Alfie Kohn

January 19th, 2022

• watching Alfie Kohn Unconditional Parenting talk
  • "false dichotomies are popular because they make choosing easy" (~9mins)
  • ~kids learn bullying patterns from their parents all too well (~15mins)
    • (resonates with a visa talking point)
  • core library / canon / Books/Cultural Literacy
    • PCT
    • Alfie
    • Deutsch
    • SooS
    • ??
  • "Punishments and rewards are popular in part because they pretend to be a one-size-fits-all solutions. That's part of why they don't work very well either." (1h00)
  • "have to look beneath behavior"
  • "the opposite of praise isn't criticism—the opposite of conditional affection is unconditional affection" (~1h19.5)
  • "how to deal with difficult parents"
    • = concept of a parenting book, but from the perspective of a child
    • "how to deal with your guru"

Podcast summaries

• Keywords - cooperation & defection aren't as obvious as they might seem (they depend on frame) IFS collective agency untangle self-authoring social technology is more of a bottleneck than material technology intentionality everyone is always doing whatever makes the most sense to them partswork Coherence Therapy everything makes sense Everyone is basically living in a dream mashup of their current external situation & old emotional meanings self-trust comes from respecting distrust Learning how to trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too safety psychological safety Alfie Kohn punishment is goodharting waiting to happen protectiveness is damage control deliberate "negative reinforcement" is punishment even if you don't call it that intrinsic motivation adulthood An Everyone Culture in general, people don't not-care. they care about many things and don't know how to care for all of them together (PCT) reward is just the temporary relief of punishment scarcity much of human collaboration scales sublinearly but it's possible to scale superlinearly what is culture? how do we make groups with the union of their individual wisdoms rather than the intersection of their individual wisdoms? list of common schemas learned in school School is fake averagerianism post-average

• 11:58 - 20:10 - Why isn't society producing enough high-agency individuals? safety psychological safety Alfie Kohn punishment is goodharting waiting to happen protectiveness is damage control deliberate "negative reinforcement" is punishment even if you don't call it that intrinsic motivation