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The paper just shows the correlation between socioeconomics status (SES) and brain function -- there's no real causality study at all showing these are the resu

The paper just shows the correlation between socioeconomics status (SES) and brain function -- there's no real causality study at all showing these are the results of lower SES. In fact, the reverse path could be true: that differences in brain function cause lower SES. Which when stated that way, seems obvious with a clear mechanism... But framing it the first way makes it seem left-leaning and blank-slatist, and gets you published, while the second reeks of adjacency to genetic determinism that's unfashionable in academia.

TeaDrunk 3y ago
I don't think the paper implies any causality either way. Notice that the title of the paper itself is "The neurobiology of life course socioeconomic conditions and *associated* cognitive performance in middle to late adulthood" Really, this is editorializing on the part of the person who submitted this link to HN.
- metacritic12 3y ago
  Yeah agreed the paper title itself isn't sensationalistic, but the submission title is.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  I don't quite agree. While the paper is much less sensational than the submission title, the way the abstract reads clearly sounds like they are at least implying some causality, subconsciously or not. Take the sentence "Individuals from higher income households showed preserved cognitive performance..." That could just as easily be written "Individuals with preserved cognitive performance showed higher levels of income..." There are a bunch of similar examples like that throughout the abstract.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - TeaDrunk 3y ago
    TBH That's literal nitpicks. Nowhere in the paper is a causal relationship proposed. Your statement that a potential subconscious proposition exists in the paper is windmill-tilting.
  - tgv 3y ago
    The wording is neutral and does not imply causality.
darby_eight 3y ago
It would be rather odd if causality only pointed in one direction.
- tmoravec 3y ago
  Isn't that the definition of causality? In life there can be multiple causes and multiple effects, but causality itself has one direction, doesn't it?
  - pcthrowaway 3y ago
    Poor people are more likely to take high-interest loans/advances, and people who take high-interest loans are more likely to be poor. You can suggest causation both ways if say, you study a group of middle-class people who took high-interest loans and find them more likely to be poor years later. If A causes B but B also causes A is it wrong to say causality goes both ways? A is both cause and effect. B is both cause and effect. I think this is nearly as common as causality going one way (like if we found that smoking causes cancer, but cancer causes people to be less likely to smoke).
  - darby_eight 3y ago
    > In life there can be multiple causes and multiple effects, but causality itself has one direction, doesn't it? Causality is an inherently parameterized description of reality. I'm saying that the terms people are using to describe this complex effect are too few and each far too high grained to draw any firm conclusions.
- 2four2 3y ago
  It does. That's pretty much the definition of causality.
  - darby_eight 3y ago
    From that perspective, surely you can draw no conclusion of causality from this data, or any conclusion you can draw has little predictive power about the direction of effect for a given sample.
taurath 3y ago
> In fact, the reverse path could be true: that differences in brain function cause lower SES. Except the ACE study exists, showing a massive difference in brain function and attainment based on childhood adversity, regardless of SES. https://nhttac.acf.hhs.gov/soar/eguide/stop/adverse_childhood_experiences https://nhttac.acf.hhs.gov/soar/eguide/stop/adverse_childhoo... Oh, and ACE's tend to go up with lower SES: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6872440/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6872440/ Finally please don't elevate eugenics by using the word "unfashionable" when its not only deeply disproven but also has a horrific legacy as the primarily stated justification for some of the world's worst atrocities. https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/Eugenics-and-Scientific-Racism https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/Eugenics-a...
- pcthrowaway 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - imtringued 3y ago
    Variance in human ability is smaller than variance in income. Productivity does not explain income in capitalist economies. Instead, most of the changes in income are explained by differences in hierarchy. You might say that more able individuals are more likely to be higher up in the hierarchy, but being higher up doesn't require an increase in ability proportional with the increase in income. You only need to be 1% better than the next guy to win the competition, leading small differences in ability to result in large differences in income. Using genetics to explain the fairness of capitalism is a pretty common lie we tell ourselves to make us feel superior over poor people.
    - Jensson 3y ago
      The majority of income differences comes from your skill. A doctor earn much more than a cashier due to having a more valuable skill, and that span makes up the bulk of gini coefficient. Ultra wealth can't be explained with skill difference, no, but that isn't very relevant to this discussion. You can get a ton of money just through skill alone, doctors, programmers, lawyers etc aren't poor by any stretch.
bitwize 3y ago
[flagged]
- binary132 3y ago
  a lot of liberals think poor people are poor because they’re dumb
  - giraffe_lady 3y ago
    You ever hear the saying "scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds?"
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

TeaDrunk 3y ago

I don't think the paper implies any causality either way. Notice that the title of the paper itself is "The neurobiology of life course socioeconomic conditions and *associated* cognitive performance in middle to late adulthood" Really, this is editorializing on the part of the person who submitted this link to HN.

metacritic12 3y ago
Yeah agreed the paper title itself isn't sensationalistic, but the submission title is.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
I don't quite agree. While the paper is much less sensational than the submission title, the way the abstract reads clearly sounds like they are at least implying some causality, subconsciously or not. Take the sentence "Individuals from higher income households showed preserved cognitive performance..." That could just as easily be written "Individuals with preserved cognitive performance showed higher levels of income..." There are a bunch of similar examples like that throughout the abstract.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- TeaDrunk 3y ago
  TBH That's literal nitpicks. Nowhere in the paper is a causal relationship proposed. Your statement that a potential subconscious proposition exists in the paper is windmill-tilting.
- tgv 3y ago
  The wording is neutral and does not imply causality.

darby_eight 3y ago

It would be rather odd if causality only pointed in one direction.

tmoravec 3y ago
Isn't that the definition of causality? In life there can be multiple causes and multiple effects, but causality itself has one direction, doesn't it?
- pcthrowaway 3y ago
  Poor people are more likely to take high-interest loans/advances, and people who take high-interest loans are more likely to be poor. You can suggest causation both ways if say, you study a group of middle-class people who took high-interest loans and find them more likely to be poor years later. If A causes B but B also causes A is it wrong to say causality goes both ways? A is both cause and effect. B is both cause and effect. I think this is nearly as common as causality going one way (like if we found that smoking causes cancer, but cancer causes people to be less likely to smoke).
- darby_eight 3y ago
  > In life there can be multiple causes and multiple effects, but causality itself has one direction, doesn't it? Causality is an inherently parameterized description of reality. I'm saying that the terms people are using to describe this complex effect are too few and each far too high grained to draw any firm conclusions.
2four2 3y ago
It does. That's pretty much the definition of causality.
- darby_eight 3y ago
  From that perspective, surely you can draw no conclusion of causality from this data, or any conclusion you can draw has little predictive power about the direction of effect for a given sample.

taurath 3y ago

> In fact, the reverse path could be true: that differences in brain function cause lower SES. Except the ACE study exists, showing a massive difference in brain function and attainment based on childhood adversity, regardless of SES. https://nhttac.acf.hhs.gov/soar/eguide/stop/adverse_childhood_experiences https://nhttac.acf.hhs.gov/soar/eguide/stop/adverse_childhoo... Oh, and ACE's tend to go up with lower SES: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6872440/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6872440/ Finally please don't elevate eugenics by using the word "unfashionable" when its not only deeply disproven but also has a horrific legacy as the primarily stated justification for some of the world's worst atrocities. https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/Eugenics-and-Scientific-Racism https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/Eugenics-a...

pcthrowaway 3y ago
[flagged]
- imtringued 3y ago
  Variance in human ability is smaller than variance in income. Productivity does not explain income in capitalist economies. Instead, most of the changes in income are explained by differences in hierarchy. You might say that more able individuals are more likely to be higher up in the hierarchy, but being higher up doesn't require an increase in ability proportional with the increase in income. You only need to be 1% better than the next guy to win the competition, leading small differences in ability to result in large differences in income. Using genetics to explain the fairness of capitalism is a pretty common lie we tell ourselves to make us feel superior over poor people.
  - Jensson 3y ago
    The majority of income differences comes from your skill. A doctor earn much more than a cashier due to having a more valuable skill, and that span makes up the bulk of gini coefficient. Ultra wealth can't be explained with skill difference, no, but that isn't very relevant to this discussion. You can get a ton of money just through skill alone, doctors, programmers, lawyers etc aren't poor by any stretch.

bitwize 3y ago

[flagged]

binary132 3y ago
a lot of liberals think poor people are poor because they’re dumb
- giraffe_lady 3y ago
  You ever hear the saying "scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds?"

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]