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This is a teenager

pudding.cool

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Re: This is a teenager

#331

Post by narrator »

leokennis wrote: post #307
narrator wrote: post #292

Let me guess, the solution is ban guns and pay higher taxes. That is the solution to literally every single problem in human history according to western sociology. Then you get some guy like Nayib Bukele who cuts the Gordian Knot of societal disfunction going from the highest murder rate in the world to the lowest in the western hemisphere in 3 years short years by putting all the gangsters in prison. All the "surpl…

This will probably greatly interest you: https://mattlakeman.org/2024/03/30/notes-on-el-salvador/

It's amazing how surprised everyone was that the whole thing worked phenomenally well. It went against a century of "expert" advice. It literally did the exact opposite. The purpose of the system is what it does [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...

Re: This is a teenager

#332

Post by magicalist »

anon291 wrote: post #302
richardlblair wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to look at visualizations like this and reflect on the experiences of the individuals living through hardship. Even those who 'make it out' may struggle in ways not fully captured in the data or this visualization. I grew up in a 'high risk environment', and experienced all the adverse experiences with the exception of gun violence (yay Canada). I'm one of the few that 'made it out'. Many of my childhood fr…

Unfortunately a solid number of these things would rely on the moral equivalent of slavery. > Reduce the burden of poverty. For instance, the poorer you are the further you have to travel to the grocery store. The people who often don't have the means to easily travel for food have to travel for food. No one wants to work in these neighborhoods because they are invariably awful. At some point the risk of an employee…

> Unfortunately a solid number of these things would rely on the moral equivalent of slavery.

Weird conclusion to jump to. GP did not suggest grocery stores staffed under threat of jail time anywhere.

Better public transit benefits everyone. Better urban design favoring walkable neighborhoods benefits everyone. Better zoning allowing neighborhood shops at street level benefits everyone.

Re: This is a teenager

#333

Post by ricardobeat »

narrator wrote: post #292

Let me guess, the solution is ban guns and pay higher taxes. That is the solution to literally every single problem in human history according to western sociology. Then you get some guy like Nayib Bukele who cuts the Gordian Knot of societal disfunction going from the highest murder rate in the world to the lowest in the western hemisphere in 3 years short years by putting all the gangsters in prison. All the "surpl…

> In early October, El Salvador’s police announced the seizure of 2,026 firearms, including 1,371 pistols and other small arms

> Imports of certain high-caliber firearms are prohibited. Arms for personal defense or hunting may be imported but are strictly controlled

No open carry either. Sounds like gun control to me. It goes way beyond “putting gangsters in prison” and a large part of the plan is investment in education to get kids away from this path.

One thing to note is the 72000 in prison did not receive a life sentence. They will be released at some point, and one has to trust that the “integration” part of the plan will work.

There are also an infinite amount of reports of police abuse, violence, unlawful imprisonment, and media being silenced. We’ll only know the true cost of this many years from now.

Re: This is a teenager

#334

Post by anon291 »

ImAnAmateur wrote: post #325
anon291 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who was on the adoption lists in California, we had to learn that statements like 'On the face of it this seems ludicrous. A baby born to a mother living in a high-risk environment but then adopted by a low-risk family would likely do far better in their life than the inverse.' were false. I don't know if it was right or wrong, but California in its mandated adoption (fostering) training courses thought th…

Do you remember the age ranges of those foster kids?

For us, because of our apartment we were looking at very young (less than a year old since we didn't have a separate bed room).

They showed us studies that even infant adoptees tended towards the educational achievement of their genetic parents, not their adopted ones, for example.

Again, I don't even know if it's right or wrong, but the agency we were working with thought we should know that.

EDIT: Okay, here's an example: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/adoption-and-genetics-imp_b_4...

And reading that I'm reminded of the agency we were going with: PACT in Berkeley.

Re: This is a teenager

#335

Post by somenameforme »

zbentley wrote: post #264
somenameforme wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a tangent, but when in the world did "happiness" become a desirable metric? If you think about it, it's really quite absurd. Happiness is a brief liminal state that should be triggered by relatively infrequent events. It is not a normal, nor desirable, default state. Contentedness, satisfaction, at-peace, and so on - there endlessly more rational, logical, desirable, and attainable things to aim for. Yet ever…

Agreed that affirmative happiness is very hard to think about as a target. But I find that most people, when they say that, actually mean reduction of suffering . That's easier to quantify--but still quite difficult, like most quantities in social research.

Do you not then run into other problems? For instance I find that lifting brings an immense amount of contentedness, yet it's essentially hours upon hours of self inflicted suffering and pain. The same is true of family. Somebody raising a 2 year old could describe it in many ways, but reduction of suffering would not be one. Such things greatly contribute to this sense of contentedness and satisfaction.

Re: This is a teenager

#336

Post by A_D_E_P_T »

danans wrote: post #287
underlogic wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe but you can't teach a Labrador algebra no matter how many treats you feed it. These are aggregate effects of low IQ genetic traits as they play out over generations in our capitalist society. The trauma is a consequence of poverty and bad parenting which is because of low IQ. And don't call me racist. Ask why there was no IQ test line up amongst all that visualized data

> The trauma is a consequence of poverty and bad parenting which is because of low IQ You have the primary direction of causality between trauma and IQ reversed. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=childhood+trauma+and+IQ... Population scale trauma exposure and bad parenting is a result of poverty, social structures, and sometimes wars and conflicts, not something predetermined by genetics.

The IQs of adopted children have next to nothing to do with their environments, and much more to do with the IQs of their birth parents. IQ in general is very strongly heritable. There are several adoption and twin studies that have demonstrated this effect, e.g.: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8513766/

Re: This is a teenager

#337

Post by s1artibartfast »

cardanome wrote: post #291
s1artibartfast wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say that the circle of influence people have is by far the most impactful on their happiness and that of their family. The individual choice to try meth or not will vastly outweigh any genetic or environmental factor on personal outcome. Beating ones children is much more influential than your socioeconomic class. No a mount of political action can compensate for dissolution of individual responsibilities. Id…

> I would say that the circle of influence people have is by far the most impactful on their happiness and that of their family. This is factually wrong. Otherwise there wouldn't be such a strong correlation between socioeconomic class and later success in life. > The individual choice to try meth or not will vastly outweigh any genetic or environmental factor on personal outcome. Drug use and poverty wouldn't be so…

You may see correlations between socioeconomic class, but they are still by far weaker than correlations with Individual behavior and choice, which is my point.

Telling someone not to be born poor isn't actionable advice. Telling them their chance of success is 1000% better if they don't do drugs IS actionable advice. Telling them to live in misery and wait for the collective to solve a social problem in decades isn't actionable or useful advice either.

>You empower them by teaching them that it a systemic issue, that it is NOT their fault.

It is a big difference between a higher statistical risk factor isn't your fault, and telling them their choices and behavior have no impact.

Individual responsibility and effort is the foundation of collective responsibility. You can't have collective action with personal action. It isn't one or the other. The boat won't move if there is individual responsibility to paddle.

Re: This is a teenager

#338

Post by ricardobeat »

narrator wrote: post #331
leokennis wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will probably greatly interest you: https://mattlakeman.org/2024/03/30/notes-on-el-salvador/

It's amazing how surprised everyone was that the whole thing worked phenomenally well. It went against a century of "expert" advice. It literally did the exact opposite. The purpose of the system is what it does [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...

What kind of expert advice did it go against? Honestly sounds like the obvious approach, I think the controversy is around the authoritarian aspects of the whole thing.

Re: This is a teenager

#339

Post by feoren »

thegrim33 wrote: post #273
wiz21c wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really surprised that you consider it a "sacrifice" to help others. Because when "others" are doing well, I'm doing better too. Give a job or a good life to anybody and you'll see, they'll just be better. Most of the poor/unemployed people are not like that because they choose to but because they had more hurdles to pass and ultimately were more at risk to fail. And it's not because some made it that it proves th…

You're just being obtuse. The topic is about spending resources in an attempt to achieve a goal. You can't just say "whatever we spend just makes people's lives better so it's worth it". There's a very real cost involved, and a very real effectiveness of spending that cost. To put it to extremes as an example, if we're spending $1 per person to give them a 99% chance of living a better life, that's a much different s…

Almost all of these calculations work out extremely in favor of just giving the poor money. It's expensive to be poor, and not just for them. They cost more in healthcare, crime, and other support systems. Literally just giving all the homeless cheap housing for free is by far the better option if you actually pay attention to the numbers. The same is abundantly clear for free education. But we can't, because we like the suffering. That's it: Americans like it when other people are suffering. We like it so much that we're willing to suffer ourselves just so that those other people can suffer even more.

To a lesser extent, there's also the Boomer Trolley Problem: if you divert a trolley onto a track wherein nobody dies, how is that fair to all the people who it's already killed!?

Re: This is a teenager

#340

Post by nsxwolf »

somenameforme wrote: post #204
prmoustache wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if it was the case, would it be a problem? What is more important, having less humans being happy or more humans having a crappy life. Why should specie survival be more important than overall happiness of those that would have lived?

This is a tangent, but when in the world did "happiness" become a desirable metric? If you think about it, it's really quite absurd. Happiness is a brief liminal state that should be triggered by relatively infrequent events. It is not a normal, nor desirable, default state. Contentedness, satisfaction, at-peace, and so on - there endlessly more rational, logical, desirable, and attainable things to aim for. Yet ever…

"Happiness", not "perpetual state of unbridled ecstasy"
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