Scott Alexander

Kaplan treats this question in the genre of life advice.

Why not relax and spend less time parenting like your grandparents did?

But to me it feels more like ancient occult wisdom.

If you heard that the people of 10,000 BC built vast crystal pyramids that channeled the music of the spheres into infinite free electricity, you wouldn't think, ah, nice, guess that gives me permission to relax and stop fretting so much about energy policy.

You would wonder how they accomplished this seemingly impossible feat.

Here's Kaplan's explanation.

Quote, End quote.

End quote.

Scott writes, this seems basically right.

I live just close enough to the tail end of this period to recognize the phrase, remember to be home by dinner.

Here's an image from Reddit.

It says, map comparing four generations of kids how far they're allowed to roam.

The mother, Vicky, aged 8 in 1979, was allowed to walk to the swimming pool alone half a mile away.

That's a little further to the north of Sheffield.

And the son, Ed, now eight, is only allowed to walk on his own to the end of the street.

That's 300 yards.

And in comparison to the great-grandfather's territory, this seems to be just a small dot.

Scott captions it, This map has radicalised lots of people on restoring children's right to roam.

But for the Straussian interpretation, check what town is in the upper right.

Looking back at the image, we notice that the town is Rotherham, and the great-grandfather's territory almost extends there, but it does not reach the town centre.