4 ms·

Short-term, voluntary material deprivation and stress, both of which you can end instantly at any time you want if you so choose, isn't the same thing as povert

Short-term, voluntary material deprivation and stress, both of which you can end instantly at any time you want if you so choose, isn't the same thing as poverty. How do you define "poverty"? Apparently it's not material deprivation, harsh environment or stress. So what is it? I think my theory predicts the world pretty good. Your theory predicts that intelligent Asian professionals, when faced with material deprivation, environment and stress will make good choices? Similarly for upper middle class Americans temporarily placed in an educational situation? And it's only a narrow set of people who will actually wind up making bad choices? I guess I totally misread your post. So in fact, it's not true that "moral failings are in fact mostly results of external causes"? The fundamental attribution error is not a magic incantation to ward off all evidence of bad decisionmaking or moral failure.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
> How do you define "poverty"? Apparently it's not material deprivation, harsh environment or stress. So what is it? It's being stuck in material deprivation. My theory is that it's most often caused by harsh environment or medical conditions. "Harsh environment" includes being born into poverty. My theory predicts that even intelligent Asian professionals will make bad choices faced with enough material deprivation, environment and stress. People backpacking and students are doing it out of their own choice and can always stop backpacking and go home / drop out or change university to a less demanding one. Unless they're doing either to escape poverty, at which point you can clearly see it's not the conditions of backpacking/education that are the source of one's problems. > I guess I totally misread your post. So in fact, it's not true that "moral failings are in fact mostly results of external causes"? My point is that there's much less moral failings happening at all than people (usually in a better situation) like to think. That is - a person X is not poor because he's lazy, he's poor because he is malnourished and so stressed that he doesn't have spare cognitive capacity to educate himself and get a better job. My theory predicts that if you solve his direct financial needs for a predictable while (for him; as opposed to random, one-off, non-repeating, small help that doesn't let him plan), he'll most likely recover and start to improve his condition. > The fundamental attribution error is not a magic incantation to ward off all evidence of bad decisionmaking or moral failure. No, but it's a name for when people are too eager to see bad decisionmaking or moral failure where there is none. Also, I pointed it out as a starting point - articles describing the concept in detail cite studies about the effects of environment on human behaviour and elaborate on how predictable humans are if you can set up the external conditions. I'm sorry I am not linking to anything concrete, but I'm writing from a crappy hotel over Great Chinese Firewall. I am asking you to trust that if you start from fundamental attribution error, you'll end up reading about relevant studies :). It's 5 minutes for you, 5 minutes per site for me :(.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  My theory predicts that even intelligent Asian professionals will make bad choices faced with enough material deprivation, environment and stress. In that case, India falsifies your theory. Virtually all of India - including the professional class - is stuck in material deprivation vastly worse than American poverty - the average American poor consumer unit consumes $20k/year, while Indian GDP/Capita is $6k/year (adjusted for cost of living). They don't usually make the same bad choices. They get educated, save money for a rainy day, mostly avoid drugs, etc. Actually, now that I think of it, English literature adjuncts are another counterexample. My theory predicts that if you solve his direct financial needs for a predictable while... Why financial? Why not just fix malnourishment directly? I did google the fundamental attribution error, but I did not find any studies showing that certain specific environmental conditions will cause all sorts of people to engage in the same bad behaviors that poor Americans engage in. The most I found is studies showing things like "people will attribute a basketball player's poor shooting success to ability rather than reduced lighting." This suggests a bias is present, but doesn't come close to proving your thesis.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    I guess we're talking a bit past each other and I'm talking myself into a circle as well, but let me try and clarify: > In that case, India falsifies your theory. Virtually all of India - including the professional class - is stuck in material deprivation vastly worse than American poverty - the average American poor consumer unit consumes $20k/year, while Indian GDP/Capita is $6k/year (adjusted for cost of living). Here by "bad" choices I meant "bad from comfortable western observer's point of view". The decisions are probably mostly good from the POV of the poor person involved. People in India are stuck im material deprivation because of the environment - the state in phase space in which their society is in. Similarly, many poor people in western countries. > Actually, now that I think of it, English literature adjuncts are another counterexample. Sadly, I don't know anything about this class of people. > Why financial? Why not just fix malnourishment directly? I don't think anybody will say that this isn't helpful. It is. Hell, it's almost as good as giving money away, assuming you cater to his particular needs - take into account what foods he absolutely dislikes, his time schedule, his allergies, etc. Because if you don't, if it's MIL-STD-01 meal pack 3 times a day, this is robbing one from dignity and in case of people with allergies / some types of mental conditions it's stress-inducing. People generally have a need of control over their own fate. It's a base Maslovian need. Most of the in-kind conditional help as implemented in today's welfare denies the beneficiaries such control. This has a serious psychological impact, and you don't have to look further than mental institutions and care houses to see the problems it causes. Or even observe how people abuse welfare or even refuse it at all in order to cling to any semblance of control over their lives they have left. Handing out cash empowers people. They can chose their meal, chose what they invest in, chose their direction. Another keyword (an almost-synonym to FAE) I forgot about - correspondence bias. The general direction I'm trying to point towards is the one presented by things like Stanford Prison Experiment, Milgram Conformity Experiment, FAE/correspondence bias, the entire economy and game theory - that people's decisions and outcomes are generally predictable based mostly on things external to them. That people follow incentives, determined by things like their mental state, stress, environment, available opportunities, etc. - and that explaining something away as "laziness" or "bad character" or "irresponsibility" is in most cases counterproductive. If I manage to get hold of a semi-decent Internet connection (allowing to load anything better than plaintext) tomorrow I'll look for links to some sources.

TeMPOraL 11y ago

> How do you define "poverty"? Apparently it's not material deprivation, harsh environment or stress. So what is it? It's being stuck in material deprivation. My theory is that it's most often caused by harsh environment or medical conditions. "Harsh environment" includes being born into poverty. My theory predicts that even intelligent Asian professionals will make bad choices faced with enough material deprivation, environment and stress. People backpacking and students are doing it out of their own choice and can always stop backpacking and go home / drop out or change university to a less demanding one. Unless they're doing either to escape poverty, at which point you can clearly see it's not the conditions of backpacking/education that are the source of one's problems. > I guess I totally misread your post. So in fact, it's not true that "moral failings are in fact mostly results of external causes"? My point is that there's much less moral failings happening at all than people (usually in a better situation) like to think. That is - a person X is not poor because he's lazy, he's poor because he is malnourished and so stressed that he doesn't have spare cognitive capacity to educate himself and get a better job. My theory predicts that if you solve his direct financial needs for a predictable while (for him; as opposed to random, one-off, non-repeating, small help that doesn't let him plan), he'll most likely recover and start to improve his condition. > The fundamental attribution error is not a magic incantation to ward off all evidence of bad decisionmaking or moral failure. No, but it's a name for when people are too eager to see bad decisionmaking or moral failure where there is none. Also, I pointed it out as a starting point - articles describing the concept in detail cite studies about the effects of environment on human behaviour and elaborate on how predictable humans are if you can set up the external conditions. I'm sorry I am not linking to anything concrete, but I'm writing from a crappy hotel over Great Chinese Firewall. I am asking you to trust that if you start from fundamental attribution error, you'll end up reading about relevant studies :). It's 5 minutes for you, 5 minutes per site for me :(.

yummyfajitas 11y ago
My theory predicts that even intelligent Asian professionals will make bad choices faced with enough material deprivation, environment and stress. In that case, India falsifies your theory. Virtually all of India - including the professional class - is stuck in material deprivation vastly worse than American poverty - the average American poor consumer unit consumes $20k/year, while Indian GDP/Capita is $6k/year (adjusted for cost of living). They don't usually make the same bad choices. They get educated, save money for a rainy day, mostly avoid drugs, etc. Actually, now that I think of it, English literature adjuncts are another counterexample. My theory predicts that if you solve his direct financial needs for a predictable while... Why financial? Why not just fix malnourishment directly? I did google the fundamental attribution error, but I did not find any studies showing that certain specific environmental conditions will cause all sorts of people to engage in the same bad behaviors that poor Americans engage in. The most I found is studies showing things like "people will attribute a basketball player's poor shooting success to ability rather than reduced lighting." This suggests a bias is present, but doesn't come close to proving your thesis.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  I guess we're talking a bit past each other and I'm talking myself into a circle as well, but let me try and clarify: > In that case, India falsifies your theory. Virtually all of India - including the professional class - is stuck in material deprivation vastly worse than American poverty - the average American poor consumer unit consumes $20k/year, while Indian GDP/Capita is $6k/year (adjusted for cost of living). Here by "bad" choices I meant "bad from comfortable western observer's point of view". The decisions are probably mostly good from the POV of the poor person involved. People in India are stuck im material deprivation because of the environment - the state in phase space in which their society is in. Similarly, many poor people in western countries. > Actually, now that I think of it, English literature adjuncts are another counterexample. Sadly, I don't know anything about this class of people. > Why financial? Why not just fix malnourishment directly? I don't think anybody will say that this isn't helpful. It is. Hell, it's almost as good as giving money away, assuming you cater to his particular needs - take into account what foods he absolutely dislikes, his time schedule, his allergies, etc. Because if you don't, if it's MIL-STD-01 meal pack 3 times a day, this is robbing one from dignity and in case of people with allergies / some types of mental conditions it's stress-inducing. People generally have a need of control over their own fate. It's a base Maslovian need. Most of the in-kind conditional help as implemented in today's welfare denies the beneficiaries such control. This has a serious psychological impact, and you don't have to look further than mental institutions and care houses to see the problems it causes. Or even observe how people abuse welfare or even refuse it at all in order to cling to any semblance of control over their lives they have left. Handing out cash empowers people. They can chose their meal, chose what they invest in, chose their direction. Another keyword (an almost-synonym to FAE) I forgot about - correspondence bias. The general direction I'm trying to point towards is the one presented by things like Stanford Prison Experiment, Milgram Conformity Experiment, FAE/correspondence bias, the entire economy and game theory - that people's decisions and outcomes are generally predictable based mostly on things external to them. That people follow incentives, determined by things like their mental state, stress, environment, available opportunities, etc. - and that explaining something away as "laziness" or "bad character" or "irresponsibility" is in most cases counterproductive. If I manage to get hold of a semi-decent Internet connection (allowing to load anything better than plaintext) tomorrow I'll look for links to some sources.