Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

This is a teenager

pudding.cool

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 868 posts

Re: This is a teenager

#111

Post by organsnyder »

swatcoder wrote: post #89
moralestapia wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(as others have said countless times) Poverty fucks people up like no other thing, sometimes for life.

FWIW, and as someone who's been through it, that's a really disempowering belief for people who have already experienced it or who are currently living through it. Life involves many profound challenges, most of which are unfairly distributed. Learning to overcome the challenges that one faces and turn them into novel opportunities and perspectives is the constructive way of looking at it. There are enough of these c…

> There are enough of these challenges that we as a society don't need to encourage them and can work to eradicate or minimize many, but this fatalist view (as indeed gets said countless times) doesn't help the people who already faced it or who will in the coming decades.

At an individual level, a fatalist view is definitely incredibly harmful. But at that doesn't mean we shouldn't work to counter it at a systemic level.

Re: This is a teenager

#112

Post by csours »

ericmcer wrote: post #35

Kind of cool, but the conclusion was completely backwards. The final line of the study was "So he is our collective responsibility. They all are.", but the entire study was about how the home environment affects your outcomes. I guess their conclusion is that if an individual does a bad job raising their kids, it is societies fault.

In health care, sometimes we help the body fix the problem, and sometimes we "just" treat symptoms.

It's ... probably not a good idea for the government to try to fix families. Any interventions must be very carefully considered.

But some of the symptoms can be helped out relatively easily.

---

I also think the author(s) may have a different perspective on responsibility, fault, and blame. I feel like blame is something that our minds do for us so we can stop thinking about a problem - to fix things you have to look past the blame.

Re: This is a teenager

#113

Post by ericmcer »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #71
ericmcer wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Convincing people that their problems are outside of their control and that the only way to solve them is to vote a certain way is also a form of authoritarianism. If you aren't to blame for your own life that implies you have no control over it.

Statistically most people born into poverty stay there. Do you think most of them aren't trying? Conversely, do you thing most people born wealthy have to put as much effort into staying wealthy? There are a number of systemic barriers, one of the big ones mentioned in this demonstration is education. If we had equal baseline access to education, housing, healthcare, and food... then sure, if people stayed impoverish…

The system is obviously not fair but individuals are still responsible for how they play their hand.

You really think it is ignorant to believe you have control over your life? What do you do just lay on the floor and wait for things to wash over you?

Re: This is a teenager

#114

Post by fnordlord »

bombcar wrote: post #34
RobCat27 wrote: post #14

I like the message, but I feel like this is bad data visualization. The width of each group of people is not the same, so it's somewhat meaningless to visually compare groups without being able to see the raw percentages. For example, the "Many Adverse Experiences" group is stretched to be longer than the other groups so that proportionally fewer people in that group appear to be a larger proportion than the same pro…

It also seems backwards, unless I'm reading it wrong and 80% of high school kids see someone get shot ...

I think you're reading it right. They have the color key correct but the key for which side is seen vs not seen is incorrect. It should be

Re: This is a teenager

#115

Post by A_D_E_P_T »

spyckie2 wrote: post #103
aestetix wrote: post #32

I watched the video. Maybe I am not understanding the visuals, but it looked like the narrator's conclusions do not actually match the data. He is trying to make an argument that poor kids need extra help or they will have a rough life. But the data seems to show that over the last 20 years, people from all background types are likely to experience bad things. Granted the last 20 years has been pretty awful, with 9/1…

Agreed, the visualizations don't sell the story. If you actually take the percentage, it's like 30-50% more likely to have the worse outcome the worse your adverse background gets. But on the chart, it's only like an extra line of kids. The absolute number increases don't look like much, but the percentage increase is very high. I think the authors could have done a much better job at highlighting that.

> If you actually take the percentage, it's like 30-50% more likely to have the worse outcome the worse your adverse background gets.

I realize that this is a taboo subject, but how much of that is nature and how much is nurture?

Low IQ is associated with worse life outcomes, and it's not exactly a problem you can fix by throwing money and resources at it.

Re: This is a teenager

#116

Post by [deleted] »

RobCat27 wrote: post #14

I like the message, but I feel like this is bad data visualization. The width of each group of people is not the same, so it's somewhat meaningless to visually compare groups without being able to see the raw percentages. For example, the "Many Adverse Experiences" group is stretched to be longer than the other groups so that proportionally fewer people in that group appear to be a larger proportion than the same pro…

[deleted]

Re: This is a teenager

#117

Post by swatcoder »

organsnyder wrote: post #111
swatcoder wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, and as someone who's been through it, that's a really disempowering belief for people who have already experienced it or who are currently living through it. Life involves many profound challenges, most of which are unfairly distributed. Learning to overcome the challenges that one faces and turn them into novel opportunities and perspectives is the constructive way of looking at it. There are enough of these c…

> There are enough of these challenges that we as a society don't need to encourage them and can work to eradicate or minimize many, but this fatalist view (as indeed gets said countless times) doesn't help the people who already faced it or who will in the coming decades. At an individual level, a fatalist view is definitely incredibly harmful. But at that doesn't mean we shouldn't work to counter it at a systemic l…

That's exactly what's said in what you quoted, even so far as putting the emphasis on societal effort by mentioning it first, so clearly I don't disagree :)

Re: This is a teenager

#118

Post by xandrius »

It might be me not getting it but all the charts seemed to have roughly the same percentage of people across the different types, given some small wiggle room.

It was never an obvious impact.

Am I getting it wrong or is it a tiny change that statistically is significant at huge scales of population?

Re: This is a teenager

#119

Post by mattzito »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #109
RobCat27 wrote: post #14

I like the message, but I feel like this is bad data visualization. The width of each group of people is not the same, so it's somewhat meaningless to visually compare groups without being able to see the raw percentages. For example, the "Many Adverse Experiences" group is stretched to be longer than the other groups so that proportionally fewer people in that group appear to be a larger proportion than the same pro…

I don't even think that the message is likeable. "Oh no they don't go to college!" is schoolmarmish and patronizing. "College is for everyone !" and "you're not really an adult until you're 25!" have done an awful lot of societal harm.

As a college non-graduate, I think that is leveraging the strong data that for most people a college degree is a huge net benefit is reasonable.

As someone who was once I hear you, though, it’s hard to sort people into buckets.

Re: This is a teenager

#120

Post by webnrrd2k »

ericmcer wrote: post #35

Kind of cool, but the conclusion was completely backwards. The final line of the study was "So he is our collective responsibility. They all are.", but the entire study was about how the home environment affects your outcomes. I guess their conclusion is that if an individual does a bad job raising their kids, it is societies fault.

I don't think that "fault", which I take as implying blame, had anything to do with the presentation. I interpreted it as very neutral in that respect. Maybe I'm misinterpreting it?

I do think it touches on how everyone is exposed to adverse outcomes, whatever category they are in. And I agree that it's a collective responsibility, although the presentation does a poor job of arguing the "collective responsibility" point.

Post reply on HN