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Eliezer Yudkowsky, “Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality”
Trust or status

— That sort of thing is the reason why I have trouble trusting adults. Because they get angry if you even try to reason with them. To them it’s defiance and insolence and a challenge to their higher tribal status. If you try to talk to them they get angry. So if I had anything really important to do, I wouldn’t be able to trust you. Even if you listened with deep concern to whatever I said — because that’s also part of the role of someone playing a concerned adult — you’d never change your actions, you wouldn’t actually behave differently, because of anything I said.

children, dichotomy, discourse