"it's Easy" Can Make Scary Tasks Scarier

"it's easy" can make scary tasks scarier

When people are struggling or afraid to try something, well-meaning people often try to help them by telling them that the thing is easy. This often backfires.

For instance:

Kid: I don’t know how to write a paper! This paper has to be 5 pages long, and we have to do research! It’s so hard!

Parent: Don’t worry. 5 pages isn’t that much. This isn’t such a hard assignment. 

In this interaction, the parent is trying to help, but the message the kid is likely hearing is “This shouldn’t be hard. You’re failing at an easy thing.”

If something is hard or scary, it’s better to acknowledge that, and focus on reassuring them that it is possible. (And, if necessary and appropriate, help them to find ways of seeing it as possible.)

For instance:

Kid: I don’t know how to write a paper! This paper has to be 5 pages long, and we have to do research! It’s so hard!

Parent: It’s hard, and that’s ok. You can do hard things.

Parent: What are you writing about?

Kid: Self-driving cars. But I can’t find anything. 

And so on.

This isn’t unique to interactions between parents and children. It can also happen between friends, and in other types of relationships.

tl;dr If something’s hard for someone, telling them that it’s easy probably won’t help. Reassuring them that they can do hard things often does help, especially if you can support them in figuring out how to do the thing.

Do not raise your children the way your parents raised you; they were born for a different time.

Abi bin Abi Taleb (599—661 A.D.)

Last night’s debate, or the mansplaining Olympics

Some things actually require preparation, it turns out.

CLINTON: Can I respond? I heard there would not be any fact-checking this debate, so I brought my own. I just want to explain what your plan would actually do. It is like trickle-down economics, but even worse. I came up with a fun nickname for it because my campaign wanted to make sure I created moments of “levity” instead of just “lecturing.” This is the straitjacket of speaking while female. “Trumped-up trickle-down,” we call it. Is that fun? By my standards, that seems fun. Donald, your business started when your dad loaned you $14 million.

TRUMP: In my defense, $14 million is, like, practically nothing. If I found it crumpled up in the pocket of a coat I had not worn in a while, I would make a face and throw it away. Also, NAFTA is bad, Secretary Clinton — does that make you happy? Usually when I address women as “secretary” they get upset and yell.

TRUMP: I have the best temperament. Obviously.

CLINTON: Obviously. Yes. Obviously. You have interrupted me 70 times to say nonsense remarks that indicate you have not the faintest idea what you are talking about. Seventy times. I have spent my life doing this. You decided, like, last year that you were mildly interested in it and that you would probably be great at it. I wish I had that confidence. I wish any little girl did.

If I had coughed even once on this stage, I would have lost this debate instantly. And so you know what? I did not cough. Not even once. You sniffed and you lectured and you made faces and you sighed. And I stood there. Impassive. Like a screensaver. I focus-grouped my number of blinks.

@lettersfromtitan, have you seen this?

Just got better, more terrifying, and a more important lesson:

“In a 2013 interview, Petrov said at the time he was never sure that the alarm was erroneous. He felt that his civilian training helped him make the right decision. His colleagues were all professional soldiers with purely military training and, following instructions, would have reported a missile strike if they had been on his shift.” (Wikipedia, from BBC)

happy Stanislav Petrov Saves The World Day

On September 26, 1983, Duty Officer Stanislav Petrov, stationed at the Oko nuclear early-warning system command center, saw that his computer system was reporting that six missiles had been launched from the United States towards Russia.

Mr. Petrov correctly judged that the system was experiencing a malfunction and that the missile strike was a false alarm, and did not call for retaliatory launches of Soviet missiles, thereby preventing what would have been large-scale nuclear war.

I am very glad of Stanislav Petrov.

I was in HP fandom a while back, and I don’t remember an alternate meaning...enlighten (or remind) me? 

I know discourse is the word of choice in fandom nowadays but I kind of wish we would have stuck with “fandom wank” because it carries the implication that the anger involved culminated into effectively nothing and that the act was wholeheartedly masturbatory in nature rather than for any greater cause.

Me sitting here after this update like