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I don't believe it. I think it's woo. There's no reason for my health to be harmed just because someone has more than me. I'm open to being proven wrong, but I

I don't believe it. I think it's woo. There's no reason for my health to be harmed just because someone has more than me. I'm open to being proven wrong, but I think this is another social science fad, another victim of academia's ideological blinkers and confirmation bias avalanche. It'll be in and out, just like how eggs and wine and chocolate are good for you on Tuesday and bad for you again by Thursday. EDIT: Yes, I'm sure envious people can tie themselves in knots over inequality, but I don't see this as a social problem. It's a personal psychological problem for those people. And I am skeptical that it is so common as to be my problem.

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lifeisstillgood 5y ago
It's not that they have more. It's that you know they have more, that it's not fair they have more because they are not better than you, and the path to get more is blocked / unfairly policed. And that eats you up inside. And that eating up is constantly firing stress hormones and heardening your heart. In short, anger leads to hate, hate leads to the dark side.
- civilized 5y ago
  Then the research is inaccurately described. They should talk about perceived injustice, not merely inequality. Even the Chinese Communist Party came to realize that people must be allowed to reap unequal rewards (based on their talent and labor) to escape desperate poverty. Their agricultural productivity tripled when they let people sell some of their produce rather than turning it all over to the state [1]. This is how Deng Xiaoping began his rise to power in a country gripped by the madness of Maoism. By accepting inequality even though the Communists have always demonized its socioeconomic manifestations. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%27s_Rural_Reform https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%27s_Rural_Reform
- Natsu 5y ago
  The problem is that, no matter what the actual causes are, self interest bias generally makes it so that nobody can accept that another person worked harder or used better strategy or whatever. For example, in games, it's always lag/bad teammates/etc. that keep them in "Elo hell" and they want to 1v1 you despite it being a team game and they ignore game winning objectives to score meaningless kills or whatever. Never mind everyone starts with exactly the same resources every time. Yes, yes, bad lag can have an effect on the margins, but some of the best players I knew were playing from another continent with terrible ping and bad lag doesn't have any effect on bad tactics. I've been in, and climbed out of that Elo in plenty of games, and I know just how sharply the mindsets change as you climb.
  - hotpotamus 5y ago
    > Never mind everyone starts with exactly the same resources every time. In a game sure, but does this seem to reflect lived reality? Edit: in fact, I don't know what game you're refering to, but imagine a game where your opponent was given an order of magnitude more HP or an hour to level up/prepare before you entered the game. Is this a game you would want to play?
    - Natsu 5y ago
      I don't want it to be about one specific game because it happens in lots of games. There's always someone who will make horribly bad tactical decisions to ignore game winning objectives and blame that on "lag" or something ridiculous. And the ones I have in mind are such that people do start with the same resources every time. Though if you want to discuss P2W games, those where actual skill is involved not infrequently have no-skill whales lose to skilled players. In those it depends on the scale of the P2W and how much skill plays into the actual contest, though. Finally, to your edit, yes, many people play MMOs and even join ones where other players have already maxed everything before they created their first character. Not everyone feels the need to be #1 or even cares if someone has more than they do, because obsessing about that stuff is a sure way to hurt your own mental health.
umvi 5y ago
> There's no reason for my health to be harmed just because someone has more than me. You would think so, but I've read several articles that suggest this isn't the case. One example that comes to mind is that in some communities kids experience social stress/bullying if their SMS bubbles aren't blue (because it implies you are too poor to afford an iPhone and can only afford a "lesser" Android): https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-apples-imessage-is-winning-teens-dread-the-green-text-bubble-11641618009 https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-apples-imessage-is-winning-... From the article: > Apple’s iMessage plays a significant role in the lives of young smartphone users and their parents, according to data and interviews with a dozen of these people. Teens and college students said they dread the ostracism that comes with a green text. The social pressure is palpable, with some reporting being ostracized or singled out after switching away from iPhones.
- ghotli 5y ago
  Fuck apple for this. Their walled garden is nice if you can afford it / deal with all the other shortcomings of modern iOS vs modern Android. Goes both ways in some respects, but the iMessage thing is way past time to have nice interop. Comes down to greed, I guess
- civilized 5y ago
  So is it the different colored text bubbles (the inequality) or is it the bullying that's the problem here? I don't think it's a hard question.
- wetpaws 5y ago
  This is not inequality, this is tribalism
  - sutuplesu 5y ago
    Are they not interlinked? It seems to me that inequality often begets tribalism, as people defensively form bands. Which then reinforces the spiral downwards.
    - 5y ago
chinchilla2020 5y ago
Furthermore, none of these studies are reproducible.
brewdad 5y ago
One obvious example is housing. Those that have more than you can afford to live in safer neighborhoods. Those less well off but still able to afford to own a home will be forced to live in neighborhoods with higher crime, higher levels of pollution, "food deserts", or any other number of negative factors. Sure, you can opt to drive til you qualify and avoid some of those problems but now you spend an hour or more each way in your car. That too comes with negative consequences to your health.
- civilized 5y ago
  That's poverty though, not inequality per se.
  - chongli 5y ago
    It’s not poverty though. If you can afford a car, an iPhone, laptop, plenty of food to eat, TV, refrigerator, washer and dryer, and all sorts of other toys and time saving appliances, you’re not in poverty by any global or historical standards. You may still be unable to afford to own a house in a clean, safe area with access to a decent school. That’s inequality, not poverty.
    - civilized 5y ago
      > You may still be unable to afford to own a house in a clean, safe area with access to a decent school. That’s inequality, not poverty. But this sentence contains no reference to how X having more than Y caused Y to suffer. It contains a description of how Y could be better off if Y had more. If inequality was eliminated by making it so no one had access to safe schools, it would not solve the problem at all. If you don't want to call the problem poverty, whatever, but it's definitely not inequality.
      - meowkit 5y ago
        I assume you don't know who Robert Sapolsky is in the parent comment. "how X having more than Y caused Y to suffer" is the observation of someone who is above you in the hierarchy of A (A is whatever measure you want, usually its financial wealth or social status). This involuntary comparison allows you to derive your relative position, and this is a biologically stressful activity when you are toward the bottom of the hierarchy. This constant reflexive update is not great for people in a highly unequal society because its a constant stress inducer and has direct physical and mental health implications that bleed over into things like the political sphere. Both "pointy" hierarchies and flattened hierarchies are bad. Flattened hierarchies are when we are all equal, and thus society stagnates. Pointy hierarchies are the traditional kings at the top, serfs at the bottom. These inevitably collapse at some point for multitudes of reasons. There is probably a happy, more stable medium. Societies that are becoming unequal have a gradient trending toward the pointy hierarchy state. Poverty is a specific threshold of material wealth, and is related, but ultimately orthogonal to the discussion.
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rodgerd 5y ago
> I don't believe it. I think it's woo. [...] ideological blinkers and confirmation bias Physician, heal thyself.
scrozart 5y ago
Do you have research and data to back you stance, like OP provided?
- jl6 5y ago
  I don’t think it’s reasonable to assume a study is correct just because a contradictory study or replication failure has not yet been published. This particular study seems to be a case of extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence. If true, the implications are enormous: medical justification for a wealth cap! Something which has never been attempted anywhere in the world in all of history.
jl6 5y ago
> There's no reason for my health to be harmed just because someone has more than me. Being angry all the time can harm your health. Maybe being envious all the time can too.
- civilized 5y ago
  Then envious people can work on themselves, as we've always understood envy to be a moral problem.
  - jl6 5y ago
    Quite. I’m just proposing a mechanism. The solution could quite well be psychotherapy rather than communism.
  - Cederfjard 5y ago
    Well, but is it possible that this is a very fundamental part of human psychology and thus not very easily overcome, especially on a societal level? Maybe we’re as hardwired to be stressed and anxious when we see someone else with more resources as we are to start looking for food when we’re hungry.
    - civilized 5y ago
      Or maybe it's something people can and should get over, as many traditional moral systems have taught.
      - Cederfjard 5y ago
        And people should definitely stop raping and murdering each other, do you have a realistic plan for making that happen in the foreseeable future? You’re being very flippant about something which is extremely challenging, changing human behavior at scale. If you want to be pragmatic you can’t just sit and pout that people aren’t behaving as well as they could - unfortunately that’s something you most likely will just have to live with.
  - 5y ago
Frondo 5y ago
Since you're asserting that you don't believe the results of this research because it's "woo" -- can you explain what type of evidence, or what degree of impact, or how deep or impeccable the link must be established for you to accept it? Is it even possible that you are, as you say, open to being proven wrong? (I ask this in good faith, because I've been arguing on the internet for 25+ years, and whenever someone says this, I end up asking them what would persuade them and the answer is usually "nothing," which, ... okay ..., but I am an eternal optimist and I strive to take people at their written word.)
- civilized 5y ago
  I'm sure that envious people can impose suffering on themselves by obsessing over those who have more than them. But I don't see another causal pathway. I'd like to see the causal pathway. Otherwise it's on a scientific level with ESP.
colechristensen 5y ago
Many studies show chemical markers of these things, it's not just psychological behavioral studies (which are often quite dubious) but easily measurable outcomes. If you're thinking quite narrowly, your point seems reasonable, it's probably below significance to say your neighbor with the bigger house and nicer car is "healthier", but this is a lot different than them vs the family that sometimes skips meals because they can't afford to put food on the table with the knowledge that a lost job will mean homelessness. Good arguments are resources by Robert Sapolsky https://www.amazon.com/Stress-and-Your-Body-audiobook/dp/B00DTO688C https://www.amazon.com/Stress-and-Your-Body-audiobook/dp/B00... or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA&list=PL848F2368C90DDC3D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA&list=PL848F2368C... or any of the books he has published (many have significantly overlapping content)
pm90 5y ago
You either believe in science or you don’t. A lot of scientific findings don’t make intuitive sense (like relativity). So we rely on the scientific methods to guide us to the truth rather than our primitive ape minds. Skepticism is part of the scientific method; but just saying “hmm it doesn’t feel right to me” isn’t really useful.
- glerk 5y ago
  There is a difference between physics and economics/social “science”.
- civilized 5y ago
  > Skepticism is part of the scientific method; but just saying “hmm it doesn’t feel right to me” isn’t really useful. Have you ever been a scientist? Scientists react this way to published research all the time, especially in fields like psychology where epistemic and empirical methods are weak.
  - pm90 5y ago
    The OP did not claim to be a social scientist so I assume they are a layperson and not a trained scientist.
- kansface 5y ago
  Just the opposite - consider the replication crisis. Our a priori belief should be that any published paper in the social sciences is junk without extremely compelling evidence to the contrary. This is an evidenced based position! Or, let’s completely disregard the studies themselves and look at the fruits of their labors. Is eg education noticeably better now than it was a generation ago? Is our mental health better now than then, etc etc.
ahoho 5y ago
Ironically, I think you're letting your view of academia distort your own thinking here. The mechanism isn't that complex. Anywhere resources are limited can lead to outcomes where an unequal society is worse off than an equal one. If I have a finite supply of doctors, for example, then the wealthy will be the ones who receive care while the poor go without. The wealthy also tend to set up systematic barriers to ensure that the resources they fund serve them alone [1]. In the US, this is probably best exemplified by public education: schools are funded by property taxes, so rich districts have better schools, which in turn further increases home values (a process exacerbated by policies that prevent construction of cheaper, higher-density housing---policies supported by, naturally, the wealthy). Schools in poorer districts are therefore worse off than they would be if wealth weren't as concentrated. Even if you take the perspective that, net, an equal amount of dollars is going toward education (or healthcare, etc.), it's fairly obvious the marginal benefits are different. A second violin teacher isn't as meaningful as adding a calculus class; elective cosmetic surgery isn't equivalent to treating diabetes. [1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-birth-of-a-new-american-aristocracy/559130/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-bir...
- deleted 5y ago
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- civilized 5y ago
  This is just your speculation. A bunch of other people in this comment tree say it's not about outcomes in an unequal society being worse than outcomes in a (hypothetical, possibly unachievable) equal society with the same resources. Instead it's about a hardwired biological stress response that people lower in the social hierarchy have when they observe people higher up. So before we go lecturing about how it "isn't that complex" let's make sure we understand what this thing is that's supposedly not that complex.
  - ahoho 5y ago
    Where's the speculation? I shared a concrete example. Places without that method of funding have more equitable education systems. I'm not really concerned what others are saying. You made the claim that "There's no reason for my health to be harmed just because someone has more than me." I just gave an intuitive explanation of how this could happen. And you can see this happening on a global scale: wealthy countries attract more higher-skilled workers, like doctors. These are educated, capable people not contributing those skills to their home countries (to be clear, I wholeheartedly support open immigration policies, but that doesn't mean "brain drain" isn't real). EDIT: ah, I was not reading carefully, and realize you are saying "I see no reason for my health to be harmed by the sole fact of being poorer than someone else." I am not familiar with Sapolsky's research and can't speculate. In principle, I do see why you'd think it's hard to disentangle the material impacts of inequality from the psychological.

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lifeisstillgood 5y ago

It's not that they have more. It's that you know they have more, that it's not fair they have more because they are not better than you, and the path to get more is blocked / unfairly policed. And that eats you up inside. And that eating up is constantly firing stress hormones and heardening your heart. In short, anger leads to hate, hate leads to the dark side.

civilized 5y ago
Then the research is inaccurately described. They should talk about perceived injustice, not merely inequality. Even the Chinese Communist Party came to realize that people must be allowed to reap unequal rewards (based on their talent and labor) to escape desperate poverty. Their agricultural productivity tripled when they let people sell some of their produce rather than turning it all over to the state [1]. This is how Deng Xiaoping began his rise to power in a country gripped by the madness of Maoism. By accepting inequality even though the Communists have always demonized its socioeconomic manifestations. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%27s_Rural_Reform https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%27s_Rural_Reform
Natsu 5y ago
The problem is that, no matter what the actual causes are, self interest bias generally makes it so that nobody can accept that another person worked harder or used better strategy or whatever. For example, in games, it's always lag/bad teammates/etc. that keep them in "Elo hell" and they want to 1v1 you despite it being a team game and they ignore game winning objectives to score meaningless kills or whatever. Never mind everyone starts with exactly the same resources every time. Yes, yes, bad lag can have an effect on the margins, but some of the best players I knew were playing from another continent with terrible ping and bad lag doesn't have any effect on bad tactics. I've been in, and climbed out of that Elo in plenty of games, and I know just how sharply the mindsets change as you climb.
- hotpotamus 5y ago
  > Never mind everyone starts with exactly the same resources every time. In a game sure, but does this seem to reflect lived reality? Edit: in fact, I don't know what game you're refering to, but imagine a game where your opponent was given an order of magnitude more HP or an hour to level up/prepare before you entered the game. Is this a game you would want to play?
  - Natsu 5y ago
    I don't want it to be about one specific game because it happens in lots of games. There's always someone who will make horribly bad tactical decisions to ignore game winning objectives and blame that on "lag" or something ridiculous. And the ones I have in mind are such that people do start with the same resources every time. Though if you want to discuss P2W games, those where actual skill is involved not infrequently have no-skill whales lose to skilled players. In those it depends on the scale of the P2W and how much skill plays into the actual contest, though. Finally, to your edit, yes, many people play MMOs and even join ones where other players have already maxed everything before they created their first character. Not everyone feels the need to be #1 or even cares if someone has more than they do, because obsessing about that stuff is a sure way to hurt your own mental health.

umvi 5y ago

> There's no reason for my health to be harmed just because someone has more than me. You would think so, but I've read several articles that suggest this isn't the case. One example that comes to mind is that in some communities kids experience social stress/bullying if their SMS bubbles aren't blue (because it implies you are too poor to afford an iPhone and can only afford a "lesser" Android): https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-apples-imessage-is-winning-teens-dread-the-green-text-bubble-11641618009 https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-apples-imessage-is-winning-... From the article: > Apple’s iMessage plays a significant role in the lives of young smartphone users and their parents, according to data and interviews with a dozen of these people. Teens and college students said they dread the ostracism that comes with a green text. The social pressure is palpable, with some reporting being ostracized or singled out after switching away from iPhones.

ghotli 5y ago
Fuck apple for this. Their walled garden is nice if you can afford it / deal with all the other shortcomings of modern iOS vs modern Android. Goes both ways in some respects, but the iMessage thing is way past time to have nice interop. Comes down to greed, I guess
civilized 5y ago
So is it the different colored text bubbles (the inequality) or is it the bullying that's the problem here? I don't think it's a hard question.
wetpaws 5y ago
This is not inequality, this is tribalism
- sutuplesu 5y ago
  Are they not interlinked? It seems to me that inequality often begets tribalism, as people defensively form bands. Which then reinforces the spiral downwards.
  - 5y ago

chinchilla2020 5y ago

Furthermore, none of these studies are reproducible.

brewdad 5y ago

One obvious example is housing. Those that have more than you can afford to live in safer neighborhoods. Those less well off but still able to afford to own a home will be forced to live in neighborhoods with higher crime, higher levels of pollution, "food deserts", or any other number of negative factors. Sure, you can opt to drive til you qualify and avoid some of those problems but now you spend an hour or more each way in your car. That too comes with negative consequences to your health.

civilized 5y ago
That's poverty though, not inequality per se.
- chongli 5y ago
  It’s not poverty though. If you can afford a car, an iPhone, laptop, plenty of food to eat, TV, refrigerator, washer and dryer, and all sorts of other toys and time saving appliances, you’re not in poverty by any global or historical standards. You may still be unable to afford to own a house in a clean, safe area with access to a decent school. That’s inequality, not poverty.
  - civilized 5y ago
    > You may still be unable to afford to own a house in a clean, safe area with access to a decent school. That’s inequality, not poverty. But this sentence contains no reference to how X having more than Y caused Y to suffer. It contains a description of how Y could be better off if Y had more. If inequality was eliminated by making it so no one had access to safe schools, it would not solve the problem at all. If you don't want to call the problem poverty, whatever, but it's definitely not inequality.
    - meowkit 5y ago
      I assume you don't know who Robert Sapolsky is in the parent comment. "how X having more than Y caused Y to suffer" is the observation of someone who is above you in the hierarchy of A (A is whatever measure you want, usually its financial wealth or social status). This involuntary comparison allows you to derive your relative position, and this is a biologically stressful activity when you are toward the bottom of the hierarchy. This constant reflexive update is not great for people in a highly unequal society because its a constant stress inducer and has direct physical and mental health implications that bleed over into things like the political sphere. Both "pointy" hierarchies and flattened hierarchies are bad. Flattened hierarchies are when we are all equal, and thus society stagnates. Pointy hierarchies are the traditional kings at the top, serfs at the bottom. These inevitably collapse at some point for multitudes of reasons. There is probably a happy, more stable medium. Societies that are becoming unequal have a gradient trending toward the pointy hierarchy state. Poverty is a specific threshold of material wealth, and is related, but ultimately orthogonal to the discussion.

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rodgerd 5y ago

> I don't believe it. I think it's woo. [...] ideological blinkers and confirmation bias Physician, heal thyself.

scrozart 5y ago

Do you have research and data to back you stance, like OP provided?

jl6 5y ago
I don’t think it’s reasonable to assume a study is correct just because a contradictory study or replication failure has not yet been published. This particular study seems to be a case of extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence. If true, the implications are enormous: medical justification for a wealth cap! Something which has never been attempted anywhere in the world in all of history.

jl6 5y ago

> There's no reason for my health to be harmed just because someone has more than me. Being angry all the time can harm your health. Maybe being envious all the time can too.

civilized 5y ago
Then envious people can work on themselves, as we've always understood envy to be a moral problem.
- jl6 5y ago
  Quite. I’m just proposing a mechanism. The solution could quite well be psychotherapy rather than communism.
- Cederfjard 5y ago
  Well, but is it possible that this is a very fundamental part of human psychology and thus not very easily overcome, especially on a societal level? Maybe we’re as hardwired to be stressed and anxious when we see someone else with more resources as we are to start looking for food when we’re hungry.
  - civilized 5y ago
    Or maybe it's something people can and should get over, as many traditional moral systems have taught.
    - Cederfjard 5y ago
      And people should definitely stop raping and murdering each other, do you have a realistic plan for making that happen in the foreseeable future? You’re being very flippant about something which is extremely challenging, changing human behavior at scale. If you want to be pragmatic you can’t just sit and pout that people aren’t behaving as well as they could - unfortunately that’s something you most likely will just have to live with.
- 5y ago

Frondo 5y ago

Since you're asserting that you don't believe the results of this research because it's "woo" -- can you explain what type of evidence, or what degree of impact, or how deep or impeccable the link must be established for you to accept it? Is it even possible that you are, as you say, open to being proven wrong? (I ask this in good faith, because I've been arguing on the internet for 25+ years, and whenever someone says this, I end up asking them what would persuade them and the answer is usually "nothing," which, ... okay ..., but I am an eternal optimist and I strive to take people at their written word.)

civilized 5y ago
I'm sure that envious people can impose suffering on themselves by obsessing over those who have more than them. But I don't see another causal pathway. I'd like to see the causal pathway. Otherwise it's on a scientific level with ESP.

colechristensen 5y ago

Many studies show chemical markers of these things, it's not just psychological behavioral studies (which are often quite dubious) but easily measurable outcomes. If you're thinking quite narrowly, your point seems reasonable, it's probably below significance to say your neighbor with the bigger house and nicer car is "healthier", but this is a lot different than them vs the family that sometimes skips meals because they can't afford to put food on the table with the knowledge that a lost job will mean homelessness. Good arguments are resources by Robert Sapolsky https://www.amazon.com/Stress-and-Your-Body-audiobook/dp/B00DTO688C https://www.amazon.com/Stress-and-Your-Body-audiobook/dp/B00... or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA&list=PL848F2368C90DDC3D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA&list=PL848F2368C... or any of the books he has published (many have significantly overlapping content)

pm90 5y ago

You either believe in science or you don’t. A lot of scientific findings don’t make intuitive sense (like relativity). So we rely on the scientific methods to guide us to the truth rather than our primitive ape minds. Skepticism is part of the scientific method; but just saying “hmm it doesn’t feel right to me” isn’t really useful.

glerk 5y ago
There is a difference between physics and economics/social “science”.
civilized 5y ago
> Skepticism is part of the scientific method; but just saying “hmm it doesn’t feel right to me” isn’t really useful. Have you ever been a scientist? Scientists react this way to published research all the time, especially in fields like psychology where epistemic and empirical methods are weak.
- pm90 5y ago
  The OP did not claim to be a social scientist so I assume they are a layperson and not a trained scientist.
kansface 5y ago
Just the opposite - consider the replication crisis. Our a priori belief should be that any published paper in the social sciences is junk without extremely compelling evidence to the contrary. This is an evidenced based position! Or, let’s completely disregard the studies themselves and look at the fruits of their labors. Is eg education noticeably better now than it was a generation ago? Is our mental health better now than then, etc etc.

ahoho 5y ago

Ironically, I think you're letting your view of academia distort your own thinking here. The mechanism isn't that complex. Anywhere resources are limited can lead to outcomes where an unequal society is worse off than an equal one. If I have a finite supply of doctors, for example, then the wealthy will be the ones who receive care while the poor go without. The wealthy also tend to set up systematic barriers to ensure that the resources they fund serve them alone [1]. In the US, this is probably best exemplified by public education: schools are funded by property taxes, so rich districts have better schools, which in turn further increases home values (a process exacerbated by policies that prevent construction of cheaper, higher-density housing---policies supported by, naturally, the wealthy). Schools in poorer districts are therefore worse off than they would be if wealth weren't as concentrated. Even if you take the perspective that, net, an equal amount of dollars is going toward education (or healthcare, etc.), it's fairly obvious the marginal benefits are different. A second violin teacher isn't as meaningful as adding a calculus class; elective cosmetic surgery isn't equivalent to treating diabetes. [1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-birth-of-a-new-american-aristocracy/559130/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-bir...

deleted 5y ago
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civilized 5y ago
This is just your speculation. A bunch of other people in this comment tree say it's not about outcomes in an unequal society being worse than outcomes in a (hypothetical, possibly unachievable) equal society with the same resources. Instead it's about a hardwired biological stress response that people lower in the social hierarchy have when they observe people higher up. So before we go lecturing about how it "isn't that complex" let's make sure we understand what this thing is that's supposedly not that complex.
- ahoho 5y ago
  Where's the speculation? I shared a concrete example. Places without that method of funding have more equitable education systems. I'm not really concerned what others are saying. You made the claim that "There's no reason for my health to be harmed just because someone has more than me." I just gave an intuitive explanation of how this could happen. And you can see this happening on a global scale: wealthy countries attract more higher-skilled workers, like doctors. These are educated, capable people not contributing those skills to their home countries (to be clear, I wholeheartedly support open immigration policies, but that doesn't mean "brain drain" isn't real). EDIT: ah, I was not reading carefully, and realize you are saying "I see no reason for my health to be harmed by the sole fact of being poorer than someone else." I am not familiar with Sapolsky's research and can't speculate. In principle, I do see why you'd think it's hard to disentangle the material impacts of inequality from the psychological.