site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1150 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for September 27, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

It's challenging when one of the four only eats french fries.

I'm always curious how kids wind up being this sort of extreme picky eaters. At what age and how did the tendency start? Is it just that you don't normally see it as enough of a problem to force it out of it, or would the kid literally starve itself to death if you refused to make french fries available?

I’ve heard from multiple people and personally seen one example where the following is true:

It’s basically just overly low risk tolerance around food safety, built in on an evolutionary level. The solution is having the whole family eat the same thing repeatedly (for like a week straight) and nothing else. That food will then be added to their ‘safe food’ registry and they’ll be fine with it forever. Rinse and repeat with each food.

It's probably a little difficult to eat e.g. spinach only for a week.

True. It was always unclear to me whether this worked for the whole food or included each component. I assumed the former (in the sense that after applied to spinach casserole, they will be fine with spinach casserole, but not with spinach by itself.) It’s not really applicable to when a kid just doesn’t like a particular food (in the case of spinach they might just have have really high taste sensitivity to bitterness) but specifically for the “will literally just eat one food and nothing else, potentially up to starvation if they don’t get french fries” type of kid

Also I understand not wanting to do this. Most people don’t like eating the same things repeatedly. I am not one of those people (my desire to eat a food grows ~linearly with the number of times in a row I’ve consumed it) but I wouldn’t blame anyone for not applying this info.

would the kid literally starve itself to death

For my one cousin, yes. Or at least to the point of fainting. IIRC, it started when she started eating food, and lasted pretty much to adulthood. I'm not sure if she even qualifies as "picky" anymore, given her improvement over the deacdes.

I have a "just so" evo explanation for that. It's that age at which kids are no longer constantly supervised or in safe areas but are still dumb as fuck. If they were eager and willing to try new things, they would've eaten some mushroom or berry and died.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats