8 ms·

Tl;dr Poor people (and racial and ethnic minorities, and women, and queer folk) are not dumb. They just have to turn their equal cognitive resources towards thi

• username90 5y ago
  No, the solution is to acknowledge that they are dumb and therefore focus resources with the assumption that they are dumb. USA assumes that poor people are smart, Europe assumes poor people are dumb. The European way is much better, and yes poor people in American are dumb, just like they are in Europe.
  • domador 5y ago
    Is this sarcasm?
    • username90 5y ago
      No. I think that dumb people deserve good lives as well, having policies that only works for non dumb people is dumb.
      • domador 5y ago
        Hmm... I'd agree that policies should help everyone, including people who are "dumb"... but not that poor people are categorically dumb.
        • username90 5y ago
          Not all poor people are dumb, but most are. And since we are talking about statistical level effects poor people being dumb will greatly influence them. So instead of asking "why are poor people fat, we should fix that!" you can also ask "why are dumb people fat, we should fix that!". The second gives a lot of different angles and can help find solutions the first question wont find.
  • lawn 5y ago
    What an absolutely dumb comment.
    • username90 5y ago
      I agree, it is so much better to say things that sounds good but doesn't help anyone. What I said doesn't benefit me at all, but spouting platitudes would.
    • elzbardico 5y ago
      Yes. The author of the comment seems not the understand simple concepts like averages and normal distributions. Additionally, he/her seems to assume a causal relationship where if you're poor it is because you're dumb, and not the other way around, or even a mix of those two things. Yeah, on average, poor people score a few points low than the average for rich people. true. But this is not an absolute as the post's author seems to believe. It doesn't mean all poor people are dumb, or that you are automatically smarter than someone who is poorer than you. Picture mentally two bell curves with a lot of overlap and very long tails. Things are in reality way more nuanced than this dumb statement that poor == dumb. On the aggregate, it is a useful datapoint, it means that probably as a society, you should reserve some more resources for education in poorer neighborhoods.
      • bluecalm 5y ago
        The society would benefit the most from policies that encourage smart and successful people to have more children.
        • jschwartzi 5y ago
          I can think of at least one society that formed in the 1930's for which this was an absolute mandate! But I don't recall reading much about them past about 1945, so perhaps you should do some further research.
          • bluecalm 5y ago
  • StavrosK 5y ago
    This comment cannot be saying what it seems to be saying, can you clarify what you mean? Maybe it was worded oddly.
    • username90 5y ago
      First point: I live in Scandinavia. Poor people are just as dumb here as in USA, but we take better care of them. USA assumes that poor people should be able to take care of themselves, which doesn't work. Taking care of them doesn't make them smarter, but it makes their lives better which is the point.
      • StavrosK 5y ago
        That's not about smartness or dumbness, though. I don't think intelligence is correlated with poverty much, but poverty is additional difficulty, so they have to work harder for the same thing as someone who isn't poor.
        • username90 5y ago
          But that isn't an issue where I'm from. The lifestyle difference between people with degrees and working class is tiny since the wage gaps are so small, and then add all government aids paying for everything including school lunches, daycare, college, healthcare etc on top of that. But still people from working class households perform extremely poorly. Helping them isn't about making them smarter or unlocking new potential because that doesn't work, it is simply to make everyone live a decent life.
          • unbalancedevh 5y ago
            It still doesn't necessarily come down to intelligence. It could just as well be motivation, or laziness, or other social pressures.
        • zepto 5y ago
          > I don't think intelligence is correlated with poverty much This is contrary to the available science. IQ and earnings are strongly correlated.
  • sophacles 5y ago
    So your intelligence is based on how much money your parents made? Your intrinsic ability to be educated is a function of someone else's wallet? Something seems off in this statement. I wish your parents had money, then your statement would probably be coherent!
    • username90 5y ago
      No, intelligence is mostly inherited. If your biological parents were smart then you will almost surely be smart and vice versa. And smart people end to earn more money, so intelligence is indirectly correlated with parental wealth. But when you put kids from poor parents into rich households they will continue to do poorly. They do a bit better, but their biological parents still matters more. If it was easy to produce smart kids then we would already do it, since smart people are so much more valuable to society the small amounts it requires to add that extra value would be nothing. But no country has managed to do this so far, its just a slow climb that follows the same trend in every western society no matter what policies they implemented.
      • yonaguska 5y ago
        It's not uncommon for smart people to be poor. You can be intelligent and have intelligent parents that came from poor countries, maybe parents that experienced a debilitating traumatic experience keeping them from working, or mental illnesses that don't inhibit intelligence, but do inhibit basic survival.
      • periya 5y ago
        Intelligence is not completely due to genetics as you are suggesting and has to do more with socio-economic conditions. Read “guns germs and steel” for why human development through the ages has a lot do with just being at the right place at the right time.
        • proxyon 5y ago
          > Intelligence is not completely due to genetics as you are suggesting and has to do more with socio-economic conditions This goes against all of the scientific literature we have. Intelligence is determined by genetics. It can be artificially lowered via poor socio-economic conditions, but it mostly cannot be lifted by higher socio economic conditions. In laymans terms, a traumatic life can make a child who was otherwise going to be smart not so smart, but a good life cannot make a child who was going to be dumb intelligent. Socioeconomic conditions can lower the intelligence determined by genetics, they cannot improve intelligence determined by genetics.
  • zozbot234 5y ago
    > Europe assumes poor people are dumb. This is one of the many drawbacks of socialism, even the "socialism with Scandinavian characteristics" that everyone seems to be obsessed with lately in the U.S. It assumes government paper-pushers are the smartest people around with the highest I.Q. ever, and everyone else is just a dumb lightweight. It's all about that soft bigotry of low expectations.
    • christkv 5y ago
      This trope has to die. The Scandinavian countries are market economies with a social benefits and health care system not socialist countries.
      • zozbot234 5y ago
        Tell that to the Bernie bros.
    • imtringued 5y ago
      I don't get it. People form societies because we are better off collectively. We run into problems where some people manage to rig society in a way that some people are consistently worse off and others are consistently better off. Society as a whole is better off => every single member is better of. There is no such relationship. However, since every individual directly contributes to the total productivity of society, we want every member to reach their maximum potential and one way to achieve that is to introduce welfare so that people at the bottom don't have to be homeless or starve because we want them to have a second chance at life.
  • bumby 5y ago
    Is it possible this is a multi-variate problem and there are other systemic variables that better explain the differences in income? It seems folly to boil something as complex and social as economics to a single input like IQ to draw such strong conclusions
• jhap 5y ago
  I recommend the book Scarcity for anyone interested in learning more about the psychology behind this. It was written Mullainathan and Shafir, both stars in their respective fields.
• nerdponx 5y ago
  Well-said. Can you blame the author for being overweight and not wanting to put up with feeling self-conscious at the gym? Being poor can push you to your limits even just trying to survive every day, not to mention be an effective worker, and being a good parent/spouse/partner/friend/family/etc to whoever is in your life. Doing 45 minutes of cardio while also feeling like an outsider is just not in the time or energy budget.
  • elzbardico 5y ago
    And when you worry about the possibility of someday not being able to afford food due to some extend unemployment episode, when you feel vulnerable any time you hear the word "recession" on the news, it is hard to convince your body not to eat as much as possible now, while food is abundant.
• swader999 5y ago
  People don't give credit to luck enough imo.
  • 2cb 5y ago
    Agreed here. I quite openly will say I’m lucky to have an intense interest in computers and to develop enough skill with them to get a job in the high paying tech industry. I didn’t choose what my passions, talents, or skills are after all. I’m always surprised that people tend to take exception to this, saying it’s nothing to do with luck, I worked hard. That’s also true. I did and still do work hard. But that doesn’t invalidate the fact that I had zero control over the fact I happen to live in a society that relies upon, and therefore places a high value on, the area I happen to be skilled in. There’s people with great talent in other areas that are very hard to make a living from. Much of where we end up in life is determined by luck and chance. That doesn’t mean we’re not also working for what we have. Just means there’s multiple variables, life is unpredictable and isn’t fully within our control, and if we happen to be highly talented at something society places great value on there’s an element of luck at play.
  • throwawaybbq1 5y ago
    Yes .. but. I had a great education/CV early in my career, and had the opportunity to interview at some of the top most companies prior to their IPO (some when they were tiny companies). Google, Facebook, Stripe and maybe 3 more that went on to be billion dollar exits. I screwed up every single time. Either I did not take the interview seriously, or took a more prestigious academic job compared to the start up opportunity. Talk about being in the right place, at the right time and still missing out. I have barely paid off a small fraction of my starter home (no longer in the Bay area). I really wonder if it is just luck or more complex than that. (Good) Luck got me the right opportunity,but it can't just be (Bad) luck that snatched away all those opportunities from materializing? Clear, I made extremely bad decisions, missed out on the greatest wealth creation event in history, and must live with this till my end. Edit. There is a rich-dad, poor-dad point I'd like to make. My parents were extremely bad with investments and not very educated. This made me chase the higher prestige academic jobs as opposed to the lucrative startups. Also, when my white friends (with moderately-rich parents) were buying houses at 5% down, I said they were crazy and I was paying off 5% interest education loans, saving up for a bigger down-payment, buying my car for cash, etc. My parents went through the days of 20% interest and never understood the power of leverage. They passed on risk-aversion to me. Even now, I understand the power of leverage, but am still scared to use it.
• tomp 5y ago
  Women? You do realize that men are more often victims of violent attacks and murders than women? Many (most?) of us are always vigilant for signs of potential violence, particularly when surrounded by groups of seemingly violent and/or armed people.
• Applejinx 5y ago
  OP here: more like, if people's resources are NOT equal (and people's abilities are not really fungible: you can have someone who's not that great but has a novel POV, or a helpful trait) then this tilts things harshly against them. You wind up with people who are not the brightest and greatest, burdened by massive cognitive overhead, hindered rather than groomed for success, and then as a society we turn around and look at the ones who were a bit better at stuff and point to their opulence and go 'look how MUCH better this person is!' People don't have to be equal for this to be a concern. It's a matter of whether you think society's best served by finding the most exceptional person and then having them rule everything. Even if you were able to do that, even if the person IS quite superior, they will never measure up to the bar society sets for them. They're good, but they're not nearly as good as their wealth would make it appear. And you look at poor people or people who are flat out failing at life. They're not good, but they're not NEARLY as not-good as their poverty would make it appear. You're seeing them at their worst, and it's a wasted resource on a colossal scale. So this is basically the argument for 'create UBI under capitalism and dominate the world through the proliferation of cool GDP you create out of all your small business people'. Basically, 'one Elon Musk is useless compared to ten thousand folks a tenth as good as him'. :)