The Logic of “Stupid” Poor People • Hacker News Board

Re: The Logic of “Stupid” Poor People

#121

Post by MrZongle2 » Thu, Oct 31, 2013, 6:21 PM UTC

Nate75Sanders wrote: post #111

IanDrake wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Two different things being discussed as one. 1) Everyone should have at least one outfit that is super classy. A cheap solution is a Salvation Army or Goodwill store in a nice part of town. 2) People who live on the dole and buy things they clearly don't need or deserve. Rocking an iPhone 5 while using your food stamp debit card at the grocery store to buy junk food is the typical "Stupid" poor person move m…

Man, the iPhone 5 really is not a very good example here. If you wear your super classy outfit to an interview AND you have the iPhone 5 instead of a prepaid Android phone (or worse -- a prepaid non-smartphone), it's going to show that you "belong" and that you're not poor. Some people really do pay attention to what kind of phone you have, particularly for these gateway-straddling jobs that the author talks about in…

Counterpoint: after the novelty of wearing the super classy outfit and waving the iPhone 5 wears off once you have a job, what else do you now have to purchase -- outside your means -- to convince your co-workers that you "belong"?

It would be cheaper to look for a job in an environment that is more interested in what you can do rather than what you tote.

That is, after all, what most of us end up doing.

Re: The Logic of “Stupid” Poor People

#122

Post by Domenic_S » Thu, Oct 31, 2013, 6:21 PM UTC

emhart wrote: post #88

saraid216 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clarification: when you say "family", do you mean "wife and kids" or "parents and siblings"?

Parents and siblings. And that actually brings up an entirely other privilege I had at that time. When I first got my job at the movie theater, I was asked by nearly every floor employee how many kids I had. I was one of only a handful who were yet to have children, despite all of us being ~18-26. I can't guess how restricted I would have been in my mobility if I had children to think of at that time.

Oh god, take this 'privilege' stuff back to Tumblr. Not having kids isn't privilege, it's choice.

Edit because I don't want this comment to come off too aggressively: you sullied a perfectly nice set of comments and truly interesting anecdote about your life by discounting it as privilege. Since when are wise choices privilege?

Re: The Logic of “Stupid” Poor People

#123

Post by balabaster » Thu, Oct 31, 2013, 6:22 PM UTC

swamp40 wrote: post #112

Qom wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. I just think it's posturing on his part. He's pretending to be something he's not, so that people see the friendly brogrammer instead of the ambitious "They trust me — dumb fucks" CEO who disregards privacy.

Don't you think that maybe it's the other 99.9% of people that are "posturing"? Some people just rebel against the "norm" of using clothing to represent their socioeconomic status - money or no money.

Some people rebel just because "f___ you, who are you to tell me what I can and can't do?" It has nothing to do with anything else.

Re: The Logic of “Stupid” Poor People

#124

Post by pdonis » Thu, Oct 31, 2013, 6:23 PM UTC

sveron wrote: post #98

cobrausn wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet she shows the barrier to entry for a woman to be other women in HR who were of the same race. How is 'critical self awareness' of straight white males going to help that? I've talked about this before at length, but assigning the term 'privilege' exclusively to 'straight white males' is fairly intellectually dishonest. The problem is bigger than that - our culture values behaving like a 'normal person', our d…

The barrier to entry was knowing the set of codes, knowing how to communicate nonverbally. Knowing how to tell someone 'I belong in your group' in the way that you speak, the way you dress, the way you move . It's very difficult for people 'on the inside' to appreciate how difficult this can be. Also, to clarify my earlier point, I would never suggest that the concept of privilege is exclusive to straight white males…

The barrier to entry wasn't the people with whom she was competing

The women in HR weren't competing with the woman trying to get hired; they were the ones making the decision whether or not to hire her.

Re: The Logic of “Stupid” Poor People

#125

Post by saraid216 » Thu, Oct 31, 2013, 6:24 PM UTC

Domenic_S wrote: post #122

emhart wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parents and siblings. And that actually brings up an entirely other privilege I had at that time. When I first got my job at the movie theater, I was asked by nearly every floor employee how many kids I had. I was one of only a handful who were yet to have children, despite all of us being ~18-26. I can't guess how restricted I would have been in my mobility if I had children to think of at that time.

Oh god, take this 'privilege' stuff back to Tumblr. Not having kids isn't privilege, it's choice. Edit because I don't want this comment to come off too aggressively: you sullied a perfectly nice set of comments and truly interesting anecdote about your life by discounting it as privilege. Since when are wise choices privilege?

Hi! Thanks for going around to all the poor families and explaining to teenagers proper family planning and sexual education, making sure that all birth controls methods are both used and failproof, and guaranteeing that no one is coerced into carrying out a pregnancy due to cultural beliefs.

It's good to know all of these things are choices. It makes it a lot easier to be condescending and close-minded about the shit others go through.

Re: The Logic of “Stupid” Poor People

#126

Post by dyno12345 » Thu, Oct 31, 2013, 6:25 PM UTC

potatolicious wrote: post #92

cobrausn wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet she shows the barrier to entry for a woman to be other women in HR who were of the same race. How is 'critical self awareness' of straight white males going to help that? I've talked about this before at length, but assigning the term 'privilege' exclusively to 'straight white males' is fairly intellectually dishonest. The problem is bigger than that - our culture values behaving like a 'normal person', our d…

I don't think you two are really disagreeing. Privilege is not exclusive to straight white males, it just so happens that in this country, at this moment, straight white males enjoy an order of magnitude more of it than everyone else. It becomes convenient to point at the largest elephant in the room instead of fully qualifying the point. But white privilege, straight privilege, and all other forms of privilege affec…

When one thinks of judging people by choice of fabric combination or wearing specific designers, "internalizing and normalizing" straight white male doesn't exactly come to mind. I think there are limits to how much this idea can explain.

Re: The Logic of “Stupid” Poor People

#127

Post by balabaster » Thu, Oct 31, 2013, 6:25 PM UTC

IanCal wrote: post #108

balabaster wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In math, most of the time, mean and average are used to mean the same thing. I will concede that yes, I did mean the mean average, or more properly, if you wish to be pedantic - the arithmetic mean average, instead of just "average".

I don't think I've ever seen a serious maths problem not be specific about the type of average they are referring to. In general speech, all three common types are meant (mode being the usual meaning of "the average/typical person...") and the context usually explains which someone means. > I will concede that yes, I did mean the mean average Which is fine, but you were complaining that someone else was wrong even th…

You know what I most like about Hacker News though? That instead of bitching about the content of the article, we're busy debating the semantics of mathematical definitions that infer the "average" person's impression of society than caring about the content of the article... that's pretty neat :P

Re: The Logic of “Stupid” Poor People

#128

Post by lambdaphage » Thu, Oct 31, 2013, 6:25 PM UTC

ahelwer wrote: post #86

When debating social justice issues, it is wise to bear in mind that deconstructing one particular thesis in a vacuum offers little more than intellectual showboating; much of the social justice narrative describes small and seemingly-trivial barriers cumulatively forming concrete obstacles. For a better metaphor, Marilyn Frye writes in The Politics of Reality : "Cages. Consider a birdcage. If you look very closely a…

Just to lay my cards on the table: I'm registered as a member of the US Green Party and have been involved with various left wing activist movements since I was fifteen. I've also been poor, living in a junkie hotel and doing day labor for cash. My most upvoted comment on hn (before I ragequit my previous account (for basically leftist grievances (!))) was one describing what that was like.

Still, I find the intellectual attitude that you've described deeply unsettling. As you've sketched it, the "social justice narrative[0]" is unfalsifiable: what claims does your theory of politics actually make about the world if any given piece of it can be overturned without making a dent in the theory itself? A theory of social inequality can't be correct in general without being correct in particular cases. Refuting (not "deconstructing") a particular thesis is not "intellectual showboating", it's engaging in argument. What else is someone who sincerely disagrees with you supposed to do?

I've seen this happen with depressing regularity: a self-styled social justice advocate will make a claim, and sometimes that claim will get demolished by an intelligent opponent. (Yes, this can happen, and it is a portent for the future of the left that most activists never learn to take a drubbing from a perceptive conservative.) Rather than taking stock at that point, the social justice advocate throws up a polysyllabic ink cloud ("institutional", "systemic" and "societal" seem to enjoy heavy rotation) and jets away. Whether it is true or not that nebulous social forces conspire to constrain outcomes for the poor in the way that the social justice advocate believes, I have no idea why such verbal behavior should be considered convincing.

This is especially frustrating if you actually sincerely think that the left has good ideas about social policy that should be argued for in earnest and implemented.

---

[0] The heavy rhetorical weight placed on the word "narrative" also gives me goosebumps. What happened to plain old arguments-- a set of propositions intended to establish (or at least raise the probability of) the truth of a conclusion? I would hate to think it's because "narratives", unlike arguments, are impossible to demonstrate or refute.

Re: The Logic of “Stupid” Poor People

#129

Post by potatolicious » Thu, Oct 31, 2013, 6:26 PM UTC

MarkPNeyer wrote: post #110

potatolicious wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree entirely. Silicon Valley is just as superficial as the rest of them, except the points your'e being judged from are a somewhat different set from mainstream society. In the Valley tech scene (and all tech scenes everywhere) the respect we afford people is heavily influenced by a lot of cultural markers. Access to newfangled gadgetry, neighborhoods we live in, even freaking toe shoes . Don't have the spare ti…

what is it about toe shoes? i always wear them - what kind of signal am i sending?

"One of us". It's tribalism. Same applies to logo hoodies, conference t-shirts, and various other things programmers do, deliberately or otherwise, to provide authenticity.

It may have started as simply being too lazy to pick out clothes from the closet, but at this point it's a full-blown subculture, with signals and counter-signals. Notice that if you walk the streets of San Francisco you can spot the tech workers incredibly easily. They're not just dressed down, they're dressed down in an very specific way. Toe shoes is one such way - they've achieved a cult status in our subculture and almost nowhere else.

Re: The Logic of “Stupid” Poor People

#130

Post by Nate75Sanders » Thu, Oct 31, 2013, 6:28 PM UTC

MrZongle2 wrote: post #121

Nate75Sanders wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, the iPhone 5 really is not a very good example here. If you wear your super classy outfit to an interview AND you have the iPhone 5 instead of a prepaid Android phone (or worse -- a prepaid non-smartphone), it's going to show that you "belong" and that you're not poor. Some people really do pay attention to what kind of phone you have, particularly for these gateway-straddling jobs that the author talks about in…

Counterpoint: after the novelty of wearing the super classy outfit and waving the iPhone 5 wears off once you have a job, what else do you now have to purchase -- outside your means -- to convince your co-workers that you "belong"? It would be cheaper to look for a job in an environment that is more interested in what you can do rather than what you tote . That is, after all, what most of us end up doing.

That's not a counterpoint in poor-person logic. It's a counterpoint in you-the-guy-who-has-more-correct-assumptions logic.

This is what I'm trying to get across with my posts on this topic.

People keep using reasoning from within a higher-class group where you already know the rules and assumptions of the game. The whole point is that the people below don't.