It's not so much "authority" but "trust" that has gone down.

There used to be institutions that were regarded as the gold standard for truth: the FDA, top science journals, the CDC, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and so on.

These weren't necessarily regarded as infallible. But it was widely recognized that they undertook a best effort to get at the truth, and would tend to err on the side of caution.

That trust is falling apart. Many people, including in the HN community, cheer this decline. They see it, not entirely unreasonable, as the downfall of despised "elites" and opening the discourse to other voices, making it more democratic.

But while the tearing down of institutions is well ahead, there is little indication that the envisioned surge of bottom-up publishing is anywhere as successful: almost no structures have appeared, for example, that provide the nitty-gritty coverage of local politics.

Nor can I think of any actual corruption by these organisations exposed by amateur sleuths. Even Snowden relied on traditional media to get his message out. Just today, the Seattle Times (old media) revealed their investigation of the broken process of Boeing's certification of the 737 Max.

"Critical thinking" is what's usually recommended in these times of information overload and bad actors. But the term just seems to give license to everyone to make up their own facts as needed. The result is a discourse devoid of agreed-upon facts. If you cite inflation data in economic discussions, the most likely reply is a conspiracy theory about the data being corruptly influenced. "Think critically", they say, "who profits from <X>, I bet they get a big fat payoff from <Y> for telling this lie".

> Nor can I think of any actual corruption by these organisations exposed by amateur sleuths.

Wouldn't the simple fact that the CDC now owns patents on vaccines qualify at least as a conflict of interest that would justifiably erode trust?

Trust is power and power corrupts. Its part of a natural cycle that occurs. This is why we develop organizations with strict constraints and methods of accountability such as the separate branches of government.

I believe it s neither "authority" nor "trust" that has fallen, but rather nihilism that has taken a sharp rise. Who cares about your authority, or trusting you outside of my purposes? It's all meaningless in the end.

How many times have you seen this statement on this board alone: "Given the passage of enough time after your death, anything you did won't matter." or some form or fashion.

None of your points 1,2,3 highlight a loss of authority so much as its transfer between different institutions: religion, state, teacher, parent.

Ok, maybe transferring authority to individuals as in (1) could be counted as a loss, but in a topic so personal that it would be ridiculous for somebody to claim authority over others in it anyway.

"religion, state, teacher, parent"

Nope, all of these are in simultaneous rapid decline in esteem and status.

Maybe but example 2 above was a case of state increasing in authority, and 3 might be for an I know but the post doesn't make it clear.

Are you saying that the problem here is that people aren't doing what they're told by authorities? Because I can confidently say that this is not an accurate reading of the fine article. Or, you know, reality.

I think it's valuable to ask some questions about the costs and unforseen second-order effects of throwing out all our traditional ideas of respect and status. It's pretty reductive to characterise this as saying people should "do what they're told". I can confidently say that's not an accurate reading of GP's comment.

You can call it a fourth-order bundle of holomorphic consequences if you like. The difference is fine enough to slice a silk scarf in two.

I don't think a belief in religious authority is necessary for a belief in scientific authority. The scientific community is especially atheist. And I don't think a belief in religious authority is especially likely to cause one to believe in scientific authority.

A lot of times one can actually undermine the other because they have two conflicting views of the world.

Point #3 is actually a sign of increasing authoritarianism.

You can make an argument that as older forms of authority (family, church) have weakened, we have been placed at the mercy of the remaining forms (governments, employers). But in this mixed picture how do we know whether science goes in the winners or losers column?

Is this unexpected? Unvetted authority took a big hit when it created totalitarian states and initiated some of the biggest atrocities and genocides ever witnessed in human history.

The author's (or your, or my) personal opinion on spanking is very much not the issue here.

Sure, but parent poster mentioned violence against the child and I'm always always going to say that it's wrong.

If you lead a child by the arm against their will, is this tantamount to physical violence or no?

If we're busy redefining what is the acceptable behavior in parenting, we better discuss this all the way to the limits.

You sound like you're being sarcastic, but I can't be sure. It sounds like you think the premise is ridiculous, but your second sentence is totally reasonable - of course we should discuss all aspects of a topic. Again, I'm not sure if your first question was honest or not, but answering it is straightforward and I think you'll find only extreme minorities of opposing opinions: Leading forcibly by the arm may be objectionable in some contexts, but it is not physical violence in most cases where the person being lead doesn't have the strength to turn the struggle into violence, so for children it almost never is (if the parent isn't using unnecessary force).

I think your parent comment is alluding to the attempts by certain groups to massively expand the use/scope of the word "violence", e.g. the "speech as violence" idea.

I think that would be a reasonable point if that was the topic, but I don't think you're right about their intention because the topic is very explicitly about physical violence. Steering over to the philosophical realm of non-physical "violence" as an abstract concept would be a pretty dramatic departure from the topic, especially since it's not even stated in the comment. They even use an act of physically overpowering a person as their example.

Correct: I do understand that the definition of violence has been expanded in some areas of public discourse, but it wasn't my point.

My point was to find out where the poster believed to be the new demarcation line for physical violence that is acceptable (in parenting). I intended to suggest that leading by the arm might be considered violence by some, perhaps including myself.

You can't escape this context, sure. But I was hoping for expansion on the idea where the poster stated "They should be investigated if their parenting is so poor that they resort to physical violence against the child." ... to which my reply is to ask what the limits are.

I can certainly imagine scenarios where leading by the arm would be considered violence, as it can cause pain and has the potential to injure.

You grab a child by the arm and drag it -- that's potentially violence, but we'd need to look at the action as a whole.

You hold a child's hand to guide it -- that's probably not violence.

HN needs a name for the falacy that people always seek to define precise exact rules for everything, ignoring the way that courts work by investigating the context of an action.

Seeking precise rules for something is, in spirit, the exact opposite of what a logical fallacy is.

I honestly don't get this. When did spanking your child amount to 'physical violence'? We became too liberal with even the basics.

Spanking a child is absolutely violence. It's just been a socially acceptable form of violence for millennia, just like some killing (either in wars or e.g. with a death penalty) has been socially acceptable for as long.

The question isn't, "is spanking violence?"

It's "are norms changing around whether spanking is socially acceptable?"

And now, for a lot of people, no, it isn't. Hitting a child to punish them is no longer "the basics" for a lot of people, even if it's how a lot of the older generation grew up and took for granted.

I have no kids, but most of my peers do now, and spanking is sooooo much off the table, it's on par with overt racism (saying the n-word, saying discrimination is okay, etc). Absolute social taboo, and absolutely no question that it's "physical violence".

How is hitting a child not physical violence?

What definition of violence are you using which doesn't include hitting children?

A definition of violence that doesn't distinguish between a completely non-injurious form of discipline and an abusive, injurious form is not very useful and its proponents are willfully obtuse.

It is injurious. It causes harm. We know it causes harm.

But let's go with your incorrect assertion that it doesn't cause harm. Try slapping one of your co-workers, and then in court saying "but it was a completely non-injurious form of discipline" and see how far you get.

Citation needed and I’m not the legal nor moral guardian of my coworkers. What a terrible analogy.

There is a huge difference between swatting someone to get their attention and hitting someone with enough force to cause injury.

If it's meant as a punishment it's not "to get their attention"; it's done to inflict pain. Again, it wouldn't be acceptable with an adult; just apply the same standard.

I don't think how to deal with an adult is a good guide for what's an acceptable way to deal with children. For instance if someone were to put their wife in timeout or take away her allowance that would make them an abusive a-hole, but these are perfectly acceptable punishments for a child. Likewise leaving one's wife is an acceptable option for an adult but not for a child.

I would put my child in time-out if he left his wife.

Children are driven mainly by emotion. Particularly young children. Pain is an emotion that tends to override other emotions. A brief, sharp pain can snap them out of an emotional loop they found themselves caught in. Since the pain is very brief, they tend to revert back to a much more reasonable state afterwards.

All that said, yes there is a difference between parenting and abuse. However, children are not tiny adults. They are tiny humans. You can often tell how they are feeling or why they are feeling that way, but it isn't by thinking the way a well-adjusted adult would. The whole point of parenting is to help them get to that point eventually.

And 99% of the non-spanking arguments ignore these truths and seek to treat children like tiny adults. If treating children like adults were possible, then we would redefine them to be adults and let them go on with their lives.

If someone acts the same way at 25 that he acts at 13, that person would be a sociopath. But 13-year-olds are rarely sociopaths (i.e., they are only when truly mentally ill).

Children can't function the same way adults do, and we can't treat them the same way, full stop.

If we could treat children the way we treat adults, they wouldn't be children, they'd be adults.

This is the kind of willful obtuseness the poster upthread is talking about.

I'm not asking people to treat children as adults.

I'm just saying that hitting a child is always as abusive as hitting an adult, and often more so because the child has no chance of escape.

There are many ways of parenting, and msot of them do not include violence against the child.

This is why hitting children is illegal in many countries.

Never mind treating children as adults: how about we treat them as humans, with rights that need to be protected?

>Again, it wouldn't be acceptable with an adult; just apply the same standard.

And that's pretty much the key point. You cannot pretend children are adults.

Our society draws lots of important distinctions between adults and children.

You don't get it. If we hit our children more, we can solve global warming. See?

Also, this is why you should be a patriot and subscribe to Science rather than Nature.

> When did spanking your child amount to 'physical violence'?

It's always been physical violence, it just used to be universally accepted physical violence, just like beating (and raping) your wife was. Now it's become less accepted, just as the other two have.

I think it stems from the fact that fewer and fewer people are having children at all, and this opinion often comes from people who don't have children, don't understand children, or who have children who walk all over them.

Children are not rational creatures, or at least not always, once you get to a certain age. There are only so many ways to deal with them, and in my opinion, as the father of 4 adult children, spanking or similar correction may be called for in a situation where the child has put himself or someone else into danger.

Because there's one thing people who aren't around children don't understand and that's how many times the average child escapes serious injury or even death. I've seen many situations where no one is being negligent, but which serious, even fatal injuries could easily have happened. You might have the most "enlightened" attitude towards discipline in the world, but that can all change when your child rushes out into traffic or does something else equally dangerous.

Of course, in response to the inescapable dangers of life, we are more and more seeing parents who simply don't allow their kids to be exposed to any source of potential danger, and they grow up to be completely helpless and start voting socialist.

If you can hit your kid, why can't I also hit my dog?

I literally see nothing wrong with hitting a pet if it gets out of control.

People use shock collars(physical pain as punishment) on their dog all the time and there are large dog training companies built around this modality.

FWIW I've zapped myself with a shock collar before using it on my dog and it's a lot more like, well, "shock" as in surprise mixed with discomfort. I would almost describe it as like instantaneous onset of the feeling of when your leg falls asleep. If you've ever done the 9V battery on the tongue, that's mostly what it is.

There are also a lot of people who hit their dogs. Is this ok?