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Unfortunately the dysfunction and poverty may go hand in hand a lot of the time. There is strong indication that scarcity affects cognitive function. "Scarcity

Unfortunately the dysfunction and poverty may go hand in hand a lot of the time. There is strong indication that scarcity affects cognitive function. "Scarcity: Why having too little means so much" is a great book on this. In essence it is not that people in poverty have less innate executive control / cognitive capacity, but that the situation of poverty causes anyone to lose some significant points of executive control / cognitive capacity. There are some illuminating (but terryfing) experiments in the book, where they show you can literally sabotage a low income persons score on an IQ test by mentioning a hypothetical car repair of 2000 dollars before they take it.

prox 6y ago
I absolutely think this is a thing, speaking from experience. Working freelance and suddenly see your savings / income dry up due to circumstances. You start to go into “survival” mode which means you start making radical different decisions that work in favour of near future results (aka surviving) but cost dearly in long term health, independence and economic strength.
donw 6y ago
I'm not sure that's specific to scarcity, though. Imagine two rooms, each with a caged bear. The bear is not happy being in a cage. A rich man, and a poor man, are ushered into their respective rooms, and told that the lock on the cage isn't all that reliable. I'd wager that they'd both suffer roughly equally on a provided IQ test. If you can't afford it, that car repair is an existential threat. You don't get that car fixed, you don't get to work, you lose your job, and then everything else that goes with that. Not to mention figuring out what you're going to do while your car is in the shop. Maybe you skimp on the repair, just do what you need to get it running again, and hope it doesn't turn into a bigger problem down the road. If you can afford it, it's an inconvenience. You drop your car off with the mechanic, get a rental or just Uber it to work, and pick up your car when it's ready. You'll pay to fix things properly, of course, because you can. I think it's not scarcity itself, but constantly living under existential fear that causes so many problems.
- goodpoint 6y ago
  > I think it's not scarcity itself, but constantly living under existential fear that causes so many problems. Correct: it's not money per-se, it's about desperately needing money in a society where money are crucial for survival. Often economists make the mistake of equating poverty == no money. Instead, not all economies are money-driven.
beefield 6y ago
Sorry, this may be too inflammable, but there is also evidence that cognitive ability is negatively correlated with conservativity. [1] So, what to do if you are conservative politician and want more voters? Do you try to make poor people better or worse off given these two data points (whose scientific validity I am not able to judge, but I have to admit, they do seem to make sense)? [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289609000051 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602...
H_Pylori 6y ago
Being poor means that you can't delegate a task like wealthier person would do. When you are poor you are often forced to become your own mechanic/doctor/accountant/lawyer (with results that can go from decent to tragic) and this takes a lot of mental cycles away from you. A part of your brain is always engaged in the process of allocating your scarce resources. All of the above takes quite a bit of effort that could be better spent studying or working, so there is some truth to what you are saying. It must also be said that a lot of poor people just aren't that bright and make very, VERY, poor decisions in life. Anybody who grew up in a dysfunctional family can attest that.
api 6y ago
> There are some illuminating (but terryfing) experiments in the book, where they show you can literally sabotage a low income persons score on an IQ test by mentioning a hypothetical car repair of 2000 dollars before they take it. Modern humans have existed for something like 100,000 years give or take a few tens of thousands, and yet we only started building anything particularly innovative in the last ~10,000 or so. So we spent 90% of our species' history doing very little in the way of cognitively challenging innovation. I wonder if this might not be the reason. Some have observed that hunter-gatherers often had better nutrition and were healthier than at least early civilized humans, but maybe they also lived under a perpetual cloud of fear about the next famine, raid, or plague. Maybe that basically shut down their capacity for higher cognition. Maybe they didn't have any time to sit down and think and do so free of concern about the future.
- prox 6y ago
  Another factor seems to be becoming sedentary as a species and gaining more sugars favoured the energy needs of the brain. That in turn allowed for people to focus on land ownership and dominance over others to secure this income.
- monodeldiablo 6y ago
  I think you're defining innovation too narrowly. There are lots of social, political, and behavioral innovations in hunter gatherer societies that may not necessarily manifest as technological innovations, but are no less innovative or clever. In my limited experience with these people, they are absolutely capable of higher cognition, including planning into the distant future.

prox 6y ago

I absolutely think this is a thing, speaking from experience. Working freelance and suddenly see your savings / income dry up due to circumstances. You start to go into “survival” mode which means you start making radical different decisions that work in favour of near future results (aka surviving) but cost dearly in long term health, independence and economic strength.

donw 6y ago

I'm not sure that's specific to scarcity, though. Imagine two rooms, each with a caged bear. The bear is not happy being in a cage. A rich man, and a poor man, are ushered into their respective rooms, and told that the lock on the cage isn't all that reliable. I'd wager that they'd both suffer roughly equally on a provided IQ test. If you can't afford it, that car repair is an existential threat. You don't get that car fixed, you don't get to work, you lose your job, and then everything else that goes with that. Not to mention figuring out what you're going to do while your car is in the shop. Maybe you skimp on the repair, just do what you need to get it running again, and hope it doesn't turn into a bigger problem down the road. If you can afford it, it's an inconvenience. You drop your car off with the mechanic, get a rental or just Uber it to work, and pick up your car when it's ready. You'll pay to fix things properly, of course, because you can. I think it's not scarcity itself, but constantly living under existential fear that causes so many problems.

goodpoint 6y ago
> I think it's not scarcity itself, but constantly living under existential fear that causes so many problems. Correct: it's not money per-se, it's about desperately needing money in a society where money are crucial for survival. Often economists make the mistake of equating poverty == no money. Instead, not all economies are money-driven.

beefield 6y ago

Sorry, this may be too inflammable, but there is also evidence that cognitive ability is negatively correlated with conservativity. [1] So, what to do if you are conservative politician and want more voters? Do you try to make poor people better or worse off given these two data points (whose scientific validity I am not able to judge, but I have to admit, they do seem to make sense)? [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289609000051 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602...

H_Pylori 6y ago

Being poor means that you can't delegate a task like wealthier person would do. When you are poor you are often forced to become your own mechanic/doctor/accountant/lawyer (with results that can go from decent to tragic) and this takes a lot of mental cycles away from you. A part of your brain is always engaged in the process of allocating your scarce resources. All of the above takes quite a bit of effort that could be better spent studying or working, so there is some truth to what you are saying. It must also be said that a lot of poor people just aren't that bright and make very, VERY, poor decisions in life. Anybody who grew up in a dysfunctional family can attest that.

api 6y ago

> There are some illuminating (but terryfing) experiments in the book, where they show you can literally sabotage a low income persons score on an IQ test by mentioning a hypothetical car repair of 2000 dollars before they take it. Modern humans have existed for something like 100,000 years give or take a few tens of thousands, and yet we only started building anything particularly innovative in the last ~10,000 or so. So we spent 90% of our species' history doing very little in the way of cognitively challenging innovation. I wonder if this might not be the reason. Some have observed that hunter-gatherers often had better nutrition and were healthier than at least early civilized humans, but maybe they also lived under a perpetual cloud of fear about the next famine, raid, or plague. Maybe that basically shut down their capacity for higher cognition. Maybe they didn't have any time to sit down and think and do so free of concern about the future.

prox 6y ago
Another factor seems to be becoming sedentary as a species and gaining more sugars favoured the energy needs of the brain. That in turn allowed for people to focus on land ownership and dominance over others to secure this income.
monodeldiablo 6y ago
I think you're defining innovation too narrowly. There are lots of social, political, and behavioral innovations in hunter gatherer societies that may not necessarily manifest as technological innovations, but are no less innovative or clever. In my limited experience with these people, they are absolutely capable of higher cognition, including planning into the distant future.