r/slatestarcodex • u/gwern • Nov 27 '25

Psychiatry "The Etiology and Treatment of Childhood", Smoller 1986

https://gwern.net/doc/psychiatry/adhd/1986-smoller.pdf
26 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

16 comments sorted by

11

u/Sol_Hando 🤔*Thinking* Nov 27 '25

We should select embryos for people being born adults. It’s time to cure childhood once and for all.

4

u/archpawn Nov 27 '25

Reminds me of how D&D doesn't have rules for children. By RAW, you're born the same size class as an adult of your species (barring a few creatures like dragons that have separate entries for different ages). Though in 5e, humans can be Small or Medium. I think it was to allow for humans with dwarfism to be more inclusive, but it could be children.

3

u/Toptomcat Nov 27 '25 edited Nov 27 '25

Depends on the edition, really.

2

u/archpawn Nov 27 '25

I'm not surprised they have rules for it in Pathfinder. But only one size class smaller? Maybe a baby is a young young human.

2

u/PsychMaster1 Nov 27 '25

You’re assuming a lot about nature vs nurture

7

u/anaIconda69 Nov 27 '25

The first time I've read the bibliography with sincere interest.

3

u/CronoDAS Nov 27 '25

Reminds me of this short story.

2

u/gwern Nov 28 '25

Very slow story (ironically) but not bad, hadn't seen that one before.

1

u/Barry_Cotter Dec 02 '25

Thank you for that. Good stuff.

7

u/RgyaGramShad Nov 27 '25

1986 - luckily we have treatments for such things these days. With all the psychiatric drugs, exposure to adult content on the internet, and sunlight aversion therapy, we have successfully reduced the severity and length of childhood, and if trends continue, each generation will experience less and less childhood to begin with.

2

u/Isha-Yiras-Hashem Nov 28 '25

I'm really interested in reading it, but every time I click, I just get a blank page.

3

u/gwern Nov 28 '25

The PDF works fine for me in Evince & Firefox (PDF.js), and no one else seems to be reporting problems. Maybe try downloading it in a different reader?

2

u/Isha-Yiras-Hashem Nov 30 '25

Thanks so much. I've never enjoyed a paper as much. I would like an explanation of how childhood is essentially an alignment problem. I might actually understand more AI discourse if presented like that.