101–110 of 282 posts
It makes sense. Trust and risk are also useful tools over the long run.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Scarcity is an outstanding book about this, and makes the point that severe constraints on anything - money, food, free time - can have psychologically damaging effects. In fact it’s extremely toxic - far more damaging than manynthings that have been banned now.
Is poverty really linked to food scarcity in western countries anymore ? The statistics show that overall, the poor are fatter than the rich.
Shaking off that habit is much easier if you never worry about whether you'll go hungry tomorrow; a lot of poor people don't have that luxury. If you're just scraping by, an unexpected bill or a parking ticket might force you to choose between a payday loan or an empty refrigerator. Combine economic insecurity with a food market full of cheap, high-calorie foods and you've got a recipe for nutritional disaster.
We're right to think that capitalism has created tremendous abundance, but we often under-estimate the pathological effects of insecurity. Without a sound safety net, the human brain just isn't capable of prudent long-term planning.
I see so many forum discussions where posters criticise the poor for their 'weak' decisions and effectively blame the poor for their own plight. Why don't they just work harder and earn the money to pay for their healthcare and education? they say. It is easy to withhold funding from deprived areas if you convince yourself that it is their own fault. These results should be on the front pages of newspapers and on TV…
Agreed. But it's not. Instead we get Stormy Daniels, the royal wedding, etc. It's easy to point at DJT but he's merely a mirror. Like it or not, he represents the real America. The one that's been there all along. The one that's been glossed over by incompetent journalism and "news" organization.
Note: I'm not saying all. Only that the segment of the population what's been hiding in plain sight is not longer being ignored.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure that healthy food is more expensive when you only look at the items, because vegetables are not (some fruits are, but veggies are far more important). With even limited cooking skills you can produce pretty cheap and yet very good meals. However, I still think your point is valid, because it's not just the food items themselves. You need time to prepare them, plus a stressful life puts psychological pres…
Veggies are very expensive per calorie. A cucumber is ~16 calories and costs ~50 cents each. A 2,000 calorie diet at that rate would be 60$ per day. Granted nobody is eating like that but 1.50$ for 3 servings of vegetables per day is 550$ per year which really is significant for them. PS: This is assuming they even have access to low cost veggies.
Given obesity rates, the problem is too much energy. After all, one part of calling for more vegetable consumption is so that people lower their energy intake. Example: https://www.fruitsandveggiesmorematters.org/eating-vegetable... (the number of articles on cutting calories by eating more vegetables is uncountable)
Just as an aside, a short excerpt from a bio.chem course that shows the connection between high energy intake and obesity: https://youtu.be/rTR-Ev3hj4c
I was always skeptical of the marshmallow test. It let too many questions open on why children eat the marshmallows. Was it because they hadn't eaten before and came to school with low blood sugar, knew that waiting fifteen minutes for two sweets the price of a penny is idiotic or that they felt uncomfortable in the room and wanted to leave as early as possible?
So you were able to think of a couple confounding factors off the top of your head, but you dismiss the idea that the researchers had considered those factors and controlled for it? Despite the fact that their full time job it is to think about things like that, and their careers are on the line if they embarrass themselves by disregarding something as obvious and trivial like that? Did you even read the original pap…
Fact is that academia is grossly overstaffed and under publication pressure. Most papers aren't worth much, especially in the social sciences.
Even in CS there are few seminal papers, and I mean the level of Tukey, Dana Scott, Pollard...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Scarcity is an outstanding book about this, and makes the point that severe constraints on anything - money, food, free time - can have psychologically damaging effects. In fact it’s extremely toxic - far more damaging than manynthings that have been banned now.
Is poverty really linked to food scarcity in western countries anymore ? The statistics show that overall, the poor are fatter than the rich.
2) Poverty creates perma-stress. It effects the body. It effects the mind. It effects decision making.
Poverty is not sinply about income. It's much more complicated than that.
(1) whatever quality X the marshmallow test tests is so strongly heritable that the parents of X children already are X and therefore tend to be more poor
(2) poverty is causative of X (maybe even by the mechanism the article suggests, i.e. less stability -> higher uncertainty -> higher discounting of expected future outcomes), but it's still accurate to label X "delaying of gratification", and it is in fact causative to success; therefore, this is a mechanism by which poverty perpetuates itself
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Scarcity is an outstanding book about this, and makes the point that severe constraints on anything - money, food, free time - can have psychologically damaging effects. In fact it’s extremely toxic - far more damaging than manynthings that have been banned now.
Is poverty really linked to food scarcity in western countries anymore ? The statistics show that overall, the poor are fatter than the rich.
Also these are cheaper and mass produced, highly marketed for low income masses and kids. Supermarkets are designed to make you buy shit.
It's a sad natural phenomenon that amplifies itself. It doesn't really cost a lot to eat healthy but it requires a steady mindset which is usually done by culture. But consumerism ate culture so .. everybody just go for short term convenience until they become obese.
I see so many forum discussions where posters criticise the poor for their 'weak' decisions and effectively blame the poor for their own plight. Why don't they just work harder and earn the money to pay for their healthcare and education? they say. It is easy to withhold funding from deprived areas if you convince yourself that it is their own fault. These results should be on the front pages of newspapers and on TV…
Scarcity is an outstanding book about this, and makes the point that severe constraints on anything - money, food, free time - can have psychologically damaging effects. In fact it’s extremely toxic - far more damaging than manynthings that have been banned now.
You can tame the stress of scarcity with a bit of meditation and experience.