Humanity is eradicating entire species left and right. Mosquitoes are our worst enemies. Can we have a deal to save some little poor amazonian frog (the doomed one which has only ~100 animals and 1 location left) and after we accomplish that, in return wipe out one species of mosquitoes?
I hope the Amazonian frog doesn't depend too much on mosquitos as food. Or that by eradicating mosquitoes, insectivorous animals don't eat more of other, less abundant and fast-breeding, insects as a replacement and it starved the Amazonian frog.
(I don't know what the Amazonian frog eats; my point is that biotopes are complex and second- and third-order effects need to be monitored. That's why smaller interventions - e.g. making humans poisonous to mosquitoes, pushing them to the evolutionary path of avoiding humans - would be better than whole eradication.)
That's what we thought about all the other species we intentionally eradicated, both the ones that turned out to be unimportant, and the ones that turned out to be very important.
Note that these specific mosquito species are invasive in most of the world after they escaped their native ecosystems and proceeded to spread like wildfire so arguably eradicating them would be a net benefit for most ecosystems.
Maybe both parents had to work two jobs. Maybe they had their own life challenges.
Perfect parenting, if such a thing exists, certainly has an economic minimum price.
And likely has a previous generation upraising requirement as well. There's a reason maladaptive cycles continuing down through generations happens: parents are often defined by their parents ad infinitum.
What matters as a parent is being the best you can be, and striving to be better than your parents were.
All that matters is the outcome. The child has to live with it.
Offspring repeat maladaptive traits which were considered normal or effective. Any skills lacked will have to be self-taught or sought out once they become aware. The narrative of being the best we can be and putting in 100% effort as parents unfortunately only makes us feel better about our situation/security, personal life choices (including avoidance), and quality of connection. Many people have kids for the sake of it and to improve their own lives. This is one of the insidious roots of a potentially painful upbringing.
Shifting the thought framing to seeking "reasons" rather than "blame" for behaviors allowed me to see failures or betrayals for what they are. I could then grieve the times I was hurt despite the love and intentions. I processed anger and bitterness about this along with a host of unresolved traumas and associated emotions that I never had the chance to resolve internally at the time. What remains is a dull universal sadness at seeing the truth of all this - the obvious harms we are doing to ourselves and each other despite "best intentions". It's a small price to pay to finally be arriving at a sense of internal peace.
Effective or "good enough" parenting requires a range of skills including emotional intelligence and awareness of our flaws in order to reduce harm, and to treat the child as a separate individual. Everyone gets stressed and makes mistakes, but those skills determine whether it's an opportunity to teach children how to self-regulate and resolve conflict, or an internal clusterfuck that sets them up for a lifetime of interpersonal issues, poor self-regulation, and disappointment. Prioritizing emotional presence is critical.
Some people with deeper issues can cause problematic child development and attachment regardless of material conditions or physical presence. It's mainly whether the child has room to grow themselves or if they are stunted/controlled by the environment.
I believe we should look at ourselves deeply and honestly to work on our own state of mind before diving into commitments. The reward of internal peace is worth the price of realizing this reality. From here we can improve it for the next generations.
> Bayesian phylogenetic analyses indicate that intensive agriculture was as likely the result of state formation as its cause. By contrast, grain cultivation most likely preceded state formation.
It seems you hold a much stronger position than the paper you cite. Anyway paper's interesting, thanks.
Responding with my own anecdata: Duolingo is not bad, but better options exist, in with a gap in quality and quantity that you might as well just use those (admittedly, I have been learning Spanish and Japanese, languages that have a lot more resources than Mongolian).
Speaking with anyone who has intensively learnt languages, FSRS is the best way to remember vocabulary (you will need a separate source to actually learn it). And I've found that books often offer more structured practice and introduction. After you've outgrown books, picking up words from real conversations / media is much faster and makes you more likely to actually remember them.
And for Duolingo, there are many things to nitpick about. The obsessive gamification, the hearts (and the current energy) system that prioritizes getting answers correct by guesswork and cheating or being limited to a few minutes a day, the company firing chunks of it's core translation and language staff.
Duolingo is more than adequate, however, if you plan to do 5 min / day and just want to keep a streak going. I have seen people who have gotten real results from it too.
For what purpose exactly? When the computer is asked the solution to a problem, it must be absolute: "What is the sum of 12 and 45"; "Is Jack cognitively apt" etc.: we want a truth, strictly. What to do with that truth, it is another problem, and not the priority of the computer vis-a-vis the requirement from truthiness. This is, of course, still in the context of adults.
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