I do believe parentage changes "the difficulty level" of life. Some kids are born to loving, nurturing, well-off parents and essentially "play the game of life" on level easy. Some kids play on level hard. However, it's the kid's own choice how they will play it.
I recently watched Steven Spielberg's recent autobiographical movie "The Fablemans". He portrayed there his own childhood and teenage years.
What I found most interesting is the fact that Spielberg's father was apparently a skilled computer engineer who worked for the IBM. There was a scene in the movie where Spielberg's father tries to show his kids the beauty of engineering while building some simple structure from wooden sticks but they all are disinterested and shortly run away. There is a scene where Spielberg's father tells teenage Spielberg that it would be better if he ditched this filmmaking hobby and started doing something more meaningful with his life.
Steven Spielberg did turn out to be exceptional but in a completely different way from his father.
I've been successfully using ChatGPT for learning German in the last month or so. It does a great job enriching my plain B1 level sentences with some fancy verbs or adjectives and pointing out my mistakes.
How does that work? Do you just tell it that you are learning and to correct your mistakes, then converse with it in German? Does it infer your German level from your own chats with it?
Yes, you can tell it that you are learning the language at the beginning of the conversation in plain English and ask it to correct any mistakes. You can easily start a bilingual conversation with ChatGPT, some random example here: https://www.reddit.com/r/russian/comments/112xgp2/practicing...
To show you what I meant when I mentioned "enriching sentences", I've just generated an example of a B1-level English sentence improved by ChatGPT.
User: Please improve this sentence: "Many people want to learn languages because they like to travel"
ChatGPT: "Learning languages is a popular pursuit because it enables people to travel and explore different cultures with greater ease."
It works similarly with other languages.
As for my German level, it wasn't evaluated by ChatGPT but by an external assessment exam and I only mentioned it to add some more context to the story. Frankly, I probably wouldn't trust ChatGPT's assessment in this regard.
> User: Please improve this sentence: "Many people want to learn languages because they like to travel"
> ChatGPT: "Learning languages is a popular pursuit because it enables people to travel and explore different cultures with greater ease."
How is this an "improvement"?
The user gave a concise sentence without errors. ChatGPT made it more verbose and added additional meaning that wasn't present in the original sentence (thus going beyond mere "improvement"). Even if it stopped before the "and", the ChatGPT version is worse: it uses more words for no benefit.
You are generally correct but the context is crucial here - in this particular case it was my intention to get a verbose fancy sentence out of a much simpler one. ChatGPT inferred my wish from the previous prompts in that chat.
Such use of ChatGPT has been useful to me as I'm trying to progress from intermediate to advanced level in my knowledge of German. However, there are numerous methods for learning foreign languages and it is understandable that you may prefer your own ways and disagree with mine.
This analogy is a huge hyperbole and the sole number of people addressing that suggests that many people might consider it to be misinformation that should be corrected before it spreads.
Even if you meant authoritarian approach towards citizen in general (not regarding parenting), this is also incorrect. People who stayed out of politics weren't really persecuted here in Poland. Activists, independent journalists and priests were persecuted by the police but ordinary people just went on with their lives (although it is true that the regime used to be very oppresive in the 1940s-50s before Stalin died in 1956).
Funnily enough, I'm from the Eastern bloc (Poland) and apparently my grandma used to run a grocery store for some time in the 1980's. It could have been technically government owned, I never inquired. Whatever was the legal status, it was called "Grandma's store" in my family.
I grew up in the former Eastern bloc (Poland) in a small town and we had this sort of free-range parenting there. When I was around 9 or 10 I would spend my whole days playing outside with the other kids from the neighborhood, especially in the summer. Sort of like the "Bullerbyn children" in Astrid Lindgren's book. Sometimes one of us was sent on an errand (like to a local shop) and others went along to keep company. There were 5 of us hanging out regularly and most of us lived in two working parent households except one who had a SAH mother and another who was raised by a working single mother. So I don't think the lack of SAH moms is a factor here. Also, my parents are not religious and there definitely was no faith-based community. My parents actually didn't know that well the parents of other kids, we kids just met each other somehow in the area or were introduced by other kids that we knew. I think it was rather a combination of living in a safe neighborhood - suburb with low traffic (even now Poland has less cars per capita than US https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicle...) and people being just less paranoid back then. Also, the societal expectations towards children have shifted in the recent years, now people often try to micromanage their children's time and provide them with too many after-school activities so kids don't have time to just hang around.
I disagree. When it comes to social issues, American left-wing could be considered far-left in many countries (basing on the recent Stanford's guide to political correctness).
Considered far-left in any country in Western Europe? (genuine question).
I follow USA news a bit and nothing comes to my mind right now that could be considered far left around here. But of course I don't follow every political debate in USA, so I'm sure I'm missing some dividing issue... Do you have an example of something that could be considered far left in Europe, perhaps?
Both you and the author of the parent comment I replied to use 'Europe'/'European' and 'Western Europe' interchangibly. That's probably causing most misunderstandings. I live in Poland which is undoubtedly an European country (right in the middle of Europe) but is rather conservative. For example gay marriage is still a controversial idea here - it's not permitted and the majority of public opinion is against.
It does seem like Eastern/Central Europe is generally more socially conservative than Western Europe - but there are many exceptions. Czech Republic is a notable liberal outlier. Predominantly Catholic countries like Italy and Ireland are rather conservative (especially when it comes to issues that the Catholic church is outspoken on like gay marriage, abortion and IVF treatments).
What I'm trying to say is that Europe is not a united entity and political attitudes vary greatly between countries.
Also, I do think American Democrats could be considered far left here in Poland when it comes to social issues (abortion, LGBTQ rights, racism). On the other hand we have free healthcare and free university education and these are taken for granted here. Is Poland more left-wing than US or more right-wing then? I'd say that's incomparable.
There's a gap between the political representation and what people on the left actually believe. The political representation definitely leans to the right compared to Western-European countries, for the most part anyway. But if I look at some of the discourse in American left-wing circles then ... yeah, I find some of it is pretty far out, and I typically vote things like the Socialist Party or Green Party (in a country where this actually means something).
I suspect this is due to a combination of 1) not having much power, being relatively "isolated" in the political debate, not having to compromise; 2) not having any actual experience with socialist/social-democracy reality, leading to an unnuanced utopian view of things; 3) a kind of response to some of the bonkers right-wing politics of the US.
The whole left wing culture war theatre part wouldn't fly in any country in EU.
American abortion freedom, try finding people in Europe who think abortion in 9th month is business as usual. No one thinks having id card to vote is racist (its as difficult and costly to get one here), cultural appropriation people wouldn't comprehend. Affirmative action etc etc.
The American left wing political spectrum has nothing to do with EU left who fight for workers not all that crap.
All of your arguments here are either incorrect or ignore the context for why something is the case in the US.
Like there's literally a running joke on British museums appropriating artifacts, abortion laws in the EU were generally around the same timeframe as the US (12-24 weeks) and so forth. The fact that the EU political systems favor workers means that yes, the EU is already far left in comparison to any progressive politician in the US.
The thing is, Europe is not a united entity and political attitudes vary greatly between countries.
For example Poland, where I live, is conservative, and American Democrats could be considered far left here when it comes to social issues (abortion, LGBTQ rights, racism). On the other hand, we have free healthcare and free university education and these are taken for granted here. Is Poland more left-wing than US or more right-wing then? I'd say that's incomparable.
Abortion is legal all the way up to delivery in 7 states + DC. I don't exactly have a dog in this fight, but I do find it interesting how many people don't realize just how few restrictions exist on abortion in some states like New Jersey for instance.
Less than 1% of abortions occur in the third trimester. I'd imagine nearly all of those are because the mom's life is in jeopardy.
There are a bunch of really stupid US state laws that just got passed that prevent doctors from removing a miscarried fetus until sepsis develops. Pretty barbaric - and these infections can often render the mother infertile, which feels extra cruel.
Anti-abortion pundits like to paint a picture that there are hordes of party girls fully gestating babies and then aborting them right at the end just for kicks, but that's just a weird politically-expedient fantasy. These laws mostly hurt women who are trying to have children.
It is hard to say whether this is a left or right wing issue. I believe that both sides oppose the creation of a national ID, each for their own reasons. Example source: [1]
I do not feel response about abortion adds to the dialogue, but since it's so wrong at least here is a response:
> try finding people in Europe who think abortion in 9th month is business as usual
Same in America. Certainly illegal. The question is first trimester abortions.
> Same in America. Certainly illegal. The question is first trimester abortions.
Each state makes their own laws on abortion, and even just saying "same in America" on any state laws doesn't make sense.
There are absolutely states in the US where it is legal to get an abortion at any time in the pregnancy, for any reason.[1] Colorado, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, Alaska and New Jersey + District of Columbia. Zero restrictions.
As a Bernie-style 'leftist', I can't say a response to this abortion assertion any better than Pete Buttigieg did on Fox news (<2 min clip), and I bet the vast majority of _all_ Americans would agree with this take:
Laws are necessary because we can't trust everyone. Some women throw their newborn babies in the trash. Are you willing to trust them to "draw the line" too, or would you insist that the legislature draw a line at birth?
The line is drawn at birth. I'm not sure what you're trying to say here unless you're arguing that those states that allow abortions at all stages allow you to abort a baby that has already been delivered.
The answer is: the legislature, always, everywhere. Some legislatures draw the line at six weeks, others draw it at birth, but every legislature draws a line.
Yes, and the legislature is often incorrect. For example, Texas draws the line at 'never', and it's medical exemption is so narrow as to never be used even in cases like ectopic pregnancies.
The point is that those states don't trust women to handle their own health and so they force the issue upon them.
If you have an actual point to make can you explain it.
It's very simple. No state or nation "trusts women" to draw the line where a new human being acquires the right to life. Every legislature takes that responsibility on itself (even those that draw the line at birth).
Do you trust women to decide whether newborns should live or die? Does Buttigieg?
So your point is an entirely irrelevant argument about moving the goalposts past abortion to make a nitpicky argument around trust.
The entire point is that ultimately it's her body you're trying to dictate. Do you think the legislature has a vested interest in controlling what men do with their organs? Should they pass laws preventing men from tying their tubes because the legislature has a vested interest in keeping population growth high?
> based on [one extremely narrow handpicked piece of evidence]
i feel like this sort of extreme bias is what has kept shifting the overton window in america away from a real center towards the radical extremist ends we've had to suffer through. brow beating bias like this with extremely narrow lenses is a bullshit asymmetry that adds so much noise & churn, that steals the oxygen from real conversations. i feel like the so called left (quite center) wants to have real discussions, has genuine intent, yet has to deal with this kind of own-the-libs attitude ad nauseum.
Does that even fit on the spectrum? From Europe things like the "Stanford's guide to political correctness" feel super niche in the same way that some weirdos on the left used to advocate for getting rid of ages of consent.
My guess is that it's subconsciously patronizing behavior. Ellison and Wang are both young (around 28/29 I think) and they are no longer respectable after their spectacular failure. People feel entitled to call them whatever they want and their first names are much easier to remember than their last names.
I do believe parentage changes "the difficulty level" of life. Some kids are born to loving, nurturing, well-off parents and essentially "play the game of life" on level easy. Some kids play on level hard. However, it's the kid's own choice how they will play it.