there is an active online community which discusses TCS and other related ideas at the Fallible Ideas discussion group. you can learn more about important philosophical ideas like TCS and get help applying them to your life! http://fallibleideas.com/discussion-info

TCS explicitly says don't sacrifice yourself, even in the specific essay linked. The people in the Netherlands are not doing TCS.

It's a common trap people fall into though, even with conventional parents. I agree that self-sacrifice is bad. There's a lot to TCS other than not having rules though.

You can't just drop rules and expect everything to work out great. That would be naive. You have to actively seek out solutions that work for you and your kid. And really work, not "work" in a compromising, sharing-of-misery kind of way.

>I see a lot of parents (mothers mostly) in public places desperately trying to explain their dissatisfaction to their misbehaving children.

What you aren't seeing is the thousands of times the child has been thwarted, denied, forced, coerced, dragged around, insufficiently helped, etc.

>The children meanwhile are completely disregarding them and will continue doing whatever they were doing untill the parents give up.

Does that strike you as the approach a child would take if their parent were typically super helpful, responsive, and had a really strong strong track record of taking the child seriously?

>The parents will end up awkwardly trying to ignore their children,

this is not TCS!

>visibly ashamed

ashamed of their helpless, dependent children who are actively upset about something!

>but still unable to use their authority for fear of breaking their chosen path to happy parenting.

You describe a sad situation but something that is not at all a criticism of TCS. It's rather compatible with the TCS worldview (the bare facts of the situations described, not your interpretation)

>They won't even raise their voice.

Having a big person yell at you isn't helpful or nice.

How many 2 year olds have you raised? I ask, because that’s exactly how many kids act naturally. They don’t realize when parents are ‘super helpful’, their behavior is much more base than that.

I can tell you first hand, a small percentage of kids will behave well almost naturally n matter what you do, and some will behave poorly no matter what is done. Most though seem to thrive with sensible boundaries in place.

I know that some people had horrible parents that mistreated them and hence they ended up being very sensitive to any parental reprimand. That sucks. None the less, kids need unconditional love, but they also need boundaries. Loving them means you sometime have to lay down the law. It’s not fun. It’s a hell of a lot easier to not do it.

1) The cost (direct and opportunity) is ENORMOUS. And even with special federal govt repayment plans, if you don't get that big firm job, the debt will potentially weigh you down well into middle age (with the possibility of a nasty tax bite at the end if you have any assets and the law isn't changed).

2) The likelihood of getting a high paying job is slim. It's even pretty risky from top 10 schools.

3) Even during the boom times, when people from top schools were getting jobs at top BIGLAW firms left and right, people were HATING LIFE at the firm because they didn't realize what it was going to be like. And more broadly, lots of people get all the way through law school and realize they don't wanna be lawyers. This is super common.

4) Non-big-firm opportunities are either super competitive (like govt or public interest), super low paying (also includes lots of govt and public interest), or not a great value proposition (how'd you like 200k in debt to try scratching out 50k a year as a solo?)

Lots of the reasons people want to attend law school are pretty dumb/false (stuff like: like to argue, wanna be prestigious, think its a safe/good-paying career track). The people that should attend law school are those who:

a) won't be financially ruined by the decision,

b) actually want to be a lawyer, and

c) have some real sense of what being a lawyer actually means (e.g. they spent at least a couple years working at a firm in some non-lawyer capacity, or they have a parent who was a lawyer and told them lots about their job, or they spent tons of their time researching law and legal practice. In other words their knowledge of legal practice is not based entirely on fictional TV and movie lawyers).

I'd say that describes under 1% of the people enrolled in law schools nationwide.

For my wife and I, there isn't anything we'd rather be doing. But we're probably in the minority on that, and frankly we had no idea we'd like the field so much when we signed up to make those tuition payments. We just got lucky. Maybe schools should just offer refunds.

I do miss the creative aspect of designing code, though.

I am just finishing my term as a summer associate at a top IP boutique. I deal with patents everyday and it is literally soul crushing at times.

Especially with software patents, it is the most ridiculous thing I have ever spent time on. After I get called to the bar, I am going back to my programming roots. Unfortunately, I've been rusty while attending law school and basically have to relearn everything.

That's okay though, because I'd rather do it and become an example to other people so they won't make the same mistake I did.

I left law school in the middle of my second year to start a business. Typically, when I talk to non-practicing lawyers now, they say "I wish I did that".

If you're sure you don't want to do law, then finishing it + passing the bar is pure waste. Time is precious. Your 20s are especially precious.

It sounds like you've got a year or two left on this path. That's 10-20% of your 20s. What does it get you?

Since I only aim to pass in law school, I don't go to any classes at all. It is almost exactly the same as not having school or a job. Having this kind of free time and the (temporary) lack of financial pressure is valuable and I can use it to grok more hipster things that will hopefully help me code better later on.

On another note, I am in Canada but want to move to the US. I'm thinking of building a good portfolio and then grabbing a job down in silicon valley to get into the US. I'll need time to do that, law school gives me time.

But lack of financial pressure is an illusion. Unless you've got family support that will end with school, you're running up debt, not getting income, and not learning a skill that will be of any use to you.

If you're truly certain law is not for you, the only thing finishing really gets you is an ability to not look silly to others when you describe what you're doing with your life.

You'll value that now, but feel silly about it later.

That's also why I want to move to the US, so I can get away from these risk-averse people who have my "best interest" at heart. Because they end up living my life for me, and enough is enough.

I also think people are more open to entrepreneurship in US, whereas people in Canada feel pretty comfortable with their situation.

For the first few months, everyone thought I was nuts. For the first two years, I still heard constant doubts.

But then the doubts ceased, and people started to say "hey, that's pretty cool what you're doing" and they asked how I did it.

There's no getting around that discomfort. Right now you're prioritizing present comfort over future regret. Would you be comfortable sending this discussion thread to yourself five years from now?

What got me around that block was reading the Four Hour Workweek, especially the first couple chapters. I'd check it out – buy it right away.

(I do LSAT prep, incidently, http://lsathacks.com is my site, and I run the LSAT subreddit. You may have seen my stuff.

Also, Canada is supportive of entrepreneurs too, you just need to find the right neighborhood and social group. I live in the Plateau in Montreal, where a good quarter of the neighborhood is a student or self employed. I don't feel out of place.)

I learned a lot about how our legal system works and how corrupt our patent system is ... And I met my wife in law school ... Otherwise going to law school was the worst financial decision of my life.

I agree entirely. And eventually, the bubble will burst, and presumably we'll have a sane system of lawyer training. But for now, there's a lot of misery in the pipeline.

I work in LSAT prep. I've found I can tell people this, to no effect.

Also you can find out what schools they are targeting and link them to http://lawschooltransparency.com. Amazing to see the jobless rates of students at even pretty good schools.

And, while our case might be an exception to the general outlook for families of two newly minted lawyers (2012 grads), her government job also enables us to lower our payments since we can contribute to an IRS 457 plan to defer compensation and lower our AGI, in addition to her retirement plan. So, that helps keep her payments lower during the required 120 payment period, while enabling us to dedicate more to addressing my law school loans.

Finally, I don't think even most government and public interest jobs are competitive in the sense that other candidates are the reasons why people can't get these jobs. Admittedly, this will be the case in more sought after positions, but there are many government jobs that don't have serious competition, where you are competing against a few other applicants. A lot of the time, the problems with people finding these jobs have to do with character issues from their past. Government jobs, notably state attorneys general, district attorneys office, or other governmental posts affiliated with law and enforcement, do scrutinize the background of the candidates more than others. So, any mishaps in character would cull you from the pool. But that's not competition, because you could be the only applicant and you still not get the job.

And what sort of issues do you think are preventing people from getting government jobs "a lot of the time" that aren't caught by the C&F committee when you are trying to join the bar in the first place?

This is the most important factor, in my opinion. Work as a paralegal (or similar job) for a year before you apply to law school.

@Audiobooks, does this mean they're replacing Audible?

He also mentioned that HN is blocking him from posting more, so maybe you can blame Paul Graham for you not getting the answers you wanted. But there's still hope.

Want answers? Want a discussion on a forum that without censorship? Want a discussion where you won't be punished if you say "What You Can't Say"[0], as xenophanes dared do today? I think he, myself, and others would be happy to answer your questions at:

https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/fallible-ideas/info

If you don't come, and instead stick to a forum where hardly anyone continues a discussion for more than 12 hours, then I for one will figure you aren't really that interested, and I won't be motivated to write answers for you.

[0] http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

> Want a discussion where you won't be punished if you say "What You Can't Say"[0], as xenophanes dared do today?

I smell astroturf.

Since you are apparently not, as JustinCEO claimed, hellbanned, I'll remind you that I'm still waiting on those citations. You demanded them from everyone else, it's only fair that you should provide your own.

> In 1938, Szasz moved to the United States, where he attended the University of Cincinnati for his Bachelor of Science in medicine, and received his M.D. from the same university in 1944.[7]

Pretty much this. Having just heard about him today, it's clear his [Szasz] statements reflect technological limitations of yesteryear combined with intense personal bias.

Why anyone would still espouse the concepts this guy put forward is beyond me.

Szasz was indeed a deeply unpopular man, but progress often depends upon such people.

For instance, did you know that he was the first psychiatrist to claim publicly that homosexuality is not a disease? (In 'Sexual Inversion: The Multiple Roots of Homosexuality', ed. by Judd Marmor, Basic Books, 1965)

Science has found biological symptoms for Alzheimer's and rabies. Unfortunately, these can only be firmly identified post-mortem and are thus not useful for diagnostic purposes. Just two examples if diseases with biological markers that are not useful.

> For instance, did you know that he was the first psychiatrist to claim publicly that homosexuality is not a disease? (In 'Sexual Inversion: The Multiple Roots of Homosexuality', ed. by Judd Marmor, Basic Books, 1965)

A broken clock is right twice a day. When you claim mental illness doesn't exist in toto, then of course you will be "right" about bullshit mental illnesses like homosexuality.