11–20 of 175 posts
It's odd how HN upvotes both articles about learning how to think as well as articles that claim that people are doomed to their financial circumstances because of externalities. It's a strange schizophrenia in a community pursuing entrepreneurialism.
"The finding further undercuts the theory that poor people, through inherent weakness, are responsible for their own poverty..."
Again, no. The poorer members of our society have more limitations on average. This is usually IQ, but will often be something like physical disability (ie., blindness), ugliness, or poor socialization, inherent or learned. This does not mean that it is all right to construct a society without full employment or universal healthcare. But if people trying to help the poor continue to be taken in by the above belief, they are never going to get anywhere.
No it doesn't. I've been poor. There is no 1 standard deviation IQ penalty. "The finding further undercuts the theory that poor people, through inherent weakness, are responsible for their own poverty..." Again, no. The poorer members of our society have more limitations on average. This is usually IQ, but will often be something like physical disability (ie., blindness), ugliness, or poor socialization, inherent or…
> no. The poorer members of our society have more limitations [...] like physical disability.
I hope I haven't mangled your words too badly. But I'm a bit confused - are you saying that people are responsible for being blind and thus are responsible for being poor?
Mentally poverty can be an all consuming condition. I've come to think of it as comparable to programming in a high level language versus programming in a low level language. If you're financially stable you are like someone programming in a high level language who has tedious tasks like memory management taken care of for you. Whereas if you live in poverty before you can get to some of the really productive work you have some hurdles to overcome.
Another way of thinking of the difference between being financially stable and being poor is that if you are poor it is constantly a necessity to think about short term outcomes first so your mind gets clogged up with them. It is very difficult to get to think about your long term good because failing to properly address your short term outcomes could end in complete disaster. This is why I cannot take seriously comments like this on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6301856 although thankfully the commenter does acknowledge he is being cynical and disrespectful.
No it doesn't. I've been poor. There is no 1 standard deviation IQ penalty. "The finding further undercuts the theory that poor people, through inherent weakness, are responsible for their own poverty..." Again, no. The poorer members of our society have more limitations on average. This is usually IQ, but will often be something like physical disability (ie., blindness), ugliness, or poor socialization, inherent or…
> > are responsible for their own poverty... > no. The poorer members of our society have more limitations [...] like physical disability. I hope I haven't mangled your words too badly. But I'm a bit confused - are you saying that people are responsible for being blind and thus are responsible for being poor?
No it doesn't. I've been poor. There is no 1 standard deviation IQ penalty. "The finding further undercuts the theory that poor people, through inherent weakness, are responsible for their own poverty..." Again, no. The poorer members of our society have more limitations on average. This is usually IQ, but will often be something like physical disability (ie., blindness), ugliness, or poor socialization, inherent or…
No it doesn't. I've been poor. There is no 1 standard deviation IQ penalty. "The finding further undercuts the theory that poor people, through inherent weakness, are responsible for their own poverty..." Again, no. The poorer members of our society have more limitations on average. This is usually IQ, but will often be something like physical disability (ie., blindness), ugliness, or poor socialization, inherent or…
"Poor" can also encompass all the nice middle-class folks who are heavily leveraged in assets, with credit-card debt and student loans and mortgages and the like.
We're not just talking about Crazy Joe Hobo.
>>low-income people who were primed to think about financial problems performed poorly on a series of cognition tests Wouldn't highly busy people with a lot of stuff to worry about such as startup entrepreneurs, chief level executives also perform poorly on cognition tests? Doesn't that prove that when your mind is busy at any level of Maslow pyramid, cognition tests and other games become trivia to ignore? So IMO, t…
It's a very different sort of distraction.
I can speak to this. For a while in 2010 I was completely broke after leaving my first job out of college, which I hated, and having some other employment opportunities fall through. Having that little money changes your decision making process about absolutely everything. Obviously every financial decision is effected, even the tiniest purchases weigh into bigger questions like "will I have enough money in my bank a…
This is exactly the correct metaphor.
I had to, at one point, stop using my coworking space and start working from home because I couldn't deal with the occasional overhead of "Huh, shit, I forget to bring lunch--can I afford to eat out today? Do I have enough gas to commute?".
Money is this magical barrier to all sorts of annoying daily minutiae--even a little bit is enough to let you shrug off the effects of suboptimal decisions. Being able to simply buy a lunch when you forgot to bring one can change your whole afternoon of productivity.