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

571–580 of 868 posts

Re: This is a teenager

#571

Post by renjimen »

concordDance wrote: post #403
renjimen wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the order of events (childhood trauma THEN adult outcomes), and the strong relationships identified in the source material (while controlling for confounding factors), I think it's about as close as we can get to inferring directionality.

> I think it's about as close as we can get to inferring directionality. No, we can try interventions (e.g. do a big and expensive anti-violence/CCTV/policing campaign in a neighborhood) and record the result. I do think the grandparent has a point and a lot of these could have a common cause. e.g. a violent environment and poor educational attainment could both be caused by poverty or genes for impulse control or a…

Fair. You can do those kinds of analyses from historical data too, though I don’t think CCTV would have much of an effect. Try free school lunches, after school support, parental benefits etc.

Re: This is a teenager

#572

Post by petesergeant »

tough wrote: post #559
petesergeant wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s true of most rich countries. The big difference between the US and most rich countries is universal healthcare.

Life and death kinda difference innit

Wikipedia suggests 0.01% of the US population dies each year (30-40,000) due to lack of health insurance. I’m sure the real number is at least double.

Re: This is a teenager

#573

Post by chefandy »

sabarn01 wrote: post #456
Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is, likely intentionally, understated. I cannot speak for the author, but the gist I got is that our society thrusts wholly unprepared people into adulthood and we could get a lot of improvements from just making it harder for people to fail at adulting. IYKYK and if you don’t you will get fucked - repeatedly. Basic life skills are not taught so it’s up to the individual if their family fails. Importantly,…

The outcome of this has been to make it harder to fail as a kid. We don't hold kids back anymore and we don't suspend kids anymore. At some point in time the rubber meets the road and you will be held accountable and have to be. We could improve the social safety net but we never want to match other countries that have more supervision of their at risk population. When I worked temp jobs there wasn't a place I worked…

> We don't hold kids back anymore and we don't suspend kids anymore.

Does that contradict real data that shows holding kids back and suspending them makes them more successful?

Re: This is a teenager

#574

Post by noisy_boy »

Aeolun wrote: post #551
petesergeant wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it feels unfair to say they don’t deserve happiness just because they can’t make themselves seek it While I’d agree, you’ve read the OP’s comment in a significantly darker light than I did, or than I can get the text to support

Ah, I wasn’t necessarily trying to imply anything about OP’s post. Just that what worked for him might not work for many others. I’m still happy to hear he did ;)

I think I agree on your take. Mental strength in people in adverse conditions is not the rule, it is the exception. Most won't have enough of it to overcome the difficulties and will instead fall prey to easy traps like drugs etc. It is easy for most of us, who have managed well enough to be commenting here which probably implies a baseline amount of mental strength, to take the shining examples and think that these examples are universal tools of motivation. To a person that is dealing with the deep-seated problems we are talking about, that could be, indeed, motivation but also could feel like we are mocking them or trivializing their struggles. Only you can feel your toothache, me saying other people experience it and get over it, doesn't lower your pain (obviously this is a scale and this analogy isn't universal).

Re: This is a teenager

#575

Post by emmo »

6510 wrote: post #490
gentleman11 wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you say the problem is social class and poverty, and not having available role models to show how adult life actually works, you’ll get flamed and trolled. If you say the problem is racial issues, you’ll get upvotes. I’ll just sit here and await my downvotes now

The pattern I've noticed is that the poor and the poorly educated have no career expectations from their kids. If the kids with wealthy and/or highly educated parents showed up at home with just one poor grade all hell broke lose. Grounded for 6 months, allowance cuts, no more TV or video games etc One kept his kid at home during the holidays to tutor him himself, screaming 90% of the time. The other parents would lo…

I hope you're never in a position to make any of these decisions.

Re: This is a teenager

#576

Post by kryogen1c »

Aeolun wrote: post #534
l0c0b0x wrote: post #519

I was Alex (my name is not Alex). Graduated high school in 97, but with a 2.1 GPA (yeah, pretty bad). Went to community college while working part time, living in a 'separated' household (mom/dad did the splits), supported both my parents both emotionally and financially (as much as I could) through their transition and new living arrangements. We were all immigrants, and still learning the ropes in this wonderful co…

I guess what we learn from this is that not everyone is as enterprising as you? While on some level I’d say that, of course you can do it if you want to. There’s many people for whom that is just too much of a leap, and it feels unfair to say they don’t deserve happiness just because they can’t make themselves seek it.

> unfair to say they don’t deserve happiness just because they can’t make themselves seek it.

You and I have very different ideas about what's fair.

Re: This is a teenager

#579

Post by ciupicri »

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #567
ciupicri wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you talking about USA? What safety nets are available in the US? P.S. It's just a question. Not everyone lives in the US. Heck, maybe the OP was even talking about another country, say Denmark.

Rather than looking at USA as Scandinavian county, imagine living in some of the counties in the global south. The competition for good jobs is so intense that you’ll work 10 hours a day, 6 days a week. You won’t miss work if you’re sick or have a family event because then somebody else gets your job. Culturally second chances don’t exist, and you’re the only chance your children have to get through school (because y…

There are no doubt way worse places than the US.

I was under the impressions that Americans work hard too. For example, if I'm not mistaking there's no mandated minimum number of vacation days, so you might get only 11 compared to 20 in most European countries.

> Heaven forbid you get sick.

The medical act is (very) good in the US, but is it affordable?

> The children have to compete in complicated exams to even have the sliver of a chance to land themselves in a good university.

Doesn't the same apply to the US as well? You either have lots of money, or good grades or you're good athlete.

Re: This is a teenager

#580

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy »

tomp wrote: post #451
Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes the only resolution for a conflict is murder. Even in non stand your ground states. I do not think you understand conflict resolution and should probably study it a bit before speaking so authoritatively. The basic gist of it is to identify the root cause of contention and identify the best practical solution. Most people bad at managing conflict fail to correctly identify the cause and empathize with the o…

How would you attempt “conflict resolution” with primary school bullies? Sometimes the only resolution to violence is (threat of) superior violence. If you’re a child and a group of kids attacks you, that’s “adults resolving the situation”. Anything else is a failure of the schooling system.

Easy and unethical? Give them a weaker target than me.

Find and exploit their weakness publicly thereby robbing them of their power.

Post reply on HN