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I'm disappointed that this comment is being downvoted silently. You're correct, it's the same basic mindset. If nothing else, consider the "Pascal's Wager" of p

I'm disappointed that this comment is being downvoted silently. You're correct, it's the same basic mindset. If nothing else, consider the "Pascal's Wager" of poverty: somebody who is poor should assume he can, by his sole effort, "pull himself up by his bootstraps" to a better life. This will help him get the best chance at doing so. If not, it doesn't matter anyway. So yes, we should "push" a positive mindset on those in poverty. And anecdotally, it worked for me and a lot of other people I know, and I think most of the people who claim otherwise do so to justify their political goal of an enlarged socdem welfare state that provides "benefits" to everybody instead of just "the needy".

WalterBright 5y ago
> I'm disappointed that this comment is being downvoted silently. I expected it. I have plenty of experience on HN with my opinion that people have agency in their lives.
- awb 5y ago
  That’s a simplistic view that lacks nuance. There are many scenarios where you don’t have agency. At some point during the day you will inevitably trust someone else to prepare food for you, give you advice, collect information, enforce rules, etc. As important as it is to acknowledge your own agency (you’re 100% right about that), you’d be remiss to ignore all the instances where you don’t.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    The ones I give my opinion on agency on are ones where people do have agency. > At some point during the day you will inevitably trust someone else to prepare food for you, give you advice, collect information, enforce rules, etc. Trusting someone is something entirely different from having agency.
    - awb 5y ago
      Related to your parent comment: > It's also been extended to the notion that if one fails, it is always someone else's fault. Sometimes it is someone else’s fault. But no one is saying it’s always someone else’s fault. And what I meant by trust is that you have the illusion of agency in many situations. People think they have full agency over their health: they get to choose what to eat, where and how to exercise, what medicine to take, etc. Except we are restricted by our economic situation, local availability, local knowledge, social influences, etc. such that no two people have the exact same agency. I’m an extreme example, people are shunned or banned from communities for making certain decisions with their lives. In those scenarios, it isn’t a free market scenario where two choices can be evaluated and the best one picked. The deck is heavily stacked and your agency is impacted to some degree, such that saying that “people have agency over their lives” is too simplistic IMO.
      - WalterBright 5y ago
        Having an agency is a book length topic. Of course a HN message is going to be short & simple. After all, people don't read long postings. <= yes, that's another generalization, but it's reasonably accurate. > People think they have full agency over their health I've seen estimates that 70-80% of health problems are the result of lifestyle choices.
        awb 5y ago
        Well there’s a lot of evidence about the role environment plays. The most famous example I know of is the Vietnam opioid study: https://www.statnews.com/2021/07/19/lessons-learned-and-lost-vietnam-era-addiction-study/ https://www.statnews.com/2021/07/19/lessons-learned-and-lost... When removing mental illness from the study, many service members who had addiction in Vietnam had no addiction or relapse when they returned to the US, even without any treatment. The leading theories were reduced stress, better social support and less access to opioids. So, if you’re growing up in a city and/or family unit with high stress (high crime, low opportunity), poor social influences / support structures and high access to dangerous or illegal activities, you’re far more likely to fall into addiction or poor decision making through no extra fault of your own. If you grow up with low stress, great influences and little temptation, you’re more likely to make good decisions with no bonus points for you. So yeah, decision making is a huge part of your health, but for this study of service men in the 50s the deck was stacked against them in Vietnam and stacked in their favor in the US. It’s interesting to see the same exact person experiencing two wildly different outcomes with their environment being the largest differing factor, rather than education, treatment, etc. It suggests that it’s hard to educate someone into making better decisions, but easier to help them make better decisions by helping them find a healthier environment. This line up with research about self control fatigue that each decision proves and act of self restraint is fatiguing (https://www.nutritionaction.com/daily/what-not-to-eat/decision-fatigue-can-lead-to-poor-choices-of-what-to-buy-and-eat/ https://www.nutritionaction.com/daily/what-not-to-eat/decisi...). Which is akin to the salesman’s trick of the trade: “persistence wears down resistance”. The more you’re tempted the more likely you are to succumb. So pick your guilty pleasure and now imagine it in your house, on the way to work, enjoyed by your friends and loved ones, everywhere all the time. It’s much harder to resist than if you don’t have access to it or have a healthy mix of people in your life who don’t indulge. I guess I see it more like 70-80% of decisions are influenced by your environment and we’re not as virtuous or evil as our actions alone might seem.

WalterBright 5y ago

> I'm disappointed that this comment is being downvoted silently. I expected it. I have plenty of experience on HN with my opinion that people have agency in their lives.

awb 5y ago
That’s a simplistic view that lacks nuance. There are many scenarios where you don’t have agency. At some point during the day you will inevitably trust someone else to prepare food for you, give you advice, collect information, enforce rules, etc. As important as it is to acknowledge your own agency (you’re 100% right about that), you’d be remiss to ignore all the instances where you don’t.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  The ones I give my opinion on agency on are ones where people do have agency. > At some point during the day you will inevitably trust someone else to prepare food for you, give you advice, collect information, enforce rules, etc. Trusting someone is something entirely different from having agency.
  - awb 5y ago
    Related to your parent comment: > It's also been extended to the notion that if one fails, it is always someone else's fault. Sometimes it is someone else’s fault. But no one is saying it’s always someone else’s fault. And what I meant by trust is that you have the illusion of agency in many situations. People think they have full agency over their health: they get to choose what to eat, where and how to exercise, what medicine to take, etc. Except we are restricted by our economic situation, local availability, local knowledge, social influences, etc. such that no two people have the exact same agency. I’m an extreme example, people are shunned or banned from communities for making certain decisions with their lives. In those scenarios, it isn’t a free market scenario where two choices can be evaluated and the best one picked. The deck is heavily stacked and your agency is impacted to some degree, such that saying that “people have agency over their lives” is too simplistic IMO.
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      Having an agency is a book length topic. Of course a HN message is going to be short & simple. After all, people don't read long postings. <= yes, that's another generalization, but it's reasonably accurate. > People think they have full agency over their health I've seen estimates that 70-80% of health problems are the result of lifestyle choices.
      - awb 5y ago
        Well there’s a lot of evidence about the role environment plays. The most famous example I know of is the Vietnam opioid study: https://www.statnews.com/2021/07/19/lessons-learned-and-lost-vietnam-era-addiction-study/ https://www.statnews.com/2021/07/19/lessons-learned-and-lost... When removing mental illness from the study, many service members who had addiction in Vietnam had no addiction or relapse when they returned to the US, even without any treatment. The leading theories were reduced stress, better social support and less access to opioids. So, if you’re growing up in a city and/or family unit with high stress (high crime, low opportunity), poor social influences / support structures and high access to dangerous or illegal activities, you’re far more likely to fall into addiction or poor decision making through no extra fault of your own. If you grow up with low stress, great influences and little temptation, you’re more likely to make good decisions with no bonus points for you. So yeah, decision making is a huge part of your health, but for this study of service men in the 50s the deck was stacked against them in Vietnam and stacked in their favor in the US. It’s interesting to see the same exact person experiencing two wildly different outcomes with their environment being the largest differing factor, rather than education, treatment, etc. It suggests that it’s hard to educate someone into making better decisions, but easier to help them make better decisions by helping them find a healthier environment. This line up with research about self control fatigue that each decision proves and act of self restraint is fatiguing (https://www.nutritionaction.com/daily/what-not-to-eat/decision-fatigue-can-lead-to-poor-choices-of-what-to-buy-and-eat/ https://www.nutritionaction.com/daily/what-not-to-eat/decisi...). Which is akin to the salesman’s trick of the trade: “persistence wears down resistance”. The more you’re tempted the more likely you are to succumb. So pick your guilty pleasure and now imagine it in your house, on the way to work, enjoyed by your friends and loved ones, everywhere all the time. It’s much harder to resist than if you don’t have access to it or have a healthy mix of people in your life who don’t indulge. I guess I see it more like 70-80% of decisions are influenced by your environment and we’re not as virtuous or evil as our actions alone might seem.