisy.

[00:25:45] That was this past year.

[00:25:46] Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

[00:25:47] Yeah. Every spike.

[00:25:50] Spike Lee said every time somebody drives somebody in a car, I lose.

[00:25:57] That was so funny because, you know, driving this Daisy was same years

[00:26:01] through the right thing.

[00:26:04] Um, but so are we doing a disservice to people who would say like,

[00:26:12] wait, this is super low hanging fruit to take Michael Jackson off the air.

[00:26:16] Nobody feels good listening to Michael Jackson now.

[00:26:19] And if you do, that's something weird about you.

[00:26:21] Let's let's send a message that we won't.

[00:26:24] We won't take our artists being child molesters

[00:26:28] and do the right thing and yank it off the air.

[00:26:30] What's I don't.

[00:26:33] I don't want to dismiss it so easily because I think there are arguments

[00:26:37] in good faith about this.

[00:26:39] Yeah, it's a sort of utilitarian view.

[00:26:42] But I think that that says the world's better off if we show

[00:26:46] everybody that we don't tolerate child molesters will destroy their career

[00:26:50] and so on.

[00:26:50] I just think that such a few devalues art itself.

[00:26:54] I think it's totally compatible to say he was a terrible person,

[00:26:58] but but his music is was extraordinary

[00:27:01] and give so much to give enough value to the music, say, well,

[00:27:04] we're going to leave him on there because of the value of the music.

[00:27:07] Right.

[00:27:08] I think Michael Jackson is a case where he was so sort of bald faced

[00:27:11] in his relationships with children that it is an extra betrayal on his part.

[00:27:16] Right.

[00:27:17] If he had never even seemed to be so moved by his love

[00:27:22] for these innocent children and then going to that,

[00:27:24] that's like sort of the ultimate betrayal.

[00:27:26] You know, our Kelly, it's like, yeah, I mean, did you think he was a good

[00:27:29] guy when you were first listening to his stuff?

[00:27:31] Like, no, you know, he married Aliyah when she was like 14 years old.

[00:27:35] There was always something creepy about Michael Jackson's.

[00:27:39] Yeah.

[00:27:40] And there were accusations from way back.

[00:27:42] Yeah, I mean, like, I don't know, like I was not surprised at all by this.

[00:27:46] Like there was something deeply just weird about him in general

[00:27:51] and especially about all the kids that would come to Neverland or wherever.

[00:27:56] Yeah, I'll admit to having just really, really wanted so badly for it not to be

[00:28:01] true and just to think that he was misunderstood.

[00:28:05] That that I in a probably motivated fashion just was ignoring,

[00:28:10] not wanting to believe it.

[00:28:11] Paul, you brought up philosophers on syllabus.

[00:28:15] So John Searle, for instance.

[00:28:17] So so I've heard people saying it's similar to the argument David was

[00:28:21] giving or trying to explore, which is, look, you know,

[00:28:24] he normally teach to Chinese room, you teach certain fundamental

[00:28:27] philosophical work he's done.

[00:28:29] But but the idea of rewarding and in some way discussing and treating with

[00:28:34] respect, somebody like that, the cost out ways to benefit.

[00:28:37] Let's put somebody else in the syllabus.

[00:28:39] I think in that kind of case,

[00:28:42] maybe there is a cost and the benefit has to be a little higher than it

[00:28:47] normally would be to put them on the syllabus.

[00:28:49] So if if there's something else that you could put on that would do

[00:28:53] the job as well or maybe almost as well, then maybe you do that.

[00:29:00] But if there's not, then you don't because now the benefit outweighs

[00:29:05] whatever cost there is.

[00:29:07] I mean, that would be one just kind of middle ground position to take.

[00:29:11] I have a what might be a bold claim, but but I think I want to argue this

[00:29:17] that our intuitions about whether or not,

[00:29:21] say like a misogynistic man or whatever somebody with a shady character

[00:29:27] should be on a syllabus will be related directly to the truth value

[00:29:35] of the discipline that we're talking about.

[00:29:37] Like that's one way to put it.

[00:29:39] So the closer you get to everybody understanding that it is an actual

[00:29:46] piece of knowledge that's been added to, you know, to this set of things we know,

[00:29:51] the less we're going to care.

[00:29:52] So the structure of DNA, right?

[00:29:56] Yeah, those guys, those guys were assholes.

[00:29:59] I think at least one of them was.

[00:30:01] But there's no way I would never teach the double helix.

[00:30:05] Right, because they discovered somebody else.

[00:30:07] They discovered it.

[00:30:08] And they were right.

[00:30:09] Who prove something you might say, well, you know,

[00:30:13] I hate that it was this guy who did it, but here's the proof.

[00:30:16] Yeah, when you start getting into the social sciences,

[00:30:19] I think it is the very nature of what, you know, what what we're saying,

[00:30:26] what whether or not what we're saying is like that of a hard science.

[00:30:30] That fuzziness starts to give us a little bit of wiggle room to start

[00:30:34] deciding who we want to listen to.

[00:30:36] And then by the time you get to art, which is wholly subjective,

[00:30:40] it is everybody's luxury to completely dismiss the work of somebody they don't

[00:30:44] like. I might disagree both of you.

[00:30:47] I mean, Tamler, you're right.

[00:30:48] If it's a coin flip, I might choose somebody who was an accused of a crime.

[00:30:53] I'll choose somebody who's PDF I already have on my computer and I don't have

[00:30:56] to go looking for it.

[00:30:56] I mean, if it's a coin flip.

[00:30:58] But what I think for the most part, take John Cyril,

[00:31:01] who has pretty serious accusations against him.

[00:31:03] I think his paper in a Chinese room is accessible.

[00:31:06] It's brilliant.

[00:31:07] It's important.

[00:31:08] And I wouldn't hesitate to present it.

[00:31:10] And I would hope that the people in the seminar would sort of have the maturity

[00:31:14] of thought to separate the work from the man.

[00:31:16] Well, that's actually that's that's why I think the Cyril Chinese room paper,

[00:31:21] I think is a good contribution to, you know, I'm not removing philosophy

[00:31:26] from having from having made contributions to what we know.

[00:31:31] And I think that one was an important argument.

[00:31:32] You know, but I also don't think like you could teach him

[00:31:36] a film class on 70s cinema and not put Polanski or Woody Allen.

[00:31:44] Woody Allen, although I mean, as a separate thing, I actually think there's

[00:31:49] I don't like I don't see the evidence like there is with Polanski that fair enough.

[00:31:56] But yeah, so say Chinatown, like, you know, it's one of the best movies

[00:32:00] of the last 50 years, you can't not include it on a on a syllabus,

[00:32:05] even though it's not presenting a truth like, you know, discovering DNA or something

[00:32:10] like that, it is a fundamental piece that you have to

[00:32:15] see if you're going to understand what happened in the 70s.

[00:32:19] Yeah, I think I think you're pointing to

[00:32:21] something else, which is when you're getting at that level like and what

[00:32:25] you're teaching is something sort of like the history of film.

[00:32:30] Of course not.

[00:32:31] Right. So we can't talk.

[00:32:32] We can't talk about history.

[00:32:33] Well, you take from my example like Pizarro, the guy who conquered the Incas,

[00:32:37] was a vile, illiterate murder.

[00:32:40] Of course, I can't teach the history of the Americas without mentioning him.

[00:32:44] But I think that's different.

[00:32:46] Am I fair to say that that's different than enjoying it sort of quaw artwork

[00:32:50] when you're in a teaching class on sort of film in the 70s?

[00:32:53] That is different.

[00:32:54] I mean, there's it is different.

[00:32:56] There's everything you were reluctant, reluctantly observing.

[00:32:59] Well, there's a guy Hitler.

[00:33:00] Let's talk about him for a while.

[00:33:02] You know, versus enjoying and appreciating

[00:33:06] and some admiring the work of somebody who might be a reprehensible person.

[00:33:11] But I guess I the 70s cinema class that I'm thinking of,

[00:33:15] they're looking at what is so brilliant about these movies.

[00:33:18] They're not looking at just a document that's not like searching for archives

[00:33:23] of Leibniz's journals or something like that.

[00:33:26] It's it's like this is beautiful and deep complex art.

[00:33:31] That's being presented to us.

[00:33:33] Would it be different to you if Polanski was all up in his movies like Woody Allen is?

[00:33:38] I mean, that's an interesting question because he really isn't.

[00:33:41] He's not the filmmaker where his presence is so obvious in it, except that it's

[00:33:48] usually really good.

[00:33:49] But so I don't know.

[00:33:53] I wonder what a good example of that.

[00:33:55] Because I think that Woody Allen is still up in the air, whether he did anything.

[00:33:59] Yeah.

[00:34:00] So I don't know if I can't use that as an example.

[00:34:03] But what about, yeah, I mean, I guess it would have to be like the show Louie or

[00:34:06] something. Right.

[00:34:08] Right.

[00:34:08] I feel like I'm missing an intuition here.

[00:34:10] I understand how the people feel strongly about it.

[00:34:13] I don't differ in my disapproval of these acts and you know, I have kind

[00:34:18] of standard intuitions that it just has very little bearing on my appreciation

[00:34:22] of the artwork.

[00:34:23] If it turned out Hitler wrote some great detective novels and people say,

[00:34:26] oh, they're terrific.

[00:34:27] I'd read them.

[00:34:28] I think I saw at the end of the day, I side with with you, Paul, on this and

[00:34:33] probably with Tamler, I'm a defender of the aesthetics of art.

[00:34:38] It's to me, it's a purely pragmatic question.

[00:34:40] Does does it bother me enough?

[00:34:43] Then I'll just stop listening to it.

[00:34:45] Not not by a principle or not because I think the art is worse or that I

[00:34:51] shouldn't be listening to it.

[00:34:52] It's just, you know, I'm well schooled in the art of defending vile artists

[00:34:56] because I started listening to rap right around the time when it got vile.

[00:35:01] And I love it, right?

[00:35:03] And I don't condone any of the things that they're talking about,

[00:35:06] but I don't deny that some of these people have been very, very bad people.

[00:35:10] And I just think art is a thing

[00:35:16] to be evaluated on its own merits.

[00:35:18] Whether you want to support financially

[00:35:20] an artist, then fine, you know, don't.

[00:35:21] But don't tell me that I can't listen to 50 cent or whatever.

[00:35:25] Because yeah, yeah, I agree.

[00:35:27] OK, we should move on because we have a lot more to talk about.

[00:35:31] You definitely do.

[00:35:32] All right, we're going to take a break and we will be right back to talk

[00:35:36] about whether parents matter or not.

[00:36:41] Welcome back to Very Bad Wizards.

[00:36:43] This is the time of the show where we like to thank our listeners for all their

[00:36:46] wonderful forms of support.

[00:36:48] Thank you for all the emails, the tweets, the discussion.

[00:36:53] If you want to get ahold of us,

[00:36:55] you could email us at verybadwizards at gmail.com.

[00:36:59] You could also tweet to us at Very Bad Wizards at Tamler, at P's.

[00:37:04] We promise like we always say, we read everything, but we don't always have

[00:37:07] time to reply, but we still very much appreciate it.

[00:37:10] You could also join our lively communities in the Facebook Very Bad

[00:37:15] Wizards page or on the subreddit.

[00:37:18] Subreddit is reddit.com.

[00:37:21] Slash R slash Very Bad Wizards,

[00:37:23] or you can support us in more tangible ways.

[00:37:25] If you would like to do that, you can go to our support page.

[00:37:28] Very Bad Wizards dot com slash VBW support.

[00:37:32] And there you'll see three ways in which you can support us.

[00:37:34] You could either give us a one time or a recurring donation via PayPal.

[00:37:40] You could click on that Amazon link and shop as you normally would.

[00:37:43] And even though you don't pay any more, we get a little little piece of that.

[00:37:47] And we really appreciate it.

[00:37:48] And finally, you can become one of our beloved

[00:37:50] Patreons and go to our Patreon page.

[00:37:54] That's patreon.com slash Very Bad Wizards.

[00:37:56] And you'll see there a few of the bonuses that you get once you

[00:38:01] become a patron of our show.

[00:38:04] In fact, one of the latest things that we did for our Patreon listeners was

[00:38:08] record an episode on an episode of Star Trek, The Next Generation.

[00:38:13] This is one of my great achievements.

[00:38:15] I got Tamler to watch an episode and discuss it with me again,

[00:38:19] available to our Patreon supporters.

[00:38:23] Final thing that I'd like to say, if you're listening to this the week

[00:38:27] that it's released the week of April 15th,

[00:38:29] Tamler and I are actually going to be in Vancouver together this week.

[00:38:33] We're both presenting at the American

[00:38:34] Philosophical Association meetings there.

[00:38:37] And there was enough interest from our

[00:38:38] Vancouver listeners to have a get together.

[00:38:41] So we're going to do that on Thursday night, April 19th, 2019,

[00:38:46] at the Emerald Supper Club in Vancouver.

[00:38:49] That's Thursday night, April 19th at 8 p.m.

[00:38:53] at the Emerald Supper Club in Vancouver.

[00:38:56] We look forward to seeing some of you there.

[00:38:58] Again, thanks to all of you for your support and all the ways in which

[00:39:01] you show us support.

[00:39:03] We really, really appreciate it.

[00:39:04] And it's what keeps us going.

[00:39:07] So now we're going to talk about a view that was proposed and popularized

[00:39:12] by Judith Rich Harris, that parents don't have influence or an impact on their kids.

[00:39:21] So I first learned of this, Paul, from you at a conference.

[00:39:25] I think it was the Society of Philosophy and Psychology in 10.

[00:39:30] And I can picture it.

[00:39:32] I'm not even sure where it was.

[00:39:33] I think it was in Philadelphia.

[00:39:35] But I can picture the bar and I know that Eddie Namia was there.

[00:39:38] And you proposed this.

[00:39:41] And my daughter had just been born, so I didn't care.

[00:39:43] Right? But I remember Eddie Namia's

[00:39:46] really being upset by what you said.

[00:39:48] Yeah.

[00:39:49] That parents don't matter.

[00:39:51] And he said, I want because he's been a father for a while.

[00:39:54] And he said, I want the way I raise my kids to matter to their future.

[00:39:59] And you said, well, the research says otherwise.

[00:40:02] And I couldn't tell.

[00:40:03] I didn't know you if you were just being provocative or if you are.

[00:40:07] But explain the view and explain what the evidence for it is.

[00:40:11] Because I start out initially skeptical.

[00:40:15] So the intuition is exactly right.

[00:40:17] For the most part, good parents have good kids in any dimension you can

[00:40:21] look at and bad parents have bad kids.

[00:40:24] And it's just it's for anything.

[00:40:27] You know, parents who read a lot to their kids have kids who read a lot.

[00:40:31] Parents who are are 10 who have criminal histories are more likely than not.

[00:40:36] Sorry, their kids are more likely than other people to have criminal histories.

[00:40:40] In correlations with everything.

[00:40:43] And so the standard view in this is that that parents imprint their kids

[00:40:47] with intelligence and personality and all the traits.

[00:40:49] So Judith Rich Harris, who has this

[00:40:51] astonishing personal history, she was unaffiliated with any university.

[00:40:56] Just, you know, a shut in, essentially.

[00:40:58] And and so she put all this together.

[00:41:01] And and also it was then supported by people like like Steve Pinker and many others

[00:41:08] and really let along behavioral genesis, including people like like David Roe

[00:41:13] at University of Arizona, really led to a revolution.

[00:41:16] And this gets summarized in Time Magazine, in other words, as do parents matter.

[00:41:22] But that's not quite of course parents matter.

[00:41:25] And she'd be the first to say first thing parents matter.

[00:41:27] And that they typically provide the genetic material for the kids.

[00:41:30] And that has a huge influence on the way kids are parents matter

[00:41:34] in the specific, a lot of specifics about how kids grow up.

[00:41:38] And certainly parents matter in how happy their kids are.

[00:41:41] You know, we're all parents.

[00:41:42] We have within our power to make our kids' lives a living hell or or,

[00:41:46] you know, wonderful as best it could be.

[00:41:48] And and how we do this obviously affects our kids' relationship with us.

[00:41:52] But Harris's point and she didn't do

[00:41:54] any original research, she put it all together was when you look at personality

[00:41:59] and intelligence, it turns out that about 50 percent of the variants roughly

[00:42:05] could be explained genetically and that everybody knew that.

[00:42:09] But the cool thing is the other 50 percent doesn't have much to do with

[00:42:14] with shared environment.

[00:42:16] It does not have to parental influence.

[00:42:18] And so one bit of evidence comes from adoption studies, which is, you know,

[00:42:22] if any of us adopt a kid,

[00:42:25] the kid will at a baby, the kid will grow up and be totally unlike

[00:42:32] their bylaw, their siblings that that are genetically connected to us.

[00:42:36] It's as if how you raise kids makes no difference for their personality or intelligence.

[00:42:42] Another point she makes is that an enormous amount of family environment

[00:42:47] has to birth order.

[00:42:48] Firstborns are treated differently than secondborns, different third

[00:42:51] parents, and yet when you look at the data, a birth order has virtually no effect.

[00:42:57] Since even in the last couple of years,

[00:42:59] there's been meta now big, big, big analyses and there's no personality

[00:43:03] differences and tiny IQ differences.

[00:43:05] And and this makes it I think parents know this in that if you ever have

[00:43:11] more than one kid, you know, I did, my kids have turned out very different.

[00:43:15] And and you see the workings of all sorts of other factors of their

[00:43:19] genes, of their environments, they resemble me.

[00:43:23] But there's a good case for me to resemble and it isn't because I did to them.

[00:43:28] But just because you know, share genes.

[00:43:30] I mean, this is I think that that

[00:43:33] when I first was exposed to this, I think I was right in grad school

[00:43:38] and I was I was a beginning developmental student.

[00:43:42] And that's right around when this came out.

[00:43:44] And it's it's interesting just to add some background.

[00:43:48] I mean, that we were in the process of hiring a developmentalist and we were

[00:43:54] looking for someone who did social development, which is sort of the area

[00:43:58] that Judith Recharis is criticizing like a whole bunch of people saying good

[00:44:01] good parents make for good kids.

[00:44:04] And it was just so clear, you know, as as Judith Recharis describes

[00:44:11] that the emperor has no clothes when it came to those studies that were

[00:44:15] just a bunch of correlation showing, you know, good parents have good kids.

[00:44:19] And everybody was so quick to assume it.

[00:44:21] The most powerful argument that is her positive claim, I think, was that that

[00:44:27] that rest of the piece that that that comes after the 50 percent genetic,

[00:44:32] that environmental piece isn't the parents, but it really is the peers.

[00:44:35] And I remember being sort of convinced by this, the one argument that she

[00:44:41] that she made and I don't know why it was this particular argument,

[00:44:43] but which was children of immigrants do not speak like their parents.

[00:44:48] And that to me captures, I think a very important, you know, it's obviously

[00:44:51] not the best piece of evidence for her claim, but it captures the spirit of her claim.

[00:44:55] You're going to if you're verbally gifted, you're going to have a child

[00:44:58] that's good at talking.

[00:45:00] Now, you move countries, you come, you don't speak their language.

[00:45:04] All your kids here is the language of the parents for the first few years.

[00:45:09] And then all of a sudden they go out and they speak with no accent whatsoever.

[00:45:12] Why? Because of the rest of the world.

[00:45:15] OK, so so my first worry is that we're talking about two different things when

[00:45:23] one side claims that parents have an impact on their kids and the other side

[00:45:27] says no, they don't.

[00:45:29] But Judith Rich Harris says no, they don't.

[00:45:31] The people who say they do, they don't necessarily mean that they are going

[00:45:36] to be like that, that like, so when I think I have an impact on Eliza,

[00:45:40] I don't mean that she's going to be like me, that she's going to become a

[00:45:43] philosopher or think in the ways that I think I mean something more

[00:45:50] ambiguous nuance that through unconditional love and support,

[00:45:56] she is going to be.

[00:45:57] And I think Allison Gopnik makes this point.

[00:45:59] She is going to be able to flourish in ways that she wouldn't have been

[00:46:04] able to had I been an absentee dad or a distant and cold dad.

[00:46:10] And it seems like a lot of the studies that she looks at are studies

[00:46:15] about whether the parents turn out to be like the kid in a very specific way

[00:46:23] rather than in this more complex way where I think

[00:46:29] Allison Gopnik says it's to think of it less like a carpenter where you're

[00:46:34] molding them into something specific, more like a gardener that is allowing

[00:46:39] them to flourish in their own ways.

[00:46:42] So a lot of studies do look for a causal role.

[00:46:45] Like so I imagine a happiness study, for instance, would look not necessarily

[00:46:49] and whether kids' happiness matches that of her parents, but rather

[00:46:54] does duty parents have any influence on the happiness?

[00:46:57] So once you factor a genetic relationship, is there is there a correlation?

[00:47:03] Now, your point is right, which is looking at correlations implies looking for the

[00:47:07] sameness. I think for a lot of cases it comes down to the same.

[00:47:11] If you're the kind of parent who wants your kid to flourish and

[00:47:15] provides love, you're kind of a loving, approving good person.

[00:47:20] Right. It's hard to think of many cases where

[00:47:23] the parent has a trait and you'd expect if the kids brought up and there's

[00:47:28] a causal influence, the kid to have the opposite trait.

[00:47:31] Right. And can I just jump in?

[00:47:33] Because I think Tamler and your objection,

[00:47:35] you're missing, I think an important point of the story, which is that kids

[00:47:40] in fact do become similar to their parents in those very things.

[00:47:46] Right. So they do end up sharing personality traits and intelligence

[00:47:50] levels with their parents.

[00:47:51] So that's sort of the starting point, that that is something that's

[00:47:56] been found over and over again.

[00:47:58] No, I'm not missing that.

[00:48:00] I get it. But then she will go on to say that that can't be explained by

[00:48:03] parenting influence and I buy that that can't be explained by parenting influence.

[00:48:08] That's probably genes and other things.

[00:48:13] What I'm saying is that if you are a loving and supportive parent that

[00:48:19] provides a lot of unconditional love, maybe your child will be more successful

[00:48:24] and more successful than you were.

[00:48:26] Like because maybe you didn't get that from your parents or so.

[00:48:30] That's the kind of thing that I didn't see

[00:48:33] measured, but I think it's a lot of the when when parents get offended that

[00:48:41] when they hear that they don't matter.

[00:48:43] But if you're right,

[00:48:44] that would imply that if Eliza had adopted sibling, adopted sister,

[00:48:49] right, the two of them would grow up to be more identical in what you'd expect.

[00:48:53] Right.

[00:48:54] Because because you would have swamped them both with your love and your care.

[00:48:57] So if one grew successful, other one,

[00:48:59] more likely than not would grow successful too.

[00:49:01] And a lot of data that she talks about suggests that's not the case.

[00:49:05] Right. And a lot of anecdotes from people.

[00:49:07] I've heard these anecdotes myself are all over the place.

[00:49:10] People who have adopted kids and often they just loved her kid.

[00:49:13] The kid turns out great.

[00:49:14] But the kid seems to go on a very different path

[00:49:17] than their biological kids.

[00:49:20] You know, I noticed this.

[00:49:22] As a parent, it's very hard to not have this confirmation bias that when I see

[00:49:26] my daughter doing something that I encouraged quite a bit,

[00:49:31] I like to take the credit for it.

[00:49:34] So but there are ways in which I've tried to influence my daughter.

[00:49:39] Right. Like I exposed her so much to, say,

[00:49:41] comic books and cartoons and she really never developed a liking for those things.

[00:49:47] But when she shows a liking for something that I also tried to encourage,

[00:49:51] say some some kind of music, I'm like, well, I guess it worked.

[00:49:55] My influence worked in this case, but not in the other case.

[00:49:58] Whereas it's probably just the case that she has her own.

[00:50:01] She's developing her own likes and interests

[00:50:04] as she's influenced a lot by her peers and her genes or whatever.

[00:50:08] And maybe what I'm doing as a parent is when I find something that she actually

[00:50:16] likes, then I keep hitting that one, right?

[00:50:18] I keep encouraging that one.

[00:50:19] And it feels like I'm extra powerful.

[00:50:21] So she's she's like, yes, it doesn't

[00:50:24] and she's likely to do something the same if she's like most people

[00:50:26] when she grows up.

[00:50:28] So if she loved comic books, somebody asked her why.

[00:50:30] Oh, my dad loves comic.

[00:50:31] My dad taught me that my dad.

[00:50:32] If she hates comic books, she might say,

[00:50:35] my dad tried to force them upon me, you know, and I really rebelled.

[00:50:38] I really rebelled.

[00:50:39] I can't even look at them anymore.

[00:50:40] And so so there's a, you know, everybody thinks

[00:50:44] there's a tremendous impulse to blame your parents

[00:50:48] for to blame or credit your parents.

[00:50:50] And the evidence that there's a causal role of the parenting is really weak.

[00:50:57] So so here this leads to my second.

[00:51:00] And this is a bigger criticism that the way she frames the debate.

[00:51:06] So she frames the debate as she's defending the null hypothesis.

[00:51:11] And the null hypothesis here is that parents have that that that parenting

[00:51:17] and what parents do has zero impact on the kids future and the kids

[00:51:26] present outside the home, I guess.

[00:51:29] And so and she places the burden of proof on anyone who rejects the zero

[00:51:34] influence hypothesis.

[00:51:37] I think that

[00:51:39] rigs the game a little bit.

[00:51:42] I think she and those who defend this view are making it very easy on themselves.

[00:51:49] All they have to do is demonstrate that there are problems with social

[00:51:55] social science studies on parenting that have tried to isolate some particular

[00:52:02] influence that that parents might have and show that that study didn't reveal

[00:52:07] any influence.

[00:52:09] But like any null hypothesis, like arguing from the null, that's problematic.

[00:52:13] It could just be that the study was designed improperly, that the study was

[00:52:18] misconceived and should have been and should have been designed in a way to get

[00:52:24] more complex factors.

[00:52:25] And I think parenting effects are going to be complex.

[00:52:28] The ways in which parents impact their kids are going to be difficult to isolate

[00:52:33] in a way that a social science experiment has to do.

[00:52:39] And so here's my question.

[00:52:41] What would happen if you tried to and she doesn't seem to do this?

[00:52:44] If you tried to tear apart the peer effect research in the same way that you tried

[00:52:50] to tear apart the parenting effect research, I'm not convinced that you couldn't

[00:52:58] come up with a peers have no impact view in the same way.

[00:53:04] If all you had to do was was tear apart those studies.

[00:53:09] I think you might be right.

[00:53:10] I think that the peer hypotheses are interesting hypotheses.

[00:53:14] I think you'd be right that it won't survive that much scrutiny.

[00:53:18] It might in the end be the other 50 percent.

[00:53:20] It's not genetic, it's just random shit.

[00:53:22] It's like you walk down the wrong street, you get beaten up.

[00:53:25] Another street you find a twenty dollar bill, somebody falls in love with you.

[00:53:29] Gamma rays come and rewire a tiny proportion of your brain.

[00:53:32] I mean, it might just be random.

[00:53:34] That's the true null hypothesis.

[00:53:37] Right.

[00:53:38] That is the null hypothesis, but that's not how she frames it.

[00:53:41] She frames it as parents have zero impact is the default.

[00:53:46] I think that that that was a rhetorical

[00:53:49] flourish that she used that I don't think that I think is doing it doing her own

[00:53:53] argument, a bit of a disservice because what she was pointing to and the

[00:53:57] interesting background is that she was a textbook writer.

[00:54:00] So she was trying her best to keep up with the field, you know,

[00:54:05] across these various editions and reading, consuming all the science.

[00:54:09] I think that what she's saying is that for so many years,

[00:54:12] that's been the default belief that everybody's tried to show this to be true

[00:54:18] and that all of the studies that that claim to be the best evidence for this

[00:54:24] actually fall apart under scrutiny because they haven't taken care of these

[00:54:29] these very glaring confounds.

[00:54:31] And so when she says I'm here to defend the null,

[00:54:33] she's really saying like, let me change if we changed our default belief to

[00:54:36] parents don't matter, what would we see?

[00:54:39] And yeah.

[00:54:41] And and I think unfortunately, you know,

[00:54:44] if you read her exchange with Jerry Kagan in Slate, you know, she does.

[00:54:49] In some cases, she's not doing herself any favors,

[00:54:51] but she is fairly subtle.

[00:54:53] I think, for instance, she says that there is a case.

[00:54:57] There is one area in which parents clearly influence probably through socialization.

[00:55:01] And that is how kids act within the confines of the home

[00:55:05] with their interactions with their parents.

[00:55:07] She says you can very much have a household in which your kids listen to you,

[00:55:14] you know, get along well with with you and their siblings.

[00:55:19] And you probably have some degree of control over that.

[00:55:22] It's just that when if you're trying to predict how the kid is going to be

[00:55:26] in life in general, once you leave the confines of the home,

[00:55:29] then what you realize is that stuff just doesn't generalize who they are.

[00:55:32] And so, I think that's just a very different person.

[00:55:36] And in the peer work, I think she's, you know, she herself never did these studies.

[00:55:40] And I don't know if they fall prey to the same criticisms.

[00:55:45] But I think she was pointing to the peer stuff to say, well,

[00:55:48] here is a plausible alternative hypothesis.

[00:55:51] But the whole time she's also saying, like she says very

[00:55:54] think explicitly, Paul, you can correct me if I'm wrong,

[00:55:57] that that's also a really hard question because if you are a certain

[00:56:02] kind of person, you are going to gravitate toward other like-minded people.

[00:56:06] And you might think it what you might think is a peer effect is is

[00:56:09] essentially just another genetic effect.

[00:56:13] And it's very hard to tease those apart.

[00:56:16] So yeah, so tell me your right to be correct.

[00:56:18] I agree, David, on these points.

[00:56:21] On one hand, you have all these studies saying that parents who are smart

[00:56:24] have smart kids, parents who are aggressive, aggressive kids.

[00:56:26] And so she points out, well, that doesn't support the parenting

[00:56:30] hypothesis could be genes as well.

[00:56:32] But at that point, you're right, you're just kind of at a standstill.

[00:56:34] It's just a question mark.

[00:56:35] It's not an argument against parents influencing people, kids.

[00:56:39] But then you get to all the adoption studies and the genetic studies

[00:56:42] and the sibling studies.

[00:56:43] And that does actually provide sort of positive evidence against the parenting

[00:56:47] hypothesis.

[00:56:48] I don't know.

[00:56:49] You'd have to there could be all sorts of reasons why adopted kids turn out

[00:56:54] differently, especially if they're raised in the same home with a real kid.

[00:56:58] Right? Maybe parents treat them differently.

[00:57:01] A real kid.

[00:57:01] Adopting kids are real, too.

[00:57:03] You know.

[00:57:04] I meant, oh man.

[00:57:07] They're just unnatural.

[00:57:09] I meant the normal one.

[00:57:11] No, in fact, like my big regret is not adopting a child.

[00:57:16] Good save.

[00:57:18] But anyway, so I apologize for that.

[00:57:21] It's not what I meant.

[00:57:21] I meant a biological kid and how that might impact the kid's psychology

[00:57:28] and their perceived environment.

[00:57:30] And so, you know, that doesn't strike me as that much positive support.

[00:57:36] It's very suggestive for sure.

[00:57:39] But so here's what she says when she is considering objections.

[00:57:43] She says, researchers, it's possible that researchers haven't looked at all

[00:57:48] the possible ways that parents could conceivably influence their kids.

[00:57:52] Perhaps there are subtle effects that they're measuring instruments have missed.

[00:57:56] I must say, though, they've been looking for them for an awfully long time.

[00:58:00] And I would say not really.

[00:58:02] Like they haven't been and maybe the tools of social science on this question

[00:58:08] are just not equipped to deal with the more subtle or complex

[00:58:14] influence that parents will have and what she's shown like as a corrective

[00:58:21] against the overconfident parents have this huge impact.

[00:58:25] Absolutely.

[00:58:26] But as a what I'm not at all convinced by is the claim based on what I've read,

[00:58:31] is the claim that parents have zero impact.

[00:58:34] It could just be that we haven't found the right way to to see how they have an

[00:58:39] impact. But that's the more radical hypothesis that somehow a kid who

[00:58:43] spends most of their time from the time that they're born to the time that

[00:58:48] they're 18 in a specific environment that that wouldn't affect their

[00:58:52] personality long term at all.

[00:58:55] That's the more radical claim.

[00:58:56] And so that's the claim that you would feel like you would need to provide

[00:58:59] more positive support than.

[00:59:01] No, I I I agree.

[00:59:03] It's crazy radical.

[00:59:04] I mean, null hypothesis, I think she framed it kind of as a statistical point,

[00:59:08] which is where you look for you're looking for an effect, not a not a null effect.

[00:59:12] But yeah, it's a radical claim.

[00:59:14] But I mean, you got to think how much you're giving up, Tamela,

[00:59:17] in the way you're saying this.

[00:59:18] So the data she talks about says that if you adopt a baby,

[00:59:22] you know, and you and your wife raise the baby,

[00:59:25] you will have no effect on the baby's IQ, no effect on the big five personality

[00:59:30] score, no effect on whether the kid will go up to go to prison, divorce rates,

[00:59:34] you know, a long, long list of things.

[00:59:37] Now you might be right to say, ah,

[00:59:39] but they haven't looked at this or they haven't looked at that.

[00:59:42] Well, no way.

[00:59:42] It does the data show that it that there is no effect or that there is

[00:59:47] that nobody has shown that there is an effect.

[00:59:50] The data.

[00:59:51] The second one today, there's no,

[00:59:53] there's if you find a zero correlation between saying it's not a zero correlation,

[00:59:58] just a tiny correlation.

[00:59:59] But you find if you find a zero correlation, you say, well,

[01:00:02] you know, maybe there's an effect, but our statistics missed it this time.

[01:00:05] Maybe we took the wrong thousand people.

[01:00:07] OK, OK, so anyway, sorry.

[01:00:09] But but the conclusion is that, you know,

[01:00:11] the things that social psychologists tend to be interested in personality,

[01:00:15] intelligence, criminality, stuff like that

[01:00:18] does not seem to be an effect.

[01:00:20] But but to add to that, you know,

[01:00:23] the part of the negative claim that she's making is,

[01:00:25] but if you're going to look at those more subtle things,

[01:00:28] if we get more precise instruments, you have to do it in the right way.

[01:00:31] You can't just proceed with the methods that you've been using

[01:00:35] because those methods are ill-suited to make causal conclusion.

[01:00:38] Yeah, fair enough.

[01:00:40] I mean, that's that seems totally right.

[01:00:42] So I read that Quillette thing that you by Brian Bootman.

[01:00:48] That did you guys didn't you send that?

[01:00:51] No, I don't read Quillette.

[01:00:54] No, I don't.

[01:00:56] The only but Patreon's it.

[01:00:59] No, I know it.

[01:01:01] You're talking about, I think I remember reading a while ago.

[01:01:03] It's very good. So what does it argue?

[01:01:05] Well, it's the parenting doesn't matter.

[01:01:07] Peers and genes only matter.

[01:01:09] Social science research is wrong.

[01:01:11] This is the thing that drives me crazy is that like it's one thing to

[01:01:16] tear apart the parenting research.

[01:01:18] But like if social science research is wrong, then you don't know that peers

[01:01:23] that peers matter and even some of the research on genes is not all by

[01:01:29] behavioral geneticists.

[01:01:31] You have to figure out how to decide how to measure behavior and how to measure

[01:01:35] personality and that's social science too.

[01:01:39] I don't know.

[01:01:41] I see like a weird lack of critical.

[01:01:43] Like I was very hard to find a critical piece on Judith Rich Harris.

[01:01:48] It's like her story is so kind of inspiring and cool that like people never

[01:01:53] like the Brockman like was issuing no challenges, no objections, nothing.

[01:02:00] Just like, oh, just so awesome.

[01:02:03] Did you know she got kicked out of Harvard when I was a graduate student

[01:02:06] and then got the award for by the same guy?

[01:02:09] I don't know.

[01:02:10] It just seems like people are their critical

[01:02:13] faculties are dulled by this view and I don't totally get why.

[01:02:19] But but but look, I mean, the vengeance my field has gotten on Judith Rich Harris

[01:02:25] is to a large extent by ignoring her by ignoring her critiques.

[01:02:29] So I can walk into any developmental colloquium in my coming environment

[01:02:33] by department and I'll hear somebody cheerfully say, oh, look,

[01:02:36] we measured a thousand parents, a thousand parents use of, you know,

[01:02:40] racist language and then we looked at their kids and the parents who said very

[01:02:45] racist things had kids who were very racist.

[01:02:47] Clearly, we must intervene and stop parents from saying racist things to their kids.

[01:02:50] And if you if you raise if you raise your hand and you say maybe

[01:02:55] whatever makes bigoted parents is passed on a bigoted kids, even if he never

[01:03:01] met each other, the person will sigh and say, yes,

[01:03:03] we're not going to do a full study like that.

[01:03:06] And also contrast class matters.

[01:03:09] That's not my contrast class.

[01:03:11] So that's why my kind is that you go

[01:03:14] is there's an 95 percent of research on parents' effects on children.

[01:03:22] Don't look at genes.

[01:03:23] And and and as such, it tells us nothing.

[01:03:27] Right. It really is just often just tells us nothing.

[01:03:31] There's also one just just just to get this in.

[01:03:33] There's there's a third factor we got to talk about as mentioned,

[01:03:35] which is child effects.

[01:03:37] So so it's supposed it's true that that spank kids grow up to be aggressive

[01:03:43] adults. Well, maybe violence is in the genes.

[01:03:47] Maybe as as the traditional view would be spanking makes your kid mean.

[01:03:51] But maybe you can you're more likely to spank boisterous and aggressive kids.

[01:03:56] Right.

[01:03:57] And so so much of even forgetting to imagine genes never existed.

[01:04:02] So much of developmental psychology proceeds

[01:04:05] under the assumption that how children act has no effect on parents.

[01:04:09] It's only the other way around.

[01:04:10] So I yell at I yell at my kid all the time.

[01:04:12] We have terrible, terrible fights and and then low and behold as an adult.

[01:04:17] He's a difficult and troublesome kid.

[01:04:19] And then people say, well, you made him that way.

[01:04:21] Well, no, he made me that way.

[01:04:23] This is all hypothetical, by the way.

[01:04:27] Sorry, Max.

[01:04:30] No, it's not not Max.

[01:04:36] No, actually, actually,

[01:04:37] my kids don't resemble me at all.

[01:04:39] So we just all did our best.

[01:04:42] You know, I like writing for the National Review.

[01:04:47] You're going to have to bleep that.

[01:04:49] Okay, it really replace with the nation.

[01:04:53] Yeah, I am the nation with a robot voice.

[01:05:00] I think that along with Paul,

[01:05:03] I've noticed that this has your effect on social development

[01:05:06] and I'm no longer in development, but it is disconcerting to go to these talks

[01:05:11] that sometimes rear themselves in social psychology talks when where it is

[01:05:16] such a default assumption.

[01:05:17] And and and in fact, if you say, well, what about the behavioral genetics work?

[01:05:23] Not only do they say, well, we're not going to look into that.

[01:05:26] They they might say, oh, you're one of those.

[01:05:28] All right, next question.

[01:05:30] Right. Right.

[01:05:31] There's it's very, very different mentality.

[01:05:34] But I can see how that would be hugely annoying and wrong headed.

[01:05:38] Yeah. And I think from the sociology of science

[01:05:40] perspective, it's just, you know, I mean, there are various reasons.

[01:05:43] It's hard to do behavioral genetic studies.

[01:05:45] You know, it's it is so intuitive that the effects are causal in one direction.

[01:05:49] And here's where I'm sympathetic to you,

[01:05:51] Tamler, with what you're saying because

[01:05:54] and maybe Paul, you feel this way too.

[01:05:57] I think that I became convinced of the at least the criticism part of this

[01:06:03] of this story and and of the positive claim that peers influence far greater

[01:06:08] than we thought, I can't live my life

[01:06:11] with my daughter.

[01:06:13] Not thinking that the things that I'm doing are having a causal impact on her

[01:06:17] future happiness or future abilities.

[01:06:20] And and I I proceed that way.

[01:06:23] It's my intuition is too hard to shake.

[01:06:25] And I in fact, I say, you know, I spent

[01:06:28] a couple of years ago when my daughter moved from Canada to the US.

[01:06:32] She was in a much more difficult mathematics class.

[01:06:35] And I spent hours and hours each week helping her with her math.

[01:06:41] And until she mastered it and now she's better than me.

[01:06:44] So I say, well, obviously that was.

[01:06:46] Yeah. I mean, I I think and I'm not backing down from that.

[01:06:51] I'm not saying that to me was proof.

[01:06:53] And I think that that, of course,

[01:06:56] there are going to be subtle ways in which we influence our children.

[01:06:59] I mean, you know, Alison Gopnik actually tweeted

[01:07:02] in response to Paul's tweet, well, of course,

[01:07:04] parents matter because without parents, kids would die.

[01:07:07] Well, yeah.

[01:07:08] But you don't have to get that extreme to find some obvious things.

[01:07:11] Like if you provide nutrition for them, right?

[01:07:15] If you're a wire mother like a Harlow wire mother,

[01:07:18] I'm sure they won't thrive if you are super non-contingent.

[01:07:23] We know that parents, the children of depressed mothers

[01:07:27] have bad outcomes in ways that isn't that isn't just depression.

[01:07:31] Right. And I don't know, Paul, what you think about this literature,

[01:07:34] but a depressed mother is behaving in this sort of weirdly non-contingent

[01:07:39] manner to her kids and it interferes with things like language learning.

[01:07:43] I'll defer to you on this, Paul.

[01:07:44] So yeah, so two quick things.

[01:07:46] One thing is the claim about parenting matter,

[01:07:50] it does obviously a parent versus no parent makes a huge difference.

[01:07:54] It's a claim about differences in parenting.

[01:07:57] So Alison Gopnik's, I think, comment was a bit misdirected.

[01:08:02] The depressed mother literature is super interesting

[01:08:06] and it's very hard to factor about

[01:08:08] that kids of depressed mothers have difficulties.

[01:08:11] May and it seems to be more than passed on by the genes.

[01:08:14] One theory I've heard,

[01:08:17] I'm not sure what the current state I heard a couple of years ago is

[01:08:20] depressed mothers tend to be more likely to marry,

[01:08:23] sorry, to have her kid with fathers who have psychopathic traits.

[01:08:27] Oh, really?

[01:08:28] And the problems with the kids aren't genetically

[01:08:30] cuteened by the mother but by the father.

[01:08:33] And those are the sort of interaction

[01:08:35] effects that become very interesting.

[01:08:37] Yeah. I mean.

[01:08:38] So it mattered that she was depressed.

[01:08:40] It just mattered in terms of who she picked as a husband.

[01:08:45] I mean, she talks about the single parent research too.

[01:08:49] And she says once you isolate things like income,

[01:08:54] then a lot of those effects go away.

[01:08:57] But like the fact that the father left is why single...

[01:09:02] Like why the household has no income.

[01:09:06] And so the fact that he left did matter.

[01:09:09] It just didn't matter in like how he was treating the kid in the house.

[01:09:15] Right.

[01:09:16] But all sorts of things matter in some sense.

[01:09:20] David's example of tutoring his daughter in math.

[01:09:23] You know, if I go on long trips and my kids lonely without me,

[01:09:26] that don't make the kids sad.

[01:09:27] The question that people are arguing about is matter for the shaping of the kids

[01:09:32] personality, proclivities, intelligence, happiness and those sorts of things.

[01:09:37] But that's what they were measuring with the single parent.

[01:09:39] Yes, that's right.

[01:09:40] Is their future personality and success.

[01:09:45] And my point was just that she's measuring parenting as impact that the parent

[01:09:51] has in the household, whereas somebody leaving the house has an impact.

[01:09:56] But it's obviously not going to be an impact in that way.

[01:10:00] So that's a more measured version of Gopnik's objection.

[01:10:04] You know.

[01:10:04] So single parents involving people leaving the house, you have plain genetic

[01:10:08] confounds because the sort of person who would leave a relationship is a

[01:10:12] different kind of person who wouldn't.

[01:10:14] I think there's been some work and maybe she talks about this of kids who have

[01:10:17] parents, one of whom dies through some sort of semi random event and what effect

[01:10:24] that has on the kid.

[01:10:25] And I don't know how this all works out, but knowing Harris,

[01:10:28] I think to argue movie, oh, that makes no difference later on.

[01:10:31] It makes the kid miserable.

[01:10:32] It could be terrible, terrible, but it doesn't make the kid less

[01:10:36] conscientious or smarter or less agreeable or anything like that.

[01:10:39] You know, the three of us have a colleague who once told me something very

[01:10:44] interesting. He said he had a first kid who was just really difficult and pretty

[01:10:53] depressed, right? Like, you know, like in very, very severe ways.

[01:10:57] And then he had a second kid and that kid was just happy, go lucky.

[01:11:03] You know, everything was like water if it ducks back.

[01:11:05] And he said, if it weren't for the fact that I had a second kid,

[01:11:10] I would have gone to my grave thinking that I was a horrible parent because

[01:11:14] the things that I did had had such a terrible impact on the first kid.

[01:11:20] But the second kid is sort of what gave him the understanding that

[01:11:24] sometimes the genetic lottery is the only thing that's going on.

[01:11:28] Because, you know, at least to the extent that you can do this,

[01:11:32] the other circumstances in their upbringing were the same, right?

[01:11:36] So, I mean, it's argued, you know,

[01:11:40] the claim is nobody of more than one kid can deny the power of genetics and also

[01:11:46] of accident.

[01:11:47] But look, both of you are sort of saying as if you couldn't live with this idea.

[01:11:51] You couldn't live with the idea.

[01:11:52] No, I'm not saying that.

[01:11:54] I could.

[01:11:55] Well, Dave was saying that.

[01:11:56] So let me sort of say.

[01:11:57] And Eddie, no.

[01:11:59] All of it.

[01:12:00] And Eddie, yeah.

[01:12:01] All of the three of us have been in, you know, long term relationships with people

[01:12:06] and and sharing your neuromatic relationship and you want to make the person happy.

[01:12:12] You share in their goals and everything.

[01:12:14] But you don't typically believe you're going to shape their personality.

[01:12:16] You want to make your life better.

[01:12:18] But, you know, you could change people in their margins.

[01:12:21] But I think it's foolish and counterproductive

[01:12:24] to think you're going to change their real nature.

[01:12:26] And maybe we should think about raising kids that way.

[01:12:29] It's a long relationship.

[01:12:30] You want to help the other person, support the other person, establish a good

[01:12:33] relationship, but you're not going to transform them.

[01:12:36] Well, so actually, Paul, I like that you said that.

[01:12:38] But to defend myself, my point was really about how hard it is to

[01:12:43] discard the intuition and how and how there are some trivial ways in which

[01:12:48] which my influence trivial, not really, but, you know, sliding doors.

[01:12:52] Like if I hadn't helped her, maybe she would go into a different field.

[01:12:55] She wouldn't be any smarter or less prone to depression.

[01:13:00] So I think that's right.

[01:13:01] I also think the sliding doors, by the way, suggest we could have a random

[01:13:05] influence on this and the data would just call out random.

[01:13:08] It wouldn't be an influence.

[01:13:10] So if you tutoring her in math was 50 percent likely to get her

[01:13:14] interested in math and 50 percent likely to turn her away from math,

[01:13:17] yeah, then that's very possible.

[01:13:19] That's right.

[01:13:20] But also like if peers matter, you also matter in terms of what

[01:13:24] peers she hangs out with, what she goes to, what a lot of those decisions are

[01:13:30] made somewhere along the lines by the parents.

[01:13:32] Right?

[01:13:33] That's actually, by the way, one critique against Harris, which I think carries

[01:13:36] some weight, which is if peers matter, then parents should matter.

[01:13:40] It should show up as a parental thing because parents could put their kids

[01:13:43] in different schools, move and so on.

[01:13:45] And the fact that parents don't matter suggests that peers might not matter.

[01:13:48] Right.

[01:13:49] It still holds that that is not the way in which parents think they're

[01:13:52] influencing their kids, but that that right that has to be.

[01:13:55] I mean, to some extent, to some extent, I was sensitive to the crowd my kids were in

[01:13:59] and I can imagine changing schools even if I thought it was a really bad crowd.

[01:14:03] Right.

[01:14:03] I was going to say like how much control

[01:14:05] Taylor, do you have over who your daughter is hanging out with at school?

[01:14:10] I mean, that no, no, we're lucky to be in

[01:14:14] in a neighborhood where she can just go to a good school and she can apply

[01:14:17] to magnets and she but, you know, like we certainly help her prepare

[01:14:22] for audition, like the audition she had to do to get into her, you know, performing

[01:14:27] arts middle school, which was a public school that was a magnet and like so

[01:14:30] there's all sorts of ways that wouldn't show up in this data that that that

[01:14:36] you might matter.

[01:14:37] But it's just one remove away from how, you know, whether I read to her

[01:14:42] or whether I talk with her about her feelings or whether I like it's

[01:14:49] I mean, this was my last sort of

[01:14:52] problem with this is she has a very narrow definition of what it would mean

[01:14:56] for a parent to matter.

[01:14:58] Sometimes the way we matter is just is not something that would that you could

[01:15:02] measure is not even conceivable how you would measure that.

[01:15:05] I mean, yeah.

[01:15:07] So what kind of mattering in a sense of changing your kid?

[01:15:11] Not in day to day can't be measured.

[01:15:14] So for example, the inclination you said you would have moved your kids.

[01:15:18] You're sensitive to their peer group.

[01:15:20] Maybe you would have moved them if you felt like they were not in an environment

[01:15:25] where they could meet good friends, right?

[01:15:27] How do you measure a person's disposition to do that, to be sensitive to their

[01:15:32] parent, their kids and environment at school and to move if they sense

[01:15:38] that it's not a good environment?

[01:15:41] Yeah, I mean, one way to do it would be the disposition should extend

[01:15:44] to both my biological kids and my adopted kids.

[01:15:47] The same disposition.

[01:15:49] So if I'm the good dad who would affect the kids' environment for the better,

[01:15:53] I should do so for both biological and adopted kids.

[01:15:57] And so my goodness should extend to both of them roughly even your fake kid.

[01:16:02] Even my unreal kid.

[01:16:05] But what I was wanting to say earlier about like that, even when I just

[01:16:11] there's something nice that happened when I was able to discard this intuition,

[01:16:16] which was I became.

[01:16:19] A lot to the extent that I can, right?

[01:16:21] Because part of what I was saying is very difficult to do.

[01:16:24] But I became a lot less worried about what I was doing.

[01:16:28] And you know, maybe it turns out that this is a horrible strategy.

[01:16:32] But I'm sort of more at peace knowing that I don't have to hover

[01:16:39] around my daughter to make sure to ensure that her life will be happy.

[01:16:43] I don't have to feed her, you know, whatever

[01:16:46] Mozart or like good literature in order to ensure that she'll be smart.

[01:16:52] I kind of have a happier life with her knowing that she's going to

[01:16:57] be as smart as she is, that she's going to have the personality that she has.

[01:17:01] And and it's not it's a terrible existence to think.

[01:17:07] And I think this is what drives parents to be these helicopter parents,

[01:17:10] to think that everything that you do is sort of

[01:17:14] so powerful and shaping their future because that's probably that's

[01:17:19] that could lead to me wanting to pay off somebody to take her SATs for her.

[01:17:25] And by the way, to connect our show,

[01:17:27] give it a sort of a sort of general solidity and connectedness.

[01:17:31] One of the people accused of this has been edited out of a of a movie

[01:17:36] or TV show that she was in. Oh, wow.

[01:17:39] Felicity Huffman that no somebody else.

[01:17:43] Anyway, it was on Twitter.

[01:17:47] So can I give my what Dave just said reminded me of the last thing that

[01:17:51] and I didn't mean to be so antagonistic, but there is this

[01:17:56] stance that she takes that reminds me of the stance that the anti-natalist

[01:18:00] takes your skeptical of this because you don't want it to be true.

[01:18:05] You'd want to believe that you matter.

[01:18:07] And so that's biasing your view of this whole thing,

[01:18:11] which is a tactic that maybe I used to use, but now annoys me.

[01:18:17] And and it's especially ironic in her case because she had a biological

[01:18:23] child who was doing great and an adopted child who was not.

[01:18:26] And she felt like she was a really bad parent.

[01:18:30] And so she had as much motivation as any parent to come to her views as

[01:18:36] as, you know, other parents have to believe that they have this

[01:18:41] outsized influence over their kids future.

[01:18:43] No, that's true. That's a fair point.

[01:18:45] That's that's a fair point.

[01:18:46] Yeah, I think we can just we should just agree that at any point when

[01:18:50] that starts being the argument, then then then you're no longer arguing

[01:18:56] the merits of the case. Right.

[01:18:57] And I saw that same thing in reading her her her discussion.

[01:19:02] You know, we're all motivated by something.

[01:19:05] Hopefully they're independent grass.

[01:19:07] Hopefully there are independent ways to assess the truth of a claim or not.

[01:19:12] Right. I'm motivated by my hostility to that line of argument.

[01:19:18] Well, I think that the the take home message, though, is that we can all

[01:19:23] just sort of completely ignore our children from here on out because

[01:19:26] they're going to be who they're going to be.

[01:19:29] Dad, can I get some food?

[01:19:31] No, Judith Rich Harris said I don't matter.

[01:19:33] I'm going to feel silly, silly when ten years from now.

[01:19:36] Because oh no, all the day.

[01:19:38] I have an enormous influence.

[01:19:40] You and you David go, oh no, I should have loved my kid.

[01:19:44] Here's the question.

[01:19:45] Did Judith Rich Harris see the first season of the Sopranos?

[01:19:50] Is this Tony's mother?

[01:19:52] Yes.

[01:19:53] You're going to tell me she didn't matter?

[01:19:56] Oh, boy.

[01:19:57] Oh, that's a very good imitation.

[01:20:00] Thank you.

[01:20:04] All right. There's yeah.

[01:20:06] No, no, there's a movie I call Three Identical

[01:20:09] Strangers, which is an extraordinary movie about about triplets who discover

[01:20:14] themselves and that they're who are separated at birth.

[01:20:17] But but I don't want to give a spoiler away,

[01:20:19] but it ends with a very powerful parents matter message that strikes me as grossly

[01:20:24] unfair and and and sometimes we see this.

[01:20:28] I mean, there's a human cost to this where

[01:20:30] your parents are often blamed for used to be, you know, my brother is autistic

[01:20:35] and I'm I'm old enough to realize it was to be living in a time where my mother

[01:20:40] was blamed for it.

[01:20:41] Yeah, you must have something terrible to the kid.

[01:20:43] And and I think right now kids who, you know, parents are are it goes

[01:20:49] both ways and I can see it being used as a cop out for a genuinely bad parent.

[01:20:52] But I think some very good parents are just blamed for problems

[01:20:56] that kids are totally at our hands.

[01:20:58] Actually, Paul,

[01:21:00] because we rarely have an expert on our show,

[01:21:04] can you clarify for me that sort of the nature of the debate between Jerome

[01:21:09] Kagan and Judith Rich Harris given that I thought?

[01:21:12] So one of the things that I teach in

[01:21:14] IntroPsych is Kagan's work on temperament.

[01:21:17] And Kagan very famously showed that

[01:21:20] you can measure temperament in infants and show that it predicts adult personality.

[01:21:25] And he himself stated that he was trying at that point to disabuse people of the

[01:21:30] notion that parents could make their kids, for instance, schizophrenic or

[01:21:33] autistic, which was a very common thing to be believed.

[01:21:36] And it seems as if this he's did he switch or was his argument always more subtle?

[01:21:42] It's a good question. I don't know.

[01:21:44] I don't know.

[01:21:45] I agree. Kagan was an odd person to be posed against

[01:21:49] Harris and I don't I can't underfly tell you why.

[01:21:53] Yeah, I mean, to some extent maybe Kagan was just representing the establishment

[01:21:57] and establishment would always say, you know, OK, there's some genetic influences,

[01:22:00] but then there's some parental and that's a reasonable view.

[01:22:03] And Harris is presenting, you know,

[01:22:05] the client and no hypothesis is true in a statistical sense.

[01:22:09] I'm not denying what a radical view it is.

[01:22:12] It's so radical that most people even in the field don't believe it.

[01:22:16] But I think it deserves to be taken very seriously.

[01:22:19] And especially if when you told me about what happens at

[01:22:24] child development conferences and how this is just assumed and I could see

[01:22:30] how that would be infuriating and then her position being this refreshing

[01:22:36] tonic to that is totally understandable.

[01:22:39] But if you don't have that contrast case,

[01:22:41] then she comes off as maybe a little too extreme and a little strident,

[01:22:46] but shrill because she's a woman.

[01:22:48] And

[01:22:51] was your was your father's ex is just in your dreams?

[01:22:54] My he made his father's ex.

[01:22:58] But like, you know, I think probably that's a really healthy thing to have

[01:23:02] happened, although it doesn't seem to have made much.

[01:23:04] And like, I will say this, like for whatever,

[01:23:06] whatever the merits of the argument are, what a great story that this woman was

[01:23:10] just sort of making ends meet writing development textbooks was suffering

[01:23:15] from from lupus, you know, and and just wrote an article that caused this much

[01:23:24] sort of turmoil in the field, whether or not it's had a long,

[01:23:27] long term effect who knows.

[01:23:29] But but it is a pretty fucking.

[01:23:31] I mean, it has, I mean, now the field people like like Pinker and others.

[01:23:35] It this is it's not there's a lot of debate about this,

[01:23:39] but but this view is very much on the table.

[01:23:42] It just hasn't, you know, percolated down to the rank and file.

[01:23:46] I should add, by the way, that I corresponded with

[01:23:48] Aris a little while ago and I invited her to be to submit an article for

[01:23:54] the Journal I co-edit Behavioral Brain Sciences where she would present

[01:23:58] her view and then do battle with like 35 angry commentators.

[01:24:02] And when she considered it, but in the end

[01:24:05] she felt she didn't really have the physical or emotional energy ready for it.

[01:24:09] And she passed away recently, right?

[01:24:11] Yeah, she did.

[01:24:12] Like she had a piece about her

[01:24:14] written by Matt Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker in 1998.

[01:24:19] But the glad you know, whatever one you might disagree of a lot of what he says,

[01:24:23] I do, but he's a wonderful writer.

[01:24:25] And I thought is I thought that if you just read one thing about it,

[01:24:28] I think The New Yorker article is exactly what to read to get a feeling

[01:24:32] for Harris's views and so on.

[01:24:34] Yeah. And the story, her story.

[01:24:36] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:24:37] When something is written that well,

[01:24:40] you don't you almost don't want to criticize the ideas behind it.

[01:24:43] Maybe that's

[01:24:44] that it's like when maybe plays that disabled person and everyone treats her

[01:24:51] really well and arrest the development like that.

[01:24:55] Or when or when Larry or when Larry's mother dies in Caribbean enthusiasm

[01:24:59] and he is an excuse to get out of everything.

[01:25:03] You know, I had dinner.

[01:25:04] I had dinner with somebody a couple nights ago who watched no TV.

[01:25:08] And I would endlessly give these analogies and they'd look at me blankly.

[01:25:13] And it made me realize that I can't talk to people who don't watch TV.

[01:25:16] Yeah.

[01:25:18] And now it's just harder and harder to find reference points with people

[01:25:21] because there's just too much.

[01:25:23] Yeah, back to the simple times when every everybody talked about Bill Cosby

[01:25:28] the Cosby show on 30 on Friday mornings.

[01:25:34] The water cooler.

[01:25:35] Yeah, the water cooler.

[01:25:37] Well, thank you, Paul.

[01:25:39] Thank you for having me.

[01:25:40] It's great that thank you to all our Patreon supporters for suggesting this episode.

[01:25:45] You were right as usual.

[01:25:50] Join us next time on Very Bedwood.

[01:25:55] That was great.

[01:26:37] And a very good man.

[01:26:39] Just a very bad wizard.