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I often see people discussing the just world hypothesis and the awfulness of the people who believe it. But I very rarely see those same people even considering

I often see people discussing the just world hypothesis and the awfulness of the people who believe it. But I very rarely see those same people even considering the possibility that it might be true. In the world of work, while exceptions exist, I've always seen a strong correlation between position and competence. (I haven't worked at bridgewater so I don't know if it's true there.) In the political/economic world, I see poor people refusing to engage in personal responsibility (i.e. having children out of wedlock, doing drugs, smoking, eating badly and not exercising, refusing to work) while the rich do the exact opposite. So I'll ask the question that I guess makes me an awful person too: why do we think the just world hypothesis is actually false?

hx87 10y ago
Because there are far, far too many counterexamples for the hypothesis to be true in any useful sense.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  Dalio's "by and large" indicates that he feels it's generally true, not universally true. I.e. a statistical trend, not a hard and fast rule. How do your uncited counterexamples show that a statistical trend is not true in any useful sense? Moreover, why isn't it reasonable to treat it as a hypothesis that is true in many specific contexts? Should we also discuss the personal awfulness of people who believe in normal distributions as a useful principle since not all data is normally distributed? "Racists and child molesters sometimes use normal distributions to model the world!"
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
GVIrish 10y ago
> In the political/economic world, I see poor people refusing to engage in personal responsibility (i.e. having children out of wedlock, doing drugs, smoking, eating badly and not exercising, refusing to work) while the rich do the exact opposite. Yet there are plenty of poor people working two jobs and clipping coupons but never see their economic situation meaningfully improve. On the other side, someone born into wealth can be lazy, use drugs, and be a general screw up and still die wealthy. Plenty of rich people do drugs too but the chances of them going to jail for doing drugs are negligible compared to the chances of jail time for a poor person. Law enforcement targets poor neighborhoods far more heavily, wealthy people don't buy drugs off street corners, and wealthy people can pay for far better legal representation. Crime? White collar crime is rarely punished with jail time. Someone selling drugs on the street might get several years in jail, whereas someone who helps launder billions for drug cartels gets no jail time and their company only pays a fine. Unethical sociopathic behavior in politics and many parts of the business world is how some people get to the top. It's not that the most qualified or deserving person got what they deserved, it was that the most ruthless, self-promoting, and deceitful person took the spoils. The just world hypothesis is often what callous people use to justify why they have the riches and people lower on the totem pole don't. It's easy to point at poor people and say they're poor because they're lazy or irresponsible, but it's much harder to admit that someone succeeded because of either advantages they were born into, or outright immoral behavior.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  Very few poor people work two jobs or even one. That's a marked contrast to high income individuals who work very hard. http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2015/demo/p60-252.pdf http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publication... Similarly, poor people are more likely to have substance abuse problems. http://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/2013MHDetTabs/NSDUH-MHDetTabs2013.pdf http://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/2013MHDetTabs... Now, as you note, rich people get away with things more - so wouldn't responsible poor people be less likely to do drugs? As a responsible adult, I do far more drugs in India (a cop might want 500rs ~ $7) than Malaysia (off with their heads!). You seem to believe the just world hypothesis is false, yet you clearly haven't even googled data which suggests it's a pretty solid statistical hypothesis in this case. It's truly a flaw in our society that such rhetoric - describing people who hold true beliefs as "callous" and "immoral" - is causing people to hold utterly incorrect beliefs. It's kind of like the modern version of "only satan worshippers believe in evolution".
  - TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
    I'm curious how you deduced that "Very few poor people work two jobs" or "High income individuals work very hard" from a census report that doesn't mention multiple job holding, and includes no information about hours worked. >it's a pretty solid statistical hypothesis in this case. Certainly not on the basis of that report, it's not.
    - yummyfajitas 10y ago
      See table 3. Very few poor people work at all. Extrapolating from this to multiple job holders follows from the fact that people who work is an upper bound on people who work multiple jobs.
      - notlefthanded 10y ago
        Maybe poor people don't work because there's a welfare cliff wherein people can work a lot more and still experience no gain in quality of life or economic situation.
Lawtonfogle 10y ago
The reason is due to the difference between necessary and suficient. Hard work is necessary to get to the stop and stay there for any significant length of time, but it is not sufficient to do so. The Just World fallacy treats it as being suficient. This is probably why it is so popular, because it is kinda close to the truth.
kafkaesq 10y ago
The rich certainly do engage in their fair share of irresponsible behavior, also - it's just that they're generally better at managing appearances and externalizing consequences. In fact, quite often that's exactly how they got to be wealthy in the first place. So while people in the lower economic brackets might engage in overtly self-damaging behaviors like smoking or eating poorly (in disproportionate numbers) -- or simply be too depressed to look for work in an economy that basically has no use for them, or to go to college for an advanced degree in their 40s or 50s -- folks in the bulge brackets will end up doing "responsible" things, like voting for the political class that brought us the invasion of Iraq (including 500k+ killed and the bloodshed we are seeing up to the current day), climate change denial, and the (artificially accelerated) deindustrialization that killed off the middle class jobs those (now) in the lower tiers might have had access to in the first place, a few decades back. In the world of work, while exceptions exist, I've always seen a strong correlation between position and competence. In a sense this is almost a truism; one simply has to ask "competent at what?" In many organizations, unfortunately, it isn't technical or domain knowledge, or even interpersonal skills that merits promotion -- but simply the art of "managing up."
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  That's not really true. For example, the poor engage in risky sexual practices - resulting in 7x the unintended pregnancy rate of people with >2x poverty line income. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/03/unplanned-births-another-outcome-of-economic-inequality/386743/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/03/unplanne... A quick google search turns up images like this, suggesting poverty is correlated with violent crime: https://i.imgur.com/gAmHXQw.jpg https://i.imgur.com/gAmHXQw.jpg Why not spend a few minutes googling before spreading false stereotypes about minority groups?
  - kafkaesq 10y ago
    Why not spend a few minutes goggling [sic]? Because the issues at hand are complex and multifaceted -- and in general, one won't find meaningful insight into them by digging for stats to cherry pick for the sake of propping up one's point of view.
lotsofcows 10y ago
Are you saying you have evidence that the actions you list (even ignoring the obvious cultural entrenchment) are more common in the poor than the rich? Can you provide a link please?
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  I've done so in various other replies.
rhizome 10y ago
I see poor people refusing to engage in personal responsibility (i.e. having children out of wedlock, doing drugs, smoking, eating badly and not exercising, refusing to work) while the rich do the exact opposite. Sorry for the snark, but it appears you simply aren't paying attention. Rich people don't have kids out of wedlock? Don't do drugs or smoke? It's probably more likely that you have a blind spot toward shared behaviors between classes because you associate them as low-status.

hx87 10y ago

Because there are far, far too many counterexamples for the hypothesis to be true in any useful sense.

yummyfajitas 10y ago
Dalio's "by and large" indicates that he feels it's generally true, not universally true. I.e. a statistical trend, not a hard and fast rule. How do your uncited counterexamples show that a statistical trend is not true in any useful sense? Moreover, why isn't it reasonable to treat it as a hypothesis that is true in many specific contexts? Should we also discuss the personal awfulness of people who believe in normal distributions as a useful principle since not all data is normally distributed? "Racists and child molesters sometimes use normal distributions to model the world!"
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

GVIrish 10y ago

> In the political/economic world, I see poor people refusing to engage in personal responsibility (i.e. having children out of wedlock, doing drugs, smoking, eating badly and not exercising, refusing to work) while the rich do the exact opposite. Yet there are plenty of poor people working two jobs and clipping coupons but never see their economic situation meaningfully improve. On the other side, someone born into wealth can be lazy, use drugs, and be a general screw up and still die wealthy. Plenty of rich people do drugs too but the chances of them going to jail for doing drugs are negligible compared to the chances of jail time for a poor person. Law enforcement targets poor neighborhoods far more heavily, wealthy people don't buy drugs off street corners, and wealthy people can pay for far better legal representation. Crime? White collar crime is rarely punished with jail time. Someone selling drugs on the street might get several years in jail, whereas someone who helps launder billions for drug cartels gets no jail time and their company only pays a fine. Unethical sociopathic behavior in politics and many parts of the business world is how some people get to the top. It's not that the most qualified or deserving person got what they deserved, it was that the most ruthless, self-promoting, and deceitful person took the spoils. The just world hypothesis is often what callous people use to justify why they have the riches and people lower on the totem pole don't. It's easy to point at poor people and say they're poor because they're lazy or irresponsible, but it's much harder to admit that someone succeeded because of either advantages they were born into, or outright immoral behavior.

yummyfajitas 10y ago
Very few poor people work two jobs or even one. That's a marked contrast to high income individuals who work very hard. http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2015/demo/p60-252.pdf http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publication... Similarly, poor people are more likely to have substance abuse problems. http://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/2013MHDetTabs/NSDUH-MHDetTabs2013.pdf http://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/2013MHDetTabs... Now, as you note, rich people get away with things more - so wouldn't responsible poor people be less likely to do drugs? As a responsible adult, I do far more drugs in India (a cop might want 500rs ~ $7) than Malaysia (off with their heads!). You seem to believe the just world hypothesis is false, yet you clearly haven't even googled data which suggests it's a pretty solid statistical hypothesis in this case. It's truly a flaw in our society that such rhetoric - describing people who hold true beliefs as "callous" and "immoral" - is causing people to hold utterly incorrect beliefs. It's kind of like the modern version of "only satan worshippers believe in evolution".
- TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
  I'm curious how you deduced that "Very few poor people work two jobs" or "High income individuals work very hard" from a census report that doesn't mention multiple job holding, and includes no information about hours worked. >it's a pretty solid statistical hypothesis in this case. Certainly not on the basis of that report, it's not.
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    See table 3. Very few poor people work at all. Extrapolating from this to multiple job holders follows from the fact that people who work is an upper bound on people who work multiple jobs.
    - notlefthanded 10y ago
      Maybe poor people don't work because there's a welfare cliff wherein people can work a lot more and still experience no gain in quality of life or economic situation.

Lawtonfogle 10y ago

The reason is due to the difference between necessary and suficient. Hard work is necessary to get to the stop and stay there for any significant length of time, but it is not sufficient to do so. The Just World fallacy treats it as being suficient. This is probably why it is so popular, because it is kinda close to the truth.

kafkaesq 10y ago

The rich certainly do engage in their fair share of irresponsible behavior, also - it's just that they're generally better at managing appearances and externalizing consequences. In fact, quite often that's exactly how they got to be wealthy in the first place. So while people in the lower economic brackets might engage in overtly self-damaging behaviors like smoking or eating poorly (in disproportionate numbers) -- or simply be too depressed to look for work in an economy that basically has no use for them, or to go to college for an advanced degree in their 40s or 50s -- folks in the bulge brackets will end up doing "responsible" things, like voting for the political class that brought us the invasion of Iraq (including 500k+ killed and the bloodshed we are seeing up to the current day), climate change denial, and the (artificially accelerated) deindustrialization that killed off the middle class jobs those (now) in the lower tiers might have had access to in the first place, a few decades back. In the world of work, while exceptions exist, I've always seen a strong correlation between position and competence. In a sense this is almost a truism; one simply has to ask "competent at what?" In many organizations, unfortunately, it isn't technical or domain knowledge, or even interpersonal skills that merits promotion -- but simply the art of "managing up."

yummyfajitas 10y ago
That's not really true. For example, the poor engage in risky sexual practices - resulting in 7x the unintended pregnancy rate of people with >2x poverty line income. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/03/unplanned-births-another-outcome-of-economic-inequality/386743/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/03/unplanne... A quick google search turns up images like this, suggesting poverty is correlated with violent crime: https://i.imgur.com/gAmHXQw.jpg https://i.imgur.com/gAmHXQw.jpg Why not spend a few minutes googling before spreading false stereotypes about minority groups?
- kafkaesq 10y ago
  Why not spend a few minutes goggling [sic]? Because the issues at hand are complex and multifaceted -- and in general, one won't find meaningful insight into them by digging for stats to cherry pick for the sake of propping up one's point of view.

lotsofcows 10y ago

Are you saying you have evidence that the actions you list (even ignoring the obvious cultural entrenchment) are more common in the poor than the rich? Can you provide a link please?

yummyfajitas 10y ago
I've done so in various other replies.

rhizome 10y ago

I see poor people refusing to engage in personal responsibility (i.e. having children out of wedlock, doing drugs, smoking, eating badly and not exercising, refusing to work) while the rich do the exact opposite. Sorry for the snark, but it appears you simply aren't paying attention. Rich people don't have kids out of wedlock? Don't do drugs or smoke? It's probably more likely that you have a blind spot toward shared behaviors between classes because you associate them as low-status.