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This is a teenager

pudding.cool

711–720 of 868 posts

Re: This is a teenager

#711

The punchline is this: "It's 2021. The research participants are in their late-30s now, which means they've had plenty of time to shape their own destinies. But we can clearly see that the experiences of their childhood had a huge effect on their financial situation as adults. It also has an effect on virtually everything else in their lives." You cannot infer the direction of causality from this data, i.e. that the…

You seem to construct a straw man.

The whole point of the study is to show that kids that grow up with more adverse effects which are out of their control makes them more likely to have problems as an adult.

You seem to say we can't infer causality, but that's exactly what they do. They show that having been affected by more adverse effects does make you more likely to suffer in the future. As the study says being poor is one of the adverse effects but not all. So that's your control right there.

Re: This is a teenager

#712

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…

> 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 you have to pay for it) and for your parents to retire in peace (because they live with you and you care for them). Heaven forbid you get sick.

I'll be honest, as a non-American, I thought you were describing the USA in these sentences. I quite frequently read things online/see videos etc where Americans are shocked that we can take several weeks or a month off for a holiday in Europe, that if we're sick we just take time off, there's no worry about being fired for getting sick, or needing to work in order to qualify for health insurance. Education isn't free everywhere, but in most places people acquire much less debt than it seems you do in the USA.

Re: This is a teenager

#713

The conclusion of this data presentation is that so of these people are our collective responsibility, and I just wasn't convinced. I wish they had shown percentages with the visualization. They choose not to. I was underwhelmed by some points that seemed like they should have been more shocking. Look at the huge number of people in the many adverse experiences category who made it to college, and make a high salary.…

> The conclusion of this data presentation is that so of these people are our collective responsibility, and I just wasn't convinced. I wish they had shown percentages with the visualization. They choose not to.

> I was underwhelmed by some points that seemed like they should have been more shocking. Look at the huge number of people in the many adverse experiences category who made it to college, and make a high salary. that was shocking! and look at the people who had no adverse experiences and still managed to end up poor. how does that happen?

What do you mean huge number of people in many adverse experiences making it to college? If you look at the graph from 2011 with highest qualification obtained. There's probably less than 1 in 8 of the many adverse effects that obtained a college degree, while about 50% of the no adverse effects kids did. Those are huge differences.

Did you expect that none of the many adverse effects kids make it to college? That's the nature of statistics with humans, yes some succeed but the probabilities are so much different.

Re: This is a teenager

#714

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I'm suggesting nothing of the sort, and it's disingenuous to suggest I did. I'm just saying that him being one of the purple group in his cohort doesn't in any way contradict the fact that that group is smaller than among people with easier childhoods.

That was obvious from the main article, and you had zero reason to rub it in Alex’s face except some sort of pervasive need to discredit his achievements because he didnt succumb to playing the role of a perpetual victim.

Re: This is a teenager

#715

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

How would providing free school lunches reduce the chance of seeing someone shot?

Re: This is a teenager

#716

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I went to primary school in the 80s and 90s and even back then it was pretty hard to be held back a grade level. Typically it only happened when a kid missed a lot of school, like they were hit by a car and spent 2 months in the hospital. Failing grades alone didn't usually cause it, at least the kids who seemed completely uninterested in school still somehow managed to graduate.

"Everybody is a unique snowflake" attitude is causing way more problems then we publically admit. Setting boundaries is important. As is seeing the consequences of your own actions. I was held back in school for a year. Looking back, this was one of the most important things in my school time. I am glad it happened.

Re: This is a teenager

#717
post #689

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The future is still a function of the past If you don't believe in conscious choice the whole debate is moot anyway.

That's not the claim. The claim is that if you're born poor, your chances of being poor when you become an adult are much higher. Perhaps you know that and still think that because the kid who is born poor "chose" to stay poor, but I hope no one capable of having a discussion about this topic thinks like that.

If they don't want to be poor why are the poor though?

No it isn't "opportunity", there has never been as much opportunity in the world to move up the social hierarchy as it exists now.

Re: This is a teenager

#718

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think many people have a misunderstanding of what lower fertility means. Imagine a country has a fertility rate of 1. It doesn't seem that bad because it's pretty close to replacement. But fertility is an exponential system. So a fertility rate of means that each following generation (~20 years) will be half as large as the one that came before it (the formula is simply a ratio of fertility_rate/2). So you won't se…

Saying society is going to collapse due to population decline is about as absurd as saying society will collapse due to overpopulation. What will end up happening is that some groups will maintain replacement fertility levels or higher, and some groups won't, but we'll trend towards an equilibrium, or flop between too little fertility and too much fertility. Either way we won't go extinct unless we explicitly kill ea…

[deleted]

Re: This is a teenager

#719

The punchline is this: "It's 2021. The research participants are in their late-30s now, which means they've had plenty of time to shape their own destinies. But we can clearly see that the experiences of their childhood had a huge effect on their financial situation as adults. It also has an effect on virtually everything else in their lives." You cannot infer the direction of causality from this data, i.e. that the…

> In this case it could be the poverty itself

unfortunately in the US socialists theories, even the most diluted ones, are almost entirely removed from the public discourse.

These kinds of issues can be better analyzed in the context of the class struggle (or class conflict), of which they are a textbook example.

On a personal level people can get over hardships and have a successful happy life, but statistically, on a societal level, those who are born poor will, more often than any other group, end up being poor(er) adults.

Re: This is a teenager

#720

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you volunteer at the local school? My wife and I are both passionate about and interested in improving children’s lives, but not super sure how best to do it outside of donations and big brother big sister-type programs. As an aside, maybe it’s because I’m inexperienced, but I’m finding it surprisingly hard to get connected with a group to help people that isn’t a highly specific cause like religion, LGBTQ, ch…

I would like to volunteer as well, but it would have to be outside of home and school since I live in Texas. I would like to help young people learn to cope with being LGBTQ+, ADD, and other things, but I don't think parents would appreciate it.

Yeah maybe you should reserve that stuff for your own kids. Which you probably don’t have.
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