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Unsteady income in young adulthood linked to thinking problems in middle age

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Re: Unsteady income in young adulthood linked to thinking problems in middle age

#41
post #26
post #18

Cue the "I was from a poor family and I got into Stanford, everybody should be able to it" from people who don't understand how life, statistics, outliers, and relative effort required (for a middle/class rich kid playing in "easy mode" to succeed, versus a poor kid playing the "extra hard mode"). People who confuse what's possible but 10x more difficult for some income groups/backgrounds, to be the same as being equ…

As anecdotal evidence from my high school class the people who had it easier did not become as successful as people who had it harder by their 40s. This might be pretty unrepresentative but the level of motivation was very different.

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, but if it does kill you it makes you dead. Put some obstacles in front of people, they'll overcome them and benefit from the process. Put some more obstacles and now the path is impassable.

Re: Unsteady income in young adulthood linked to thinking problems in middle age

#42
post #18

Cue the "I was from a poor family and I got into Stanford, everybody should be able to it" from people who don't understand how life, statistics, outliers, and relative effort required (for a middle/class rich kid playing in "easy mode" to succeed, versus a poor kid playing the "extra hard mode"). People who confuse what's possible but 10x more difficult for some income groups/backgrounds, to be the same as being equ…

Here's a crazy idea. Instead of spending all that time and effort invalidating the opinion of those who have successfully made it out of those circumstances, why don't you ask them how they did it and what they think can be done to help those who haven't? The problem with keyboard warriors is that it isn't actually action. It's akin to the studies showing that people who talk about what they're going to do get the sa…

>Instead of spending all that time and effort invalidating the opinion of those who have successfully made it out of those circumstances, why don't you ask them how they did it and what they think can be done to help those who haven't?

Don't worry about that, for the types I talk about, we get to hear "how they did it" at every chance they get to brag about it.

People also hear "what they think can be done to help those who haven't", and more often than not, its condescending garbage, like "you just need to try harder", "motivation is key", "those people are lazy", and so on.

They are the worst judges of the factors of their success. For one, as the saying goes, "no winner believes in chance". It's all about their character and grit, nothing circumstantial -- so even if we take their words as gospel, there's nothing there applicable to others, except "change your character".

In fact compared to that, the born-rich are perhaps more considerate than the outliers that made it.

>The problem with keyboard warriors is that it isn't actually action. It's akin to the studies showing that people who talk about what they're going to do get the same emotional satisfaction from actually doing it.

Which is neither here, nor there. This is a discussion, we are all "keyboard warriors" here.

>What you've managed to do is dismiss the very people who have the most insight and made yourself feel better to boot. What's not to like, right?

Or, you know, I've managed to shed some light into things that are still a large problem in modern society, and that people tend to view wrongly.

Also, when you assume (e.g. that I'm poor myself and needed to say those things to "feel better") you make an ass out of, etc...

Re: Unsteady income in young adulthood linked to thinking problems in middle age

#43
post #8

Poverty harms children. It's possible it harms young adults as well. The sooner we dismiss the notion that we need the poverty to motivate us to work and adopt some form of basic income, the better. It might be cheaper too than current system when you consider all the harm that poverty does to economy and workers.

Giving money to poor you only create more of those. People should be given a chance, not money.

There would not be poor if it was not for the rich.

marx's capital lays this out.

Re: Unsteady income in young adulthood linked to thinking problems in middle age

#44
post #18

Cue the "I was from a poor family and I got into Stanford, everybody should be able to it" from people who don't understand how life, statistics, outliers, and relative effort required (for a middle/class rich kid playing in "easy mode" to succeed, versus a poor kid playing the "extra hard mode"). People who confuse what's possible but 10x more difficult for some income groups/backgrounds, to be the same as being equ…

Here's a crazy idea. Instead of spending all that time and effort invalidating the opinion of those who have successfully made it out of those circumstances, why don't you ask them how they did it and what they think can be done to help those who haven't? The problem with keyboard warriors is that it isn't actually action. It's akin to the studies showing that people who talk about what they're going to do get the sa…

Required watching: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=l_F9jxsfGCw

Re: Unsteady income in young adulthood linked to thinking problems in middle age

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a crazy idea. Instead of spending all that time and effort invalidating the opinion of those who have successfully made it out of those circumstances, why don't you ask them how they did it and what they think can be done to help those who haven't? The problem with keyboard warriors is that it isn't actually action. It's akin to the studies showing that people who talk about what they're going to do get the sa…

Well the ones dismissed where those who said I Did X anyone should be able, which is not exactly a very deep insight into the difficulties of doing X when hobbled.

this illustrates exactly the problem.

While people are having these "insights", the problems are not actually getting fixed. This is because fixing the problem isn't really the goal.

And these people should absolutely be judged for this.

Re: Unsteady income in young adulthood linked to thinking problems in middle age

#47
post #18

Cue the "I was from a poor family and I got into Stanford, everybody should be able to it" from people who don't understand how life, statistics, outliers, and relative effort required (for a middle/class rich kid playing in "easy mode" to succeed, versus a poor kid playing the "extra hard mode"). People who confuse what's possible but 10x more difficult for some income groups/backgrounds, to be the same as being equ…

>...the game is not rigged against those from poor backgrounds Rigged isn't a fair word, it's just reality. Also, as another commenter pointed out, there are people that are successful in a wide range of ways, money is just one of them. And those that had it easy early on often times don't do well later in life when things can get hard. Edit: I spent time on the streets as a teen (yes it affected me) but my siblings…

Rigged isn't a fair word, it's just reality.

It's only reality because people accept it. If we stop accepting it the reality can be changed. For example, for several hundred years many people accepted slavery and believed owning people was justifiable. When enough people decided not to accept that reality it was changed fairly quickly.

Re: Unsteady income in young adulthood linked to thinking problems in middle age

#48
post #8

Poverty harms children. It's possible it harms young adults as well. The sooner we dismiss the notion that we need the poverty to motivate us to work and adopt some form of basic income, the better. It might be cheaper too than current system when you consider all the harm that poverty does to economy and workers.

Giving money to poor you only create more of those. People should be given a chance, not money.

Giving money to poor is giving them a chance. A lot of problems with being able to find and keep a job ultimately stems from lack of money for things like housing, clothing, transportation, healthcare and decent meals.

Re: Unsteady income in young adulthood linked to thinking problems in middle age

#49
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As anecdotal evidence from my high school class the people who had it easier did not become as successful as people who had it harder by their 40s. This might be pretty unrepresentative but the level of motivation was very different.

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, but if it does kill you it makes you dead. Put some obstacles in front of people, they'll overcome them and benefit from the process. Put some more obstacles and now the path is impassable.

Coming from country much less fortunate compared to US what is considered unsurmountable obstacle in US would be close to what a regular person is facing there. So it might be that people believing that they have no options has a significant impact on what they can achieve.

Re: Unsteady income in young adulthood linked to thinking problems in middle age

#50
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a crazy idea. Instead of spending all that time and effort invalidating the opinion of those who have successfully made it out of those circumstances, why don't you ask them how they did it and what they think can be done to help those who haven't? The problem with keyboard warriors is that it isn't actually action. It's akin to the studies showing that people who talk about what they're going to do get the sa…

> Instead of spending all that time and effort invalidating the opinion of those who have successfully made it out of those circumstances, why don't you ask them how they did it and what they think can be done to help those who haven't? Don't worry about that, for the types I talk about, we get to hear "how they did it" at every chance they get to brag about it. People also hear "what they think can be done to help t…

There's always reasons why the dismissal of those with the most insight is the "right" thing to do.

It turns out human beings can rationalize a lot of things that ought not be rationalized.

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