"Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior" lol

That is true to an extent, BUT:

Someone who works hard and has no connections is not going to be as good a lawyer (say) as someone who doesn't work as hard and has plenty of connections, because it aids your argument immensely if you can call on your old psychology professor or whatever instead of just trying to argue from pure logic.

And that's no matter how good your pure logic is; five people making an ok argument against one person making an amazing argument and the five people will most likely win.

This applies to politics and a lot of the other connection based jobs as well. It doesn't apply so much in publishing; since you can hire an agent, that's more "did you do the minimal amount of research required to know what a publisher expects or are you just sending in your manuscript totally blind?"

Well although it applies to politics and such, that is the mentality I'm trying to attack. See the parenting style (I'm not going to bother with western vs asian, because really it's more strict vs lenient) would result in varying degree of these skills. Would you rather people convicted/acquitted of crimes because more people can make an inferior argument versus a single person making a superior argument? If the one person is making a more accurate assessment, it is clear, from a standpoint of justice, that it is better to simply go with the one person.

Likewise politics just infuriates me. We have health ministers that don't know how anything in medicine works. I don't need the guy to be best brain surgeon in the world, I just want him to be competent in the medical profession and then work with doctors to get stuff done. We have science ministers that don't even know what evolution is, I would figure if you're going to guide policy on science, you should at least have a basic understanding of it. Actually, I want you to have an advanced understanding of it. Take the difference between the Chinese Health Minister who has 40 years of medical experience, works with doctors and the WHO actively and makes sound medical decisions (we'll ignore oppression problems). Then you take the UK Environmental Minister, hasn't a clue how anything works, doesn't know what climate change is, but works actively to combat greenhouse gases. Why? Because that's his ideology... not because scientists told him it was the right thing to do. So you end up with people making totally random decisions based on nothing but friends and ideology instead of sound science and... ah whatever I'm so off topic at this point.

Anyway, the job of the parent is instil discipline at a young age of how to study, how to learn, how to memorise, how to gather more information. If the child at a later age (grade 5+) doesn't work on his own after that, then too bad, because that's when you get to see the issue that you're speaking of where the kid has no self-motivation. A parent can't change that, they can only give what they can, open doors and hope for the best after that. I think it only makes sense to be more overbearing to compensate a child who lacks motivation to succeed because if the kid just goes "meh" until age 18 and now they can't get a job and have no chance at university/college/apprenticeship/whatever, now they're screwed.

From the standpoint of justice yes, but unfortunately not from the standpoint of human psychology. Five people making a weaker argument wins because more people are more convincing. The idea is that if the one person was really right, more people would join their side. Unfortunately that heuristic breaks down in a courtroom, where everybody's incentives to stick to one side are so great essentially nobody will ever switch sides.

Also: "I don't need the guy to be best brain surgeon in the world, I just want him to be competent in the medical profession and then work with doctors to get stuff done."

Or in other words, you expect him to have connections in the medical field. He can't work with doctors if he doesn't know any doctors.

And I find it kind of odd you're holding up China as an example of this, because the only way to get a position in China's government is to know someone who's already there. You can't just be so good people vote you into the position or whatever; you must at least be known by someone in the government to be considered.

The Chinese system is more complicated than that but it is more merit based than that. You get it via appointment but you have to actually be good in your profession first. For instance, if you want to be in the health ministry, then you have to be a competent doctor first, which you can only do if you had job skill. I'm not saying that connections don't matter but they matter less than it does in western countries.

And I realise i stated I want him to work with doctors. That's me not being an extremist in my point of view of merit based solely on job skill. The Health Minister didn't get the job knowing doctors, he does his job by getting to know doctors, which is the primary difference in mentality. That is, connections should be seen as a way to get better ideas not as a skill metric in itself.

...But if you have more connections, you're more powerful, and better suited for a high-ranking job.

My two cents:

Draconian Authoritarian parenting of this sort could make academic geniuses, and nothing much else. They end up having no real purpose in life. The so-called lax parenting style of the US, at least, teaches the young'uns to live for something of their own choosing.

And no, I'm not gonna tell you how I was raised, since I have a rather....complicated family history that could warrant its own thread here in OTC.

hey cojuanco, do you hate the Philippines so much that you could never bring yourself to call it by name?

And oh...

"A job you hate but that pays a lot is worse than a job you like but that pays crap."

edited 5th Feb '11 5:10:22 AM by ladycoffee

But I and the others on this thread never said anything about a job you hate. Just one you might not love as much as the badly-paying job.

In my opinion, you're still kind of screwed if you have a job you love but have barely any money to support yourself. Unless you believe in not having luxuries.

edited 5th Feb '11 10:04:05 AM by snowfoxofdeath

Again, what's the point of luxuries if you're not actually happy?

Stuff you have doesn't make you happy, it's stuff you do that makes you happy.

In my view, both routes could lead to misery — just different styles of misery. Choosing one over the other implies a view as to which kind of misery is worse.

The "Chinese" opinion here (in scare-quotes because in rough outline this is not at all specific to Chinese or even Asian parents) is that an unfulfilling job that provides financial support for you and especially your family is the lesser misery.

Where I'd disagree with that approach is the insistence that even non-academic hobbies must be dictated by the parents. The insistence, for instance, on violin and piano — that's pure parental selfishness, one-upmanship and fear. Yes, it's probably a good thing for a kid to learn to play music to a decent degree of proficiency — the kind of thing that will bring them joy in their adult life (and, once they've gotten past the hardest part, during their childhood too), provide them opportunities for social interaction, and teach the values of persistence. However, the insistence on those instruments is all about (a) the fear of difference — those are the two most stereotypical instruments, the standards, the ones nobody will question; (b) the fear that other instruments might end up with their kids playing in, heavens forbid, something corrupting that's not classical music; (c) competing with all the other Asian parents and trying to one-up them.

Much better, I think, to teach your kids that work is work and play is play, and the latter is reward for doing well in the former. That work doesn't have to be the ultimate fulfilment in your life, but it allows you to do, in your spare time, the things that you find truly fulfilling and satisfying.

Rather than, as in this example, teaching that sacrifice and suppression is what you have to do in every single moment of your existence.

Not sure if I said something similar already, but by this logic, I should quit school and work on my writing.

Look, snowfox, every time you say that, it becomes clear you're not arguing against my argument, you're arguing against other people you've met before who have made similar arguments.

I've already said before multiple times it doesn't matter if you have to do work to get to the point where you have a job you like; all that matters is that the job you do for most of your life is enjoyable.

Sorry. My brain likes to throw things in the blender sometimes, and this is a long thread.

I guess this is a "whatever floats your boat" sort of thing. I know people that don't mind not having their dream job because they have the financial security to pursue some other hobby and others that are happy being poor.

"Much better, I think, to teach your kids that work is work and play is play, and the latter is reward for doing well in the former. That work doesn't have to be the ultimate fulfilment in your life, but it allows you to do, in your spare time, the things that you find truly fulfilling and satisfying."

Quoted for truth. Thanks for articulating what I was trying to say.

Again, not gonna bother arguing this anymore.

I think my way works; you guys think your way works. So you do your thing and I do my thing and if I find out I'm wrong you get to brag.

Some of us have actually had jobs, you know.

For the last time, it is unlikely that, with any amount of effort, most people would be able to get a job that they really liked that paid enough to live on, period.

And I think you're wrong.

Either you can provide hard proof or we can just agree to disagree. I don't see why anybody needs to get defensive about this.

She did provide hard proof, at least when it came to becoming an author, which a disproportionate amount of tropers seem to want to do, including me.

A lot of authors have other jobs as well, even people who are published by a major publisher and are somewhat successful. The same with musicians, visual artists, etc etc.

Of course. Writing is a great thing to do—it's just not usually viable to do full time.

Miscellaneous other examples from within my circles of experience:

• You may have seen my freelance art I've done for people on the forums. I can get people to pay about $2 for pictures that may take one to 10 hours to complete.
• I've been helping out at the local humane society; my compensation has been a free kitty (a $70 value). One or two volunteers have been hired as employees—out of a hundred or more.
• I've also done extensive conservation research at an art museum; with a year and a half of experience, a college degree in a related field, and two publications, I've earned $760 (about 75 cents an hour, or two-thirds of a month's rent).
• If you want to be a library employee (other than a librarian), prepare to volunteer as a page for three or four years. After that, you may be able to pick up paid hours part time (10 hours a week or something like that).
• My sister-in-law and her husband are both successful professional opera singers. But they both have day jobs, because you can't make a living as an opera singer.
• My mother-in-law is a professional violinist and violin teacher. Pretty much the same deal, except that she has a husband who also works, so she can get by without a day job. She probably wouldn't be able to do it if she weren't married, though.
• My uncle spent his twenties battling depression and misery as he tried to get by as a freelance art historian and book dealer. Then he sobered up, got a job as an editor, and now does book dealing as a hobby and to pay for trips to Paris.
• Most of the teachers at the private school I attended were essentially hobbyists (retirees, spouses of people with well-paying jobs, etc) and they have a terrible attrition rate with new/young teachers, because their wages aren't high enough to live in the pricey city where the school is.

Much better, I think, to teach your kids that work is work and play is play, and the latter is reward for doing well in the former. That work doesn't have to be the ultimate fulfillment in your life, but it allows you to do, in your spare time, the things that you find truly fulfilling and satisfying.

I'm Deboss, and I support this message.

@jd

1. That's all anecdotal evidence, not the "hard proof" I asked for.
2. You also seem to be arguing against other people with similar positions, because nowhere did I say that everything someone likes to do can be turned into a job; rather that everyone has a job  ^*
   ^{has in the sense of "has out there", not in the sense of "currently has", of course}
   that they would like to do. Most people have many things they like to do; not all of them would pay anything, but at least one of them will pay at least enough to pay basic living expenses.
3. Most of your examples are badly paying or volunteer versions of very similar jobs that pay more. I.e: Someone who likes animals a lot, and wants to like animals a lot for pay, would go for veterinarian (or at least work in a pet store) rather than volunteer at the humane society. Someone who really likes to be around books would probably go for librarian rather than other library worker. I know for a fact (from every teacher I've had for 12 years now) that being a teacher usually pays well enough to live off of; your experience there is definitely atypical.

@OTOH: Considering what kind of site this is, I think we can call that a statistical artifact.

And the sum total of your argument is, and continues to be, "I think you're wrong."

@Jewel: That's not entirely fair. I think a better criticism would be that his main argument seems to have shifted. Black Humor, from your earlier posts on the subject I got the impression that anything less than an absolutely fulfilling job that you love to do would be unacceptable, whereas now you seem to be saying "Pick a field that interests you at least a little", which is something I could get behind. Most people on this thread shot down your first argument as impractical, while this second one is actually very reasonable.

Edit: Fixed some grammar.

edited 5th Feb '11 7:18:54 PM by OnTheOtherHandle

Sure, I don't think anyone would argue with picking a field related to your interests (for instance, a fiction writer getting a job at a magazine). But it's easy for someone who hasn't tried looking for a permanent job to think that they're going to be the one person who makes it as, say, a professional film actor, even though the vast majority of talented, dedicated, hardworking people in those fields end up failing at them.