[mbreese]

How did you get this rant from that article? This is about a guy who wants to block off time every night to spend with his daughter. How is that so offensive? (especially when she is so young)

Your rant about parenting is way off topic. After all, you can't "parent" if you're at work all the time.

[_cttz]

Parenting is off topic in a thread about family responding to a post about parenting? I don't think so.

Actually, I was reacting more to the triteness of the thread than to the OP. But it's pretty clear that the OP is imbued with much the same values. In fact, the author is making a case for them. Why else call it a "manifesto"? The thing is, the case is -- as it always is -- lined up on the side of love, nurturing, and what-really-matters-in-life. Stuff nobody could reasonably oppose. Which means that, whatever the argument is, there must be something wrong with it. If it were correct, it wouldn't exist.

[mbreese]

It's off topic because the post wasn't about parenting, it was about scheduling your work life. Your post was talking about parenting styles (child-centric, etc...). He didn't mention a thing about how he was raising his daughter, just that he was scheduling the time to do so.

For example, I can block off 3-4 hours a day for my kids where I don't work/check email/etc... That has nothing to do with how I am raising them.

The point that I took away from the original post was that taking time for your kids[1] is good for your work. It was a counter-intuitive discovery for him, but he felt that the dedicated time away from work helped to make him more productive.

[1] For him it was your kids, for you it could be your dog, your spouse, or building ships in bottles...

[unconed]

Thank you for putting it so succinctly. The fact that you got mostly emotional responses from supposedly levelheaded hackers shows how much you hit the nail on the head.

[_cttz]

I noticed that too, but in fairness, it's worsened by the poverty of the medium (online forum discussion) which doesn't provide for emotional calibration. Our brains tend immediately to snap into a binary formation in response to what's presented. Since what I said on this (pretty charged) subject was provocative, it must mean that I oppose nurturing children and favor abusing them. Rationally that's absurd, but emotionally it's quite logical.

But in person, it wouldn't as likely come to that, because we could use many tools to calibrate - tone of voice, personal warmth, listening, etc. - and mitigate the extremes. Or we'd efficiently detect that a discussion can't get anywhere right now and save ourselves the trouble.

Anybody who figures out a technical solution to this problem is in a position to make a major contribution. Unfortunately, it may not be possible short of teleportation. We are wired for physical proximity.

p.s. For what it's worth, I have found every bit of effort toward becoming aware of this binary dynamic in oneself to pay off a thousandfold.