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i'm weirded out by the fact ppl just openly lie to their children about santa? and this is just a widespread cultural agreement? and people get mad at you if you tell kids the truth? So fucked up. Im gonna start santa-truther activism, hold signs in front of elementary schools

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I thought about this a lot & concluded a fairly inconsequential conceptual rug pull from under a child is a good thing. To live in a false reality with others & then be confronted with another reality in a safe way seems potentially beneficial on top of the joy/magic of the lie.

Aella

@Aella_Girl

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@MikeNayna

yeah but it also teaches your kids that you will in fact lie to them if you think it's good for them

2:45 AM · May 10, 2022

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which i mean, i guess is probably a good thing to learn if you are in fact someone who would lie to them when you think it's good for them, so they can figure out they should trust you less

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the replies make it seem like telling kids the truth about santa needs to be about ruining their childhood no - just explain to them the concept and why some people believe in it when they ask you can make them feel smarter than their friends.

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Yeah, I'm actually okay with some lies. They're both incredibly useful (probably too useful) and can be quite harmless when used with skill. I mean, jokes, for example, are lies that we quite enjoy. So I'm okay with the 🎅🤶 lie, given the above points follow at some point.

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But that's how it works, though. You lie to your children all the time. About the importance of bedtime, the evils of playing too many video games, the necessity of getting along with neighbors. I get your altruism here, but it's a tad naive

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"Welcome to the world, little one."

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Mummy and Daddy taught me, Santa was a lie and (more importantly) that other adults foolishly thought that most kids believed in Santa (Newsflash! Most don't! But are smart enough to pretend they do), and that if I gave the game away it would mess up the whole arrangement.

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That's not the message I got from that really. It just felt like fantasy play and a tradition. At a certain point I didn't really believe but wanted to (maybe I never believed I dunno.) I never felt a sense of betrayal over it.

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Yes, but when every adult in your culture tells that particular lie to all children, it’s not that deep. Kids believing in magic is a good thing, as is them developing the critical thinking skills to realize that it’s fake. 1/

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Stories, myths, etc are evolutionarily built into our psyche. You’re missing the bigger picture. Were you lied to in some way by your parents that hurt you?

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Since that is something that will happen to them throughout the course of their adult lives, perhaps an early epistemic betrayal gets you more careful adults less ready to trust Authorities, which is Good "Why would the government lie to us?" is product of epistemic sheltering