48 ms·

This is a teenager

• sireat 3y ago
  I couldn't really understand the annual income being so low on the about 20 persons I clicked on. It was between $50 to $1700 annually. Was that the income when they were 13 years old?
• zuminator 3y ago
  The color scheme is terrible. Salmon, plum, light purple, medium purple, dark purple, and grey?
• rideontime 3y ago
  Not to distract from the important content of this piece - which I simply can't devote any attention to in the middle of my workday, lest I ruminate for the next few hours - but for those interested in its development, here's a dev diary: https://bigcharts.substack.com/p/behind-the-scene-this-is-a-teenager https://bigcharts.substack.com/p/behind-the-scene-this-is-a-...
• deleted 3y ago
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• jordanpg 3y ago
  "Don't feel like scrolling? Watch the video instead!" Please add a TL;DR here as well. Some of us never want to watch the video instead.
  • davidcollantes 3y ago
    Everything can't have a TL;DR. Well, it can, but it loses the essence, the meaning. I saw the animations, I read the text, I interacted with the page, and felt touched. I understood the message the author is trying to convey. I liked the execution. Just as you, I don't like (much) watching videos.
    • jordanpg 3y ago
      Fair enough. I think I was just reacting to the "watch the video" suggestion which is a continuous source of irritation to me especially in the complicated video game word (e.g., Paradox games).
• HomoJS 3y ago
  [flagged]
• numlocked 3y ago
  Very cool site, however... ...my takeaway is a little different than what is in the commentary box (for the year 2017 in particular). The distribution of incomes don't actually look that different, to my eye. If this is the grand reveal -- showing that childhood heavily influences future financial mobility -- it's not super obvious. I mean, yes, there seem to be a bit of a skew towards low earners in the bottom tranche -- but really it looks like the group that has had some astounding headwinds is kinda sorta doing about the same as the 'no adverse experiences' group? That is amazing as well! It'd be nice to be able to get to the underlying data more easily, and drill into see the statistical conclusions. The horizontal bands not being of even length doesn't help either. Edit: I don't think I was correctly taking into account the "no data" group, which makes the skew much more obvious (that the "many adverse experience" group has substantially lower earning power). I wish that the horizontal groups were of the same length, and the "no data" group was simply removed. I think that would make a transformative difference in terms of actually being able to understand this visually and intuitively. Edit 2: Also how amazing is it that this study got done! The link to the study is very hard to find on this site, and also is wrong. The correct link (I think anyway) is https://www.bls.gov/nls/nlsy97.htm https://www.bls.gov/nls/nlsy97.htm
  • unyttigfjelltol 3y ago
    The visualizations suggested the differences were very marginal. Some people with no adverse experiences struggle; some with many adverse experiences thrive; and while the reverse is more often true there appear to be other factors more strongly determining outcomes.
    • WesternWind 3y ago
      the best determinant, statistically, is what zip code you grew up in.
  • ianbicking 3y ago
    I noticed that too... the effects didn't look nearly as dramatic from the visuals as the text would make me believe. The exception was health, that was a much more dramatic correlation than income/etc. It reminds me of a study recently of homelessness in California, and people made a big deal about housing availability and affordability as the prime factor, but seemed to ignore the very notable health correlation in that study.
• subpixel 3y ago
  Positive relationships with adults is shown to be means of counteracting adverse childhood experiences. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8237477/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8237477/ I volunteer in a local school. It's not always fun, but something has to change.
  • toomuchtodo 3y ago
    Less kids in households that don't want them. This is a pipeline problem. Intentional children only. Hard topic to cover online, nuance and emotions on the topic. > I volunteer in a local school. It's not always fun, but something has to change. You're a good person doing necessary work. There aren't enough humans doing it, but it matters to who you're helping.
    • bumby 3y ago
      Related, and equally hard to cover online: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalized_abortion_and_crime_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalized_abortion_and_crime_e...
      • toomuchtodo 3y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39978774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39978774 ("HN: Steven Levitt and John Donohue defend the abortion-crime hypothesis") https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2024/04/08/steven-levitt-and-john-donohue-defend-a-finding-made-famous-by-freakonomics https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2024/04/08/steven-le... | https://archive.today/m3zl0 https://archive.today/m3zl0 ("Steven Levitt and John Donohue defend a finding made famous by “Freakonomics”")
        • deleted 3y ago
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    • throwway120385 3y ago
      It would also help if more people that are doing marginal work could receive a wage that they felt secure with. Money is one of the biggest stressors for couples and families.
• aidenn0 3y ago
  Am I supposed to see more than one teenager at the point where the narrative suggests I can? I only see one as I'm scrolling through. Firefox 120.0.1 [edit] I scrolled all the way to the top and then back down and it seems to have resolved the issue.
  • svachalek 3y ago
    yes
  • tetromino_ 3y ago
    Same but here with Chrome on Android. I also get scrolling freezing in places so I am forced to reload the page (and then graphics disappear). The article would have been vastly more readable if it was plain html with static embedded images and without any custom scroll/touch event handling - then one would easily be able to scroll around in it, search text, and view charts uncorrupted by javascript bugs. I am sure the author is proud of their nytimes-like data visualization project, but in this case, the visualization makes the result in every way worse.
    • aidenn0 3y ago
      They get points for linking to a video at least.
• robtest123 3y ago
  [dead]
• doctorpangloss 3y ago
  The visualization will frequently incorrectly show something of the form: <--- False True ---> True True False False True True False False
  • pteraspidomorph 3y ago
    I noticed this on Relatives died (thus far).
  • sweetbacon 3y ago
    Yes I saw this on a few "screens" and it really confused me at first. They flashy visuals detract from the message in a variety of ways.
    • Breza 3y ago
      I normally love the Pudding (getting a pitch accepted would be a high point in my career) but this one is hard to read. So many of the screens give you different colored groups whose sizes are hard to compare.
  • SuperHeavy256 3y ago
    Yeah I agree this was very confusing.
  • flanbiscuit 3y ago
    I thought I just wasn't understanding the visualizations. Glad it wasn't just me. It also wasn't very clear to me what I was supposed to be noticing in the visualizations that was related to whatever text was currently popped up. In the end I just watched the youtube video that was linked to at the very beginning and it made everything much clearer to me.
  • fillskills 3y ago
    Saw in the "Parents Involved" section
  • poutrathor 3y ago
    Also, the visualization let you think that all the leftmost teenagers are the same ones stacking the bad things. That might be true, but I doubt it is. The part around Highschool was especially unclear. Are they the same teenagers getting all the bad stuff. That would be plausible but not to the extend the visual displays I guess. In other news, I hate that trend of scrolling to animate to get content.
• Almondsetat 3y ago
  The page opens. Title appears. I start scrolling. Nothing happens. I scroll and I scroll but the page doesn't budge. I come to my senses: "aha, I get it! For the last few minutes I've been aimlessly scrolling in search of content and all the people around me in the train must have seen me do it with the same crooked posture and lifeless expression of a modern day teenager on their phone! This is me, the teenager! I have been the victim of a piece of performance art!" Then I realized it simply doesn't work properly on my phone's Chrome...
• HlessClaudesman 3y ago
  The scrolling on Android was horrible, much like being a teenager. Well done.
  • jpm_sd 3y ago
    Oh, is that the issue with all of this scroll-jacking bullshit web design lately? I'm not using the Designer's Choice mobile platform, so my experience just sucks? NYTimes is one of the worst offenders.
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• RobCat27 3y ago
  I like the message, but I feel like this is bad data visualization. The width of each group of people is not the same, so it's somewhat meaningless to visually compare groups without being able to see the raw percentages. For example, the "Many Adverse Experiences" group is stretched to be longer than the other groups so that proportionally fewer people in that group appear to be a larger proportion than the same proportion would be in other groups because they're not as wide.
  • deleted 3y ago
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  • unbalancedevh 3y ago
    Also, the visualization doesn't update well when scrolling back and forth; and the grouping is bad -- "bullied" is listed as an adverse condition, but is also shown as a separate grouping; and the way it's displayed for "Seen someone shot with a gun" is backwards, implying that the vast majority have seen that. Too bad, because it otherwise seems like an interesting study.
    • candiodari 3y ago
      Social sciences is not value-free. In reality the most important indicator of "at-risk" is previous involvement with social services and mental health professionals. Usually because these experiences tend to be so bad that the kids involved start to hide problems, or even attack anyone involved with social services. And THEN they get into a negative spiral. It is not the first time they get into a negative spiral, except now their experiences with mental help are so incredibly negative they fight to remain in the negative spiral, sometimes to the point of physical violence. Likewise, these professionals hide that almost all experiences kids have with social services are negative for the kids. Now I suppose you could say the above is an example of that, but really, it goes further. Kids seek help with homework, and only get berated by someone that couldn't do the homework themselves ... Studies keep pointing out that social services is exactly the wrong approach. What makes teachers, and social professionals good is excellent subject knowledge, combined with basic psychology. NOT the other way around. And in practice every mental help professional I've ever seen thinks they know what to do, and when pushed fail to produce even basic psychological facts, or outright deny them. I like to think you can explain this that when push comes to shove our minds are trying to solve problems in the real world. The majority of mental problems are someone failing to solve real world problems, and repeatedly failing to influence the outcome. A little bit of psychology is needed to get them to try again ... and a LOT of knowledge of the real world is need to make sure the outcome is different.
• neom 3y ago
  We really do love pudding.cool[1]- I'd never bothered to go look at what it's actually all about till today, and you should too if you've not, because it wasn't exactly as I expected: https://pudding.cool/about/ https://pudding.cool/about/ - these people seem great, we should probably support them. I noticed they have a Patreon if you're feeling generous[2]. [1]https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=pudding.cool&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... [2]https://www.patreon.com/thepudding https://www.patreon.com/thepudding
  • jonahx 3y ago
    Their mission statement is disingenuous, to say the least, and I sensed it as soon as I started the current post. Here is the mission statement, in bold, and in this form, great, I'd be all for it: The Pudding explains ideas debated in culture with visual essays. We’re not chasing current events or clickbait. Then we scroll down a bit and see that, in fact, they are not taking a fresh, objective look at issues, but are strongly committed to one side of the culture war, the progressive left: "We believe in journalism that denounces false equivalence, one that can explicitly say Black Lives Matter" "We strive for our journalism to be one of key making, not gate keeping, and we won't shy away from stories that tackle racism, sexism, and classism head on." "We're a small group that operates as a collective rather than hierarchical team."
• toomuchtodo 3y ago
  Video version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKv1Mixv0Hk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKv1Mixv0Hk
• deleted 3y ago
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• aidenn0 3y ago
  Just clicking randomly shows a (to me) unexpectedly low age for first sex. If I understand right, the people in here were born in 1984, so they are younger than me (late Gen-X), and i keep hearing that Millennials are having less sex than all previous generations, but these numbers look on the young side. Sampling 11 across cohorts I got a median of 15, which is lower than I found for one all-generations measure I found[1] [edit] Finally got to the end where I can sort by various metrics and found a median of 17/16/15 for low/medium/high ACEs score, which is slightly closer to what I expected. Also reading the "millennials are having less sex" articles, they mostly focus on people born in the early '90s, so the tail-end of millennials. 1: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1802108/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1802108/
  • michaelt 3y ago
    > i keep hearing that Millennials are having less sex than all previous generations This article is about a longitudinal study; it follows "Alex" who was age 13 in 1997, i.e. born in 1984. US teen birth rates have been falling a lot - 61 births per 1000 in 1991 fell to ~48 births per 1000 in 2002 (When Alex would have been 18) and continued falling to just 13.9 births per 1000 today according to https://www.statista.com/statistics/259518/birth-rate-among-us-teenagers/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/259518/birth-rate-among-... You have probably heard reports that teenagers are having less sex today. The teen birth rate would seem to clearly show that. But "millenials" aren't teenagers any more, they're 30-40 year olds.
    • aidenn0 3y ago
      Might be poor reporting, but it's not hard to find headlines like: Why millennials are having less sex than generation Xers[1] 1: https://www.cnn.com/2016/08/02/health/millennials-less-sex-than-gen-x/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2016/08/02/health/millennials-less-sex-t...
      • DiggyJohnson 3y ago
        That is an 8 year old article. Nearly half a generation ago. That article would how he comparing generation Z to older generations (assuming the focus was still on the average 20 something year old).
• twelvechairs 3y ago
  The animation is dominating the narrarive rather than assisting it. I (as many I assume) just want to skim the information and find myself stuck waiting for things to load or pathfinding algorithms to work. People keep flipping side to side needlessly also. Sometimes I'd just prefer flat 2d diagrams.
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  • Hackbraten 3y ago
    I can't believe I had to scroll down that far to find someone who had the same experience as I. Scrolling degenerated to 1 fps on an up-to-date Firefox. I didn't have a chance to follow the story.
• elil17 3y ago
  Anyone else notice how those with the most adverse experiences were both more likely to be depressed and more likely to be happy "all of the time" for the past month? Is this a flaw in the data? What is the causal explanation for this?
  • sour-taste 3y ago
    When you see a friend or family member shot/experience drug use/other awful things maybe you stop taking for granted the things you have.
  • zeroonetwothree 3y ago
    it’s self reported data so it’s not super reliable It could be people with more adverse experiences are less likely to take care in answering survey questions
    • elil17 3y ago
      This doesn’t make sense to me because other questions seemed to follow the trends you’d expect.
  • markwj 3y ago
    Challenges with emotional regulation was my first thought. I imagine children who grow up in stable environments can better regulate their mood as they can return to a caring parent who will soothe them when they're emotionally dysregulated, compared to those in instable environments. This might lead to the highs being higher and the lows being lower, a stretching of the bell curve.
  • imzadi 3y ago
    I noticed that the no adverse group had very few people who said they were happy most of the time. I think this could come down to the weight of debt and maintaining a "stable" lifestyle. The more adverse effect group is probably generally lower income and less likely to have a lot of debt.
    • 3y ago
• visarga 3y ago
  Apparently GPA distribution is less affected by adverse experiences. So doing college admissions based on GPA sounds more fair than affirmative action. Some people from disadvantaged groups also say they would rather be admitted on merit alone because it is more reliable in the long run, but they don't get this choice.
  • yonaguska 3y ago
    Problem is, GPA is incredibly subjective across different schools, hence the need for standardized testing. Do you rank someone that has a 3.5 at a boarding school where they were taking college level math classes at Princeton as less qualified than someone that has a 4.0 at a school where half the students aren't literate?
    • drawkward 3y ago
      Agree. The place I went to HS had a 4.0 grading scale. There was no other high school in my town. Several towns over, their school district decided that AP classes should get weighted grades, putting me at a comparative disadvantage within the same curriculum.
• aestetix 3y ago
  I watched the video. Maybe I am not understanding the visuals, but it looked like the narrator's conclusions do not actually match the data. He is trying to make an argument that poor kids need extra help or they will have a rough life. But the data seems to show that over the last 20 years, people from all background types are likely to experience bad things. Granted the last 20 years has been pretty awful, with 9/11, various wars, and other things. So I'm not really sure if I can take anything away from the video.
  • throwway120385 3y ago
    Yeah I saw the same thing in the shape of what was presented. The proportions are roughly the same in the visualization, it's just that most people had some or many adverse experiences. But what I see is that in my generation your home life didn't matter as much. I agree that we need to move as many kids as possible out of the "adverse experiences" category but I don't think this data supports that. The last 20 years have been really really awful for everyone I went to school with.
    • deathanatos 3y ago
      > The proportions are roughly the same in the visualization They're not, though? E.g., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKv1Mixv0Hk&t=278s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKv1Mixv0Hk&t=278s — note that the final bar is also shorter, so really you need to elongate it a bit in your mind (and compress the bar above it): the proportion of the "many adverse experiences" group is definite greater than the other two. (I wish they'd've just labelled the %'age on the screen, made the bar lengths equal — I have a lot of issues with the data visualization here, but none severe enough that they defeat the core point of the video.) Edit: okay, I've counted the miniature people on this chart. For this specific example, they are: no adverse exp.: 7 aff, 109 total; some adversity: 16 aff, 239 total; many adverse exp.: 24 aff, 152 total. In percentages, that's "No adverse experiences" → 6.4% victims of crime, "Some adverse experiences" → 6.7% victims of crime, "Many adverse experiences" → 15.8%. The last group is more than double the other two. (The first two, in this example are equal; but the visualization also roughly shows that.)
• ericmcer 3y ago
  Kind of cool, but the conclusion was completely backwards. The final line of the study was "So he is our collective responsibility. They all are.", but the entire study was about how the home environment affects your outcomes. I guess their conclusion is that if an individual does a bad job raising their kids, it is societies fault.
  • micromacrofoot 3y ago
    I think the idea is that "only support your family" harms everyone. The example, Alex, has 2 kids, works manual labor to earn poverty wages, and is depressed. Which one of the types of teen do you think his kids will be? The common refrain is "then he shouldn't have had kids" but unless you're going to create an authoritarian state people will always have kids (and restricting kids went awfully for China anyway).
    • s1artibartfast 3y ago
      I think social and individual expectations are a big part of this. Why is Alex depressed? If they had 20k more a year, would they be happier, or just 2 steps ahead on and empty hedonistic treadmill. Alex now has a new mustang, but is still depressed and fails as a parent. I think it would be interesting to see the relative impact of a 2 parent + low risk home vs income, and I think there is a lot lost when people assume every variable reduces to income. What about Alex when they have low income, but a healthy home life? What about Alex when they have higher income, but a shit home life?
      • nvy 3y ago
        Money actually does buy happiness, despite what the wealthy would like you to believe. It is very likely that yes, he would in fact be happier with an extra 20k a year. You don't know he'd have a new mustang; that's just you projecting. He might put the extra 20k a year into savings for his kid's education - I know that feeling like I'm setting my kids up for future success makes me happy.
        • 3y ago
• zer00eyz 3y ago
  >>> He'll be bullied at school. He'll be held back a few grades. He won't go to college. I dont even know where to start with this. 1. The whole anti bullying campaign that we now have two and a half decades of in schools has backfired spectacularly. This feels like "well DARE didn't work, we need to put this money somewhere else". We tell kids dont bully people, but if you defend yourself in a fight everyone gets suspended because of zero tolerance... it is obscene. 2. College? Really? We stripped schools of anything that was vocational, or practical. What happened to shop and home economics... and the computer labs that got many of us started are long gone. Meanwhile we're short on plumbers, welders and all sorts of middle skill jobs... Note: that there are now middle skill jobs (trained professionals but not college) that not only make more than those with degrees, they will do better over the course of their life because they dont have massive debt. Alex has a shitty home life, but we under fund public schools and then rob kids for college (and we dont need more college grads).
  • throwway120385 3y ago
    > We stripped schools of anything that was vocational, or practical. What happened to shop and home economics... and the computer labs that got many of us started are long gone. Meanwhile we're short on plumbers, welders and all sorts of middle skill jobs... I completely agree. The hollowing out of the education system in response to NCLB and the relentless drive for "data" and "standards" is why a lot of people no longer graduate from high school with any life skills.
  • Qwertious 3y ago
    >but if you defend yourself in a fight everyone gets suspended because of zero tolerance... it is obscene. Zero tolerance, in it's current meaning, is stupid. But the original concept was great: if anything happens, then you respond to it. "Respond to it" including things like sitting down and talking about it, without necessarily issuing any punishments whatsoever.
  • edm0nd 3y ago
    Who cares about zero tolerance rules tho, just simply ignore them on the parent and adult level. My nephew was getting bullied and we told him the kid bullying him was simply just mad at his own home life and to ignore him. We also told him that if the bully attacked him first, he has 100% the right to punch him back. Well well well, the bully cornered him in the school bathroom and attacked him. My nephew punched him in the face. my nephew got made into a legend at school and got suspended. Guess who doesn't get bullied anymore? Violence works.
• xkcd1963 3y ago
  Hey! Teacher! Leave the kids alone!
• moralestapia 3y ago
  Great site. However, I think there's much more interesting things one could visualize from the same dataset. I'll go out on a limb (these days?) and say that nothing is more influential when growing up than what your parents teach you. That alone transcends all other negative/positive effects considered (health, income, "have you seen someone getting shot", ...). I see the study does account for parents present or not but I would've liked to read a similar story in which this is the categorical control. The other one "classic" correlation of interest is race vs. all the other variables, but I can understand why they didn't want to initiate yet another flamewar.
• Dig1t 3y ago
  >But in 2022, the average cost for first-time college students living in campus was $36,000 – nearly $10,000 higher than a decade prior. It's made college inaccessible for kids who need it most. College kids do not need to live on campus, most people in this country live within commuting distance of a community college or university. It may not be a top rated university, but it will always be one that teaches skills kids need to build a life. You do not NEED to pay anywhere near $36,000 for college, and stating it as a necessity is misleading. The point that the author misses is that the subject, Alex, would have easily qualified for free tuition at his local community college or university, and most likely a scholarship or grant would have paid his living expenses while attending as well, based solely on his economic and ethnic background and not his grades. The only missing piece was someone to tell him how to do it, or someone to encourage him to do it. This is generally what people mean when they say that poor people lack the knowledge to get themselves out of poverty. >Over the last few years, his annual income was around $20,000. He has struggled with his weight for much of his adult life, and it affects his overall health. It is worth noting that the poorest in the USA struggle with eating too much, not too little. This is at least a silver lining that we should not ignore. Many countries in the world, poor people are starving. >In one year, the US will elect Donald Trump as president – a man who constantly insults poor people and calls them "morons." As part of this paragraph, the author links to an extremely partisan article which does not even try to hide its bias. It quotes something that Donald Trump said back in a 1999 interview. I don't love Trump and wouldn't vote for him, but I think the author's point about him is stretched quite a bit and was unnecessary for the overall point he's trying to make. In the end, the main takeaway from this article seems to me to be that you can justify any bad decisions or bad outcomes in your life by blaming your childhood trauma. With such a worldview how can one ever better themselves? It seems such a self-defeating way to look at things, if you never blame yourself for your bad decisions how can you ever learn how to make better decisions? I know that if I personally lived my life blaming my childhood trauma for problems I've had, that I would still be poor to this day.
• beepbooptheory 3y ago
  This is wonderful in a lot of ways but also seems to be designed to annoy HN specifically. With its somewhat, um, adventurous choices in data visualization combined with an overall conceit that poverty is harmful and kids are not the ones to blame... It's like a dangerous cocktail. I could read this thread in my head probably!
• tomvalorsa 3y ago
  In case the author swings by - I think the presentation of this is really cool. The sprites bring it to life as they hurry around the screen! The way Alex bookends the walkthrough of the data is clever as well, and I felt the return to him at the end was quite evocative. Nice work!
• Cockbrand 3y ago
  For a different approach on the socio-economic background's influence on growing up (and eventually growing old), check out the very interesting "Up Series" [0]. It's a British documentary series that starts out with interviews with kids at age 7 from different backgrounds, and then interviews the same group of people every 7 years (14 Up, 21 Up, you get the idea). They've come to "63 Up" so far. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_(film_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_(film_series)
  • thefourthchime 3y ago
    I agree, fantastic series
• readams 3y ago
  One thing that jumps out is that being held back in school is one of the "adverse experiences" that will cause poor performance later. But of course being held back in school is what happens when your school performance is poor, so this seems backward. All of these things just seem to be proxies for "your parents are rich".
  • zbentley 3y ago
    > being held back in school is what happens when your school performance is poor, so this seems backward Why is that backward? Couldn't they be mutually affecting factors a la the failures of "No Child Left Behind"'s penalty system (as in: ACEs damage school performance, leading to risk of being held back a year, which risks additional ACEs)? > All of these things just seem to be proxies for "your parents are rich". If that is indeed a strong correlation, then that would be valuable insight gained from this study, I think.
  • Clubber 3y ago
    >All of these things just seem to be proxies for "your parents are rich". 1. You have good parents (attentive/loving/encouraging/supportive/available). 2. You have access to a good education. Those seem to be the big differentiators in my experience. Rich people typically have #2, so that's 1 of 2 right out of the gate.
    • kulahan 3y ago
      Having a lot of money and having loving parents are not related in any way I can tell. Maybe they’re less likely to fight with each other in a money-based scenario, which is probably better for the kid. Education makes a bit more sense since it’s at least easy to buy your way into a better education.
      • Clubber 3y ago
        >Having a lot of money and having loving parents are not related in any way I can tell. They're not, they serve different needs. Perhaps indirectly related, but having money certainly doesn't make you a good parent. Those are just prerequisites for a higher chance of success. If you have neither you have the least chance of success. If you have one, you're more likely to succeed, if you have both, you're most likely to succeed.
• albert_e 3y ago
  Visualization was confusing and I don't think the narrative matches the data being shown. Differences between groups were way less dramatic in the visuals than the narration suggests. The differences could just be statistical noise for all we know.
• breakfastduck 3y ago
  Every single one I clicked on said they weren't in college or work. Is it bugged?
• Samuel_w 3y ago
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• pie_flavor 3y ago
  The data visualization is fun, but the conclusion has exactly the same problem as the studies it links to: it's an analysis of a previous survey, with no experimental interventions, and as such is only measuring a correlation, with the causality being an asspull. In reality, every idealistic explanation of why these things happen gets shot down by RCTs or twin studies.
• tux1968 3y ago
  It sure appeared that on a percentage basis, the difference in outcomes between the 3 identified groups, wasn't that significant. Or maybe it was just a poor visualization of the data.
• SuperHeavy256 3y ago
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  • HumblyTossed 3y ago
    It's HN. Most of these people have been programmed to think everyone can fix themselves with enough bootstrapping, therefore everyone should be able to.
• alex_lav 3y ago
  Crashes my browser.
• nailer 3y ago
  Watching the video And looking at the visualisation rather than the voiceover, I’m surprised that having more adverse experiences in childhood doesn’t have A more significant effect on the adults.
• sethammons 3y ago
  you can find out your ACE score online easily. It is 10 questions. A lot of folks commenting are getting stuck on poverty. Even folks in higher socioeconomic categories can have high ACE scores; poverty is only part of an ACE score. What is wild is the relationship to health as it ties to ACE scores. I found a lot of value reading The Deepest Well by Dr. Burke Harris. She notices that some of her patients are having strange health issues and then she realizes that these strange health issues can be tied to their ACE scores. Issues include epigenetic changes and immune system dysfunctions among many others. She advocates for early ACE screening to help address issues as early as possible.
• erquhart 3y ago
  > College isn't just a place that teaches you how to do a job; it's also a safe, structured, and productive environment for people to continue growing up – and to fend off adulthood for a bit. This is actually a problem. > in developed countries, there is an era between ages 18 and 25 when we collectively agree to let people explore the world and figure out what role they want to have in it. He calls it "emerging adulthood". And college is an environment built for emerging adults – a place where kids can leave their family environment and finally have a chance to independently shape their futures. This is a wholly inaccurate description of college.
  • andruby 3y ago
    Would you care to expand a bit more of what your experience was like or your perception? Why is the first statement a problem? (not trying to be confrontational, just would like to know more)
    • deleted 3y ago
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  • manc_lad 3y ago
    it was my experience of college. many I know would agree, and few would agree with you. I'm sure there are some that didn't feel this way, but strange sweeping statement to make.
    • deleted 3y ago
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• xandrius 3y ago
  It might be me not getting it but all the charts seemed to have roughly the same percentage of people across the different types, given some small wiggle room. It was never an obvious impact. Am I getting it wrong or is it a tiny change that statistically is significant at huge scales of population?
• oglop 3y ago
  “Ultimately, initial conditions matter” Whoa. Mind blown. Worth the infinite scroll and meandering presentation. Condescending and pearl clutching read. I used the military to escape. Life’s tough, navel gazing and pushing college doesn’t help in the vast majority of cases. Everyone has adverse things happen, but not everyone makes the choice to start finding solutions.
  • sublimefire 3y ago
    Great point, getting away is an important step when you are stuck in an environment that causes more harm to you than good. I think one of the related issues is that it is difficult to get away when you are 14 or similar.
  • 10xDev 3y ago
    Everything is a matter of probability. Resorting to survivorship bias even if that includes yourself is just spitting in the face of statistics.
• fsckboy 3y ago
  > Hono - [炎] means flame in Japanese oh, cool! that must mean, because of all those volcanos, that Honolulu means... > From Hawaiian Honolulu, from hono (“bay, harbor”), cognate with Maori whanga, + lulu (“shelter”), from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian duŋduŋ (“sheltered”).* ok, nope. "fire shelter" would have been pretty cool tho.
• ein0p 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • pipeline_peak 3y ago
    In before this gets flagged /massively downvoted. If you don’t explain your intentions it comes off as brainwashing the viewer. Because otherwise they’re just mindlessly taking in whatever you’re telling them. So what are we supposed to take from this?
    • paulgb 3y ago
      In case readers aren't familiar with The Pudding, they sometimes have an angle but are just as often interesting data explorations aimed at their intellectually curious audience. I don't think they need to have an agenda for every piece, although I understand the suspicion for people not familiar with their work. https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=pudding.cool https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=pudding.cool
    • OmarShehata 3y ago
      It's not clear but I think what it's signaling is a progressive ideal of taking ownership over the collective good / a rehabilitation mindset towards crime vs a punishment, based on the following that's meant to get the viewer to empathize with "failure" as an adult is due to factors beyond just personal responsibility. > When we're young, we have so little control over their lives [...] Then we turn 18 and we're expected to be "adults" and figure things out. > > If we fail, we are punished. > > We are blamed for not going to college [...]
    • BobaFloutist 3y ago
      >If you don’t explain your intentions it comes off as brainwashing the viewer. Sorry, what?
  • 9question1 3y ago
    Is your concrete proposal that data should only be allowed to be collected and shared by people with a specific agenda to push?
• TheEggMan 3y ago
  They should show the crime the person will commit. Some interesting data on that found on FBI.gov
• dimgl 3y ago
  Is it just me or does this visualization show that things aren't actually that bad? And that adverse experiences don't have that much of an impact on outcomes?
• nahikoa 3y ago
  I don't want to be that guy, here's a nice summary of what you missed, since the creator is so inconsiderate when it comes to accessibility: The video introduces us to Alex, a 13-year-old in 1997, who is Hispanic and living with his dad and stepmom. At this point in his life, Alex's family has a net worth of just $2,000, and his parents are not particularly supportive or involved in his life. Despite these challenges, Alex expresses a sense of optimism about his future. This optimism is shared by many teenagers, as evidenced by a survey from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, which includes 9,000 participants followed from their adolescent years into adulthood. The video then shifts to highlight the importance of childhood experiences, as research by Vincent Fidi published in 1998 would later reveal. This research indicates that traumatic and stressful events during childhood can have profound, lifelong effects on an individual's health, relationships, financial security, and overall well-being. The video follows 400 of these survey participants, focusing on those with uninvolved parents, those who have been bullied, and those growing up in risky home environments. It tracks adverse experiences such as parental drug use, being held back or suspended from school, and witnessing violence. By 2001, the participants are in their senior year of high school. The video examines the adverse experiences these students have faced, noting that Black and Hispanic youths are disproportionately represented among those who have experienced multiple negative events. These experiences often correlate with academic performance; students who face more adversity tend to struggle more in the classroom. The video also introduces the concept of "emerging adulthood" as a period between childhood and adulthood, during which college can provide a supportive environment for young adults to navigate this transition. By 2010, some participants have completed a four-year college degree, with a clear trend showing that those who had fewer adverse experiences in childhood are more likely to have attended college. The video also highlights the financial struggles of those from less privileged backgrounds, many of whom are still grappling with the economic implications of their challenging upbringings. In 2021, the long-term impact of childhood adversity is starkly evident. The participants' life outcomes, including income levels, health issues, and overall happiness, show a direct correlation with the adverse experiences they faced as children. Alex, whose story we have followed, is now 37 years old, living with his partner and two kids. He has struggled with his weight and health throughout his adult life, and his annual income remains around $20,000. The video concludes by emphasizing that the circumstances of our youth significantly shape our lives and that systemic factors play a significant role in individual outcomes. It calls into question the blame placed on individuals for their life circumstances and suggests that the collective responsibility to support young people is essential for breaking cycles of adversity.
• engineer_22 3y ago
  Its confusing and hard to make comparisons when the length of the rows is different for each group. It seems disingenuous. Cool website though, kudos to the author.
• LeroyRaz 3y ago
  The visualization works poorly on my phone, basically unusable.
• jovial_cavalier 3y ago
  Yeah, lots of people are traumatized. Lots of people have seen close friends or family members get killed... some have been sexually exploited... I'm not sure the answer is for them to get a degree in communications. And furthermore, what actually is stopping them from getting a college degree if they so choose? The price. What is driving up the price?
• renewiltord 3y ago
  It's hard to take the Western world seriously. There was a guy on Reddit who lamented how so many Americans live in their cars, unlike Indians or Chinese. The 15th percentile in India puts one at 10k INR / year apparently and this constant woe and gloom in the US does not have a counterpart. It would seem that some degree of thriving requires striving. The median person here has an iPhone - a luxury device. Here, the cultural belief is that if some other guy is richer than you, he cheated his way there. And you should steal from him. And the relentless woe is me whining about normal life. "We were the first generation who had to live through 9/11 and a pandemic and the global financial crisis!" Bro, in the '90s India was testing nuclear weapons and Pakistan had them and the possibility that two nuclear armed nations would go to war was real. There were massive genocides. The Gulf War. The President was impeached. The Unabomber. The LA Riots. In the '80, the AIDS pandemic was getting known and it wouldn't be handled for 30 years! It was a shadowy figure. Challenger blew up. Lockerbie bombing. The Iran-Iraq War. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan. The UK fought the Argentines in the Falklands. The French blew up the Rainbow Warrior. This is what normal life looks like. Things happen. The number one thing that has come out of the modern Internet is this whiny brigade of losers who want to blame everything in the world for their problems. The majority of Americans are actually happy with their own lives. It's these few loud whiners. No, dude, 9/11 isn't why you can't get a girlfriend. Get a grip.
  • 10xDev 3y ago
    Top comment: "I volunteer in a local school." Bottom comment: "Get a grip!" Two kinds of people...
• swader999 3y ago
  Study is great and all but how would it work when corrupted by an event like the pandemic lockdown.
  • cruffle_duffle 3y ago
    It won't look good, I'll tell you that much. Society hysterical reaction to covid did kids dirty.
• deleted 3y ago
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• fourseventy 3y ago
  I don't like the victim mentality of the message.
  • drawkward 3y ago
    Yea, those kids who were born into crappy situations should just get out of those crappy situations! Dumb victims. :/
• slowhadoken 3y ago
  Poverty and abuse is a cloud that very few people can see through. Normal people try to help but often make it worse.
• samatman 3y ago
  Everything this is based on is subject to absolutely massive genetic confounds. How you're raised is who your parents are, except for when it isn't. Which is why we have adoption studies. Which strongly indicate that it's who your parents are, not how you're raised, which is more determinative of outcomes. Is it a mixture of factor? Yes, but the dominant component is clear. A study like this focuses on the minor component and presumes that it's causal. That is unlikely to be the case.
• foreverobama 3y ago
  [dead]
• gymbeaux 3y ago
  This should be the measure of our country, rather than the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Incidentally, rehabilitating these traumatized kids-turned-adults would probably have profound positive impacts on the economy (since that's all Jamie Dimon and friends care about).
  • kypro 3y ago
    Not disagreeing with your point that economic metrics often held too highly above others, but Jamie Dimon has commented a lot on the need to tackle inequality. Even if he's doing so for ulterior reasons, I feel like this is an uncharitable representation of his views.
    • worik 3y ago
      > Jamie Dimon has commented a lot on the need to tackle inequality. Good Let's put him on the BBQ
    • gymbeaux 3y ago
      Talk is cheap
  • sxg 3y ago
    > This should be the measure of our country The most important thing about a metric is that we all agree on how to interpret it. While money may not measure exactly the right thing, we can all agree that $50 is $50 regardless of our age, race, gender, upbringing, etc. Take a look at the other comments on this thread. There's hardly any consensus on what this visualization shows. If this was how we measured our country, we'd get nowhere because there's no agreement on what this data means or what to do about it.
• imacomputertoo 3y ago
  The conclusion of this data presentation is that so of these people are our collective responsibility, and I just wasn't convinced. I wish they had shown percentages with the visualization. They choose not to. I was underwhelmed by some points that seemed like they should have been more shocking. Look at the huge number of people in the many adverse experiences category who made it to college, and make a high salary. that was shocking! and look at the people who had no adverse experiences and still managed to end up poor. how does that happen? I was left with the impression that if the government threw a lot of resources at it we might be able to move a noticeable percentage of those people in a better direction, but not most of them. The questions that remain are, how many people's lives could we improve and by how much? And, critically, how much are we willing to collectively sacrifice to move that percentage of people in a positive direction?
  • theicfire 3y ago
    I had very similar takeaways, you said it well!
  • tomrod 3y ago
    This highlights what Judea Pearl's causal framework gets at: Pr(Y|X) versus Pr(Y|do(X)), where we can set early. Causality isn't easy to establish. Correlation is insufficient. Note, too, I am unfamiliar with the literature cited by the Infoanimatedgraphic.
  • colonelpopcorn 3y ago
    You have to balk when anyone says that anybody is the same person they were 24 years ago.
    • erikerikson 3y ago
      You have to disbelieve anyone who says they aren't a derivation of their previous person states. That's just physics.
      • dumbo-octopus 3y ago
• rglover 3y ago
  Semi-related: often astounded by what can be achieved with HTML5 canvas.
• rconti 3y ago
  I'm not sure if it was just me, but I struggled with the visual style. In some groups there were more rows than others, but then the rows would be of different lengths, making it difficult to intuitively compare the population sizes, especially when trying to break them down by color coding. It felt like the "some adverse experiences" group was worse off than the "many adverse experiences" group, which I'm guessing is incorrect.
  • robocat 3y ago
    I was a bit sceptical to start with about correlation versus causation. Causes are what we are looking for here. If we see someone get shot, does that mean we decide not to go to university[1]? I watched the video, and the semantic meaning of pink people kept changing, and I couldn't follow the story because too many moving parts. There's a study looking at people from a "bad" neighbourhood, that used data on immigrants to and emmigrants from the neighbourhood to try and track causation. If I was feeling obnoxious I would grab the data, and massage it until the conclusion is that we should blind children so they don't see someone get shot so that they go to university. [1] actually I can think of plenty of friends where that would be plausible (disclaimer: gun violence isn't so common in New Zealand). I'm trying to pick an example where causation and correlation are more disjoint but I think I've failed here.
• goldenchrome 3y ago
  How about if we control for IQ?
• sgammon 3y ago
  Beautiful evidence.
• fregonics 3y ago
  The presentation argues that the adverse experiences cited are outside the individual's control, some of them are and they can have negative effects, i agree, like gun violence or uninterested parents, but others are questionable, like suspensions or being held back in school, which is (in most part) derived directly from the individual's actions. Since the margins in some of the statistics are so small i wonder how would they look with the adverse experiences ignoring this 2 points. For me it is obvious that a person who was held back in school and received suspensions will be less likely to be well off when they are older.
  • thfuran 3y ago
    >derived directly from the individual's actions. Are you saying that a person's actions aren't influenced by their environment?
    • concordDance 3y ago
      Assuming a materialistic (non-spiritual) world this statement seems a bit vacuous as we are all the direct products of our environment (including womb environment, genes, nutrition, culture, etc).
    • naasking 3y ago
      Of course they are, but putting the locus of control on external factors disempowers people. "These people didn't do as well as they could have due to poor impulse control" is a better explanation/reason than "these people have poor impulse control because of the environment in which they were raised"; the environment is not the cause of the poor outcomes, the poor impulse control is the cause, and pointing out the cause shows a path to correcting the issue.
      • thfuran 3y ago
        >the environment is not the cause of the poor outcomes It's not the proximate cause, but that doesn't mean it is in no way causative. >and pointing out the cause shows a path to correcting the issue Yes, it can often be most efficient to address root causes.
• RationalDino 3y ago
  My biggest takeaway is that they nowhere address address the fact that correlation is not necessarily causation. Yes, our childhood affects who we become. But it is not the only thing that affects it. For example Two giant factors come to mind. Genetics and racism. Consider one genetic factor. I have ADHD. That means that it is extremely likely that one or both of my parents had ADHD. (My father, certainly. My mother, maybe. She certainly had a genetic propensity for depression that her children struggle with.) This resulted in an unstable family home. Unsurprisingly this resulted in me falling into their adverse environment category. As an adult I've done reasonably well. But yes, my challenges have affected my children. But were those challenges because I grew up with horrible problems? Or was it because I have a well-known genetic condition that causes challenges? On genetics, I highly recommend https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691190808/the-genetic-lottery https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691190808/th.... GWAS studies can only tease out genetic correlations for European Caucasians. Part of that is that they can only be done with a lot of data from somewhat related people. And part of that is that with Caucasians it is reasonable to assume that bad results are due to personal characteristics, and not racism. But we can do it for Caucasians. And so we can know for Caucasians that the impact of genetics is about as strong as the impact of socioeconomic status. We can also separate the effects of things like the effect of when you first had sex from the genetics that make you first have sex early or late. That one is fun, because it turns out that the genetics matters a lot, and when you first did it only matters because it is correlated with your genetics. We can look at the impact of reading to kids. Yeah, that's pretty much genetics as well. We put a lot of effort into getting kids read to more, and didn't get demonstrable results for it. So you see, understanding the impact of genetics is very important for what public policies are likely to work. They tell a great just-so story. But I'm not convinced. Moving on, what about racism? They trace the story of Alex. Hispanic. He had a terrible upbringing. Which could be caused by the impact of racism on his family. He had a terrible adulthood. Which could be caused by the impact of racism on him. He's just as good an example for "racism sucks" as he is for "adverse childhood sucks". Which is it? We don't know. What should we do about it? That's still an open question! And finally, let's look at personal responsibility. I don't agree with condemning poor people for being poor. But suppose you are born in whatever circumstances, with whatever genetics. What's the best way to improve your life? Judging from my experiences and understanding of human nature, it is to encourage an attitude of personal responsibility. Don't worry too much about what's outside of your control. Focus only on what's in your control, and try to do the best that you can. Ironically, this matters more when the deck is stacked against you. If you have family background and racism are holding you back, you can't afford the third strike of a self-destructive attitude. But if your background and race give you resources, your attitude probably doesn't hurt you as badly. Does "personal responsibility" make for a good social policy? No. But should we encourage people to individually embrace it? Absolutely! I strongly disagree with their cavalier dismissal of the idea.
• legitster 3y ago
  What a cool visualization! ... of a fairly mundane data set. If anything, I am shocked by how much the data between the groups evened out over time. The differences in "adverse experiences" started out so stark, but almost seemed to disappear by 2021, especially in categories like happiness and wealth. I would hate the be the researched who followed this for 20 years just to find nothing particularly interesting. > "If we fail, we are punished. We are blamed for not going to college, for being unhealthy, for being poor, for not being able to afford healthcare and food and housing." Not sure if the author and I are looking at the same data set. If anything, it's saying the opposite to me - the difference between a terrible childhood and a perfect childhood results in some barely perceivable differences by the time you are 27.
• etsca 3y ago
  [flagged]
• patwolf 3y ago
  On the section for gun violence, it says "And these are the kids who witnessed gun violence", but the title says "See someone shot with gun". I'm curious which it is since gun violence encompasses things other than seeing someone shot.
  • adamredwoods 3y ago
    For example, being held up at gunpoint.
• Laylo_ 3y ago
  This data seems suspect. Three "some adverse experience" and four "many adverse experiences" individual all report a most recent annual income of exactly $380,288? That seems highly unlikely, and if that is a data error there are likely others.
  • 3minus1 3y ago
    It doesn't seem unlikely to me at all. Lots of people are smart or successful despite coming from a broken home. Weird example but Eminem was extremely poor growing up.
    • dc96 3y ago
      You're misinterpreting. When sorted by annual income, the top 5 incomes all have the same value: 380,288. This points to something weird going on in the data, unless all of those specific participants happen to work the same job at the same company. Even then, years of experience and salary increases would likely differ.
      • relaxing 3y ago
        Perhaps that value is an integer representation of a categorical value, like wealth percentile or tax bracket?
      • relaxing 3y ago
        Oh this is a fascinating coincidence- 380,288 just so happens to be the income reported by Vice President Harris and her husband on their 2021 federal tax return. https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/2022-04-15-VPOTUS-Redacted-2021-Federal-and-State-Returns.pdf https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/2022-0...
  • taurath 3y ago
    I have 7/10 ACE's and am a self-taught senior software engineer. We exist. Not always well, and good lord is it hard to find empathy from coworkers who had the "standard" life advancement, but we exist. Among folks who've gone through the same stuff as me, they are not doing nearly as well as a group compared to others in my generation. (But yeah there's some data checking that needs to be done as denoted elsewhere in the thread)
• hnburnsy 3y ago
  "Being held back" or grade retention is rare for high school students (teenagers), so rare that it is hard to find a study on it. RAND studied middle school and elementary school retention and found only some smallish negative effects. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB10025.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB10025.html Most middle\high school grade retention I see these days is self-imposed for an advantage in athletics; don't get me started.
• narrator 3y ago
  Let me guess, the solution is ban guns and pay higher taxes. That is the solution to literally every single problem in human history according to western sociology. Then you get some guy like Nayib Bukele who cuts the Gordian Knot of societal disfunction going from the highest murder rate in the world to the lowest in the western hemisphere in 3 years short years by putting all the gangsters in prison. All the "surplus elite" NGO people who spent their entire career ineffectually addressing "the root causes of crime" are all now out of a job and/or very upset.
  • leokennis 3y ago
    This will probably greatly interest you: https://mattlakeman.org/2024/03/30/notes-on-el-salvador/ https://mattlakeman.org/2024/03/30/notes-on-el-salvador/
    • narrator 3y ago
      It's amazing how surprised everyone was that the whole thing worked phenomenally well. It went against a century of "expert" advice. It literally did the exact opposite. The purpose of the system is what it does [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...
      • ricardobeat 3y ago
        What kind of expert advice did it go against? Honestly sounds like the obvious approach, I think the controversy is around the authoritarian aspects of the whole thing.
  • ricardobeat 3y ago
    > In early October, El Salvador’s police announced the seizure of 2,026 firearms, including 1,371 pistols and other small arms > Imports of certain high-caliber firearms are prohibited. Arms for personal defense or hunting may be imported but are strictly controlled No open carry either. Sounds like gun control to me. It goes way beyond “putting gangsters in prison” and a large part of the plan is investment in education to get kids away from this path. One thing to note is the 72000 in prison did not receive a life sentence. They will be released at some point, and one has to trust that the “integration” part of the plan will work. There are also an infinite amount of reports of police abuse, violence, unlawful imprisonment, and media being silenced. We’ll only know the true cost of this many years from now.
• rafaelero 3y ago
  What's missing here -- and in most of social sciences -- is the realization that adverse events is itself a product of genetics, and bad social outcomes are only weakly mediated through those events. Genetics is most of the story here and, although it's a depressing narrative, I'm sick of seeing people push a narrative that is not based on facts.
  • shimon 3y ago
    On what factual basis can you claim that adverse events are primarily driven by genetics? On the face of it this seems ludicrous. A baby born to a mother living in a high-risk environment but then adopted by a low-risk family would likely do far better in their life than the inverse.
    • anon291 3y ago
      As someone who was on the adoption lists in California, we had to learn that statements like 'On the face of it this seems ludicrous. A baby born to a mother living in a high-risk environment but then adopted by a low-risk family would likely do far better in their life than the inverse.' were false. I don't know if it was right or wrong, but California in its mandated adoption (fostering) training courses thought that we should be disabused of the idea that taking in a child (even a newborn) would mean that the child wouldn't end up significantly like the genetic parent. There were several studies we had to read (don't have them) that supported this claim. We didn't end up fostering, for unrelated reasons.
      • ImAnAmateur 3y ago
        Do you remember the age ranges of those foster kids?
        • anon291 3y ago
          For us, because of our apartment we were looking at very young (less than a year old since we didn't have a separate bed room). They showed us studies that even infant adoptees tended towards the educational achievement of their genetic parents, not their adopted ones, for example. Again, I don't even know if it's right or wrong, but the agency we were working with thought we should know that. EDIT: Okay, here's an example: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/adoption-and-genetics-imp_b_4682667 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/adoption-and-genetics-imp_b_4... And reading that I'm reminded of the agency we were going with: PACT in Berkeley.
• hnburnsy 3y ago
  Hey Alvin (the author), you see us discussing this, how about addressing the issues raised in this discussion? https://twitter.com/alv9n/status/1780289344852431041 https://twitter.com/alv9n/status/1780289344852431041 >So this piece is now at the top of @hackernews. This experience is always cool and terrifying, especially when they also see all the small things that don't quite work about the piece.
• abhayhegde 3y ago
  > Then we turn 18 and we're expected to be "adults" and figure things out. If we fail, we are punished. ... The world we've built has shaped his life. This is a powerful message. A cynical (mostly realistic) outlook is that we are powerless pawns at the mercy of the powerful (read rich) in the world whose actions are ultimately reasons for blaming the powerless.
• Nimitz14 3y ago
  Maybe I missed something but the adverse experience factor didn't seem to be very meaningful. Not convinced by their argument. Great title and initial presentation though!
• astura 3y ago
  I feel like this is trying to tell me something really important but the data visualization crashed my browser multiple times.
• cameldrv 3y ago
  The punchline is this: "It's 2021. The research participants are in their late-30s now, which means they've had plenty of time to shape their own destinies. But we can clearly see that the experiences of their childhood had a huge effect on their financial situation as adults. It also has an effect on virtually everything else in their lives." You cannot infer the direction of causality from this data, i.e. that the traumatic experiences themselves cause the poorer outcomes. I remember reading about how in Chicago someone had noticed that kids who did better had more books at home, so they decided to give poor kids books. Certainly not a bad thing to do, but just giving them some books is not going to make them like the better off kids in all of the other (highly correlated) ways that they're different. Just as an example, one of the traumatic factors they identify is if a kid had witnessed someone being shot. The wealthy kids are way less likely to see anyone get shot, because if people were regularly getting shot in their neighborhood, they would move. The poor kids' parents don't always have that option. In this case it could be the poverty itself, not the shooting that is causing the poor outcomes. But then you get into why the parents are poor in the first place, and there are many causes, but a lot of them get passed down to the next generation in one way or another.
  • refulgentis 3y ago
    > Certainly not a bad thing to do, but just giving them some books is not going to make them like the better off kids in all of the other (highly correlated) ways that they're different From personal experience, I can absolutely vouch for that. 35, came from nowhere with nothing, absentee parents, out of house by 15. Dropped out of college, waited tables, did a startup, sold it, worked for 7 years at Google, now I'm doing my 2nd startup. Does it fix everything? No. But it gave me something to do that wasn't TV, and it kept me safe from [redacted] dad and [redacted] mom, I could hole up wherever I wanted and spend hours in them. You'd be surprised at the things that are lifelines. I had a really hard time explaining to this CS PhD dude who ran a weekend night basketball league for no particular reason how different and better that kept my life the last couple years of high school. You aren't shifting the whole distribution with one act, but just like the little shifts add up in the negative, they add up in the positive too. I remember a woman in her 30s running into me in the library lugging around those 7 volume MSDN published sets at 9 years old. She was incredulous and told me to keep it up. That mattered! No one had even noticed me or remarked on it before, gave me pride.
• Nevermark 3y ago
  It is odd that they don’t normalize the width of the dozens of 3 cohort graphs. Apparently in order to show fully filled rows. But it dramatically blunts the visual clarity of comparison between the differing percentages in each cohort associated with better and worse outcomes.
• timzaman 3y ago
  This depiction actually slowed me the issue was much more subtle and less severe than I thought.. I thought it would have been much worse. I don't think that was their intent!
• rkho 3y ago
  > College isn't just a place that teaches you how to do a job Sorry, what? This statement feels like the exception, not the norm for most people who have attended college.
• apsec112 3y ago
  The chart titled "Percentage of people 25 to 29 years old with a bachelor's degree" is just wrong. Looking at their own source, NCES, in 2010 this was 32%, while their graph seem to show around 70%: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d17/tables/dt17_104.20.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d17/tables/dt17_104.20.a...
• golemiprague 3y ago
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• 3minus1 3y ago
  As others have mentioned this site heavily implies causality with statements like "we can clearly see that the experiences of their childhood had a huge effect" and "college or technical school can mitigate some of the effects of adverse childhood experiences". It is simply not possible to draw such conclusions from a longitudinal study. Interventions and actual experiments are necessary. The site is really nicely done and even moving, but I find the ideas it is putting forth harmful honestly. We all would like to see better outcomes for teenagers, but if that is truly our goal we should not be shaping public policy around non-scientific observations on correlations. Let's do some actual science please and build policy around that.
  • sabarn01 3y ago
    The oddest example was suspensions. It treated suspensions as if they were random bad events not behaviour driven. Its not the suspension that causes poor outcomes its the behaviour.
• taurath 3y ago
  The layout of the data being poor and accuracy issues called out, while rightly, don't really engage with the narrative. This infographic talks about the economic outcomes, but there are also major health outcomes like early death, mental health issues that this doesn't approach. I think in a way it takes away from the core ideas of the impact of ACE's, which Everyone should absolutely know about. There IS a direct causal link from ACE's to poor life outcomes, and here is some reading on that: https://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797(98)00017-8/fulltext https://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797(98)00017-8/ful... https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/aces/resources.html https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/aces/resources.html
• eslaught 3y ago
  Has anyone done anything like this for historical time periods? I realize the data is inherently sparse, but I'd be curious to see what the results would look like in 1900, 1800, 1700, 1600, etc. My impression of the data is that, actually, we're doing pretty well with social mobility. Not perfectly by any means, and there is lots of room to improve. But as compared to (I think) just about any historical period, I think the graphs would be even more skewed. I'm fairly certain that as a medieval peasant, there were basically no viable routes to improving your lot (and even the word "lot" betrays the assumptions of the time), and so acceptance was the only viable route (violent rebellions excepted).
  • jaza 3y ago
    We are indeed doing well by historical standards. Looking back to Dickensian times, for example, those at the lowest echelons of society were lucky to make it to their teenage years at all! Infant and child mortality was far higher than it is today. And for those (who were poor and who lacked supportive parents) that lived to 13+, the majority had received little or no schooling, were virtually guaranteed to be illiterate, had likely already lost close family / friends, had likely already been employed in slave-like conditions, had likely already lived a life of crime out of necessity, and were likely to be incarcerated or executed in their lifetime. Not that any of that means we can't do better today. We can and we should.
• adamredwoods 3y ago
  I'm assuming this is a US study, I wish it said that, because these days the internet has an international audience.
• Aeolun 3y ago
  The thing I took away from this, and seemed more than just a slight increase for one of the categories, was that people with zero adverse experiences are very rarely ‘happy all the time’.
• selfie 3y ago
  [flagged]
• hndamien 3y ago
  It seems to me a lot of this is caused by inflation making it very hard for people struggling econimically, and the fall out effects of that for all society. Stop develuing the dollars people use by printing money and maybe some chunk of this goes away over time when people can enjoy the dividend of a productive society.
• geraldalewis 3y ago
  Sorry for the meta-commentary, but I don’t think it warrants its own post: wow the Overton window has shifted right on HN. I’ve noticed it with other comment threads but this one drives it home. Not good for discourse.
  • tavavex 3y ago
    I haven't been on this platform for long, but I'm feeling it as well. Maybe it coincides with the extreme shifts that have been occurring in real life, or maybe the audience here is just more likely to be very conservative. From my subjective observations, I feel like the average HN user is older and richer than the average tech worker.
  • hot_gril 3y ago
    Is it better for discourse if it's left?
  • 94cedbef06 3y ago
    [flagged]
  • Generous8030 3y ago
    I don't want to imagine your level of radicalism if you think HN is anywhere on the right. In my opinion you would have to be at the point of being completely disassociated with reality.
• teleforce 3y ago
  Very cool, clever and intuitive data presentation, this probably the way forward of effectively publishing research findings and help empower those who are not keen on reading research data (e.g policy makers). I will be very interested to see their workflow on how the data transformation from papers to what we see here, and this can be a game changer in publishing research results and findings. Those who are designing computer based GUI, graphics, dashboard can learn a lot from this animation and interactive with timeline/frequency approach (soon someone will coin a this a special term e.g gamification, etc) because this is how we can optimize the brain to process its data for optimum users' usability. Deep learning AI has shown impressive results values in mimicking the brain functionality based on the human cognition and brain neurology and it is about time the user interface aspect get the same treatment. Excellent books like Designing with the Mind in Mind can be a good guiding principle based on human cognition for effective and intuitive user interface [1]. For the research presented by data it is kind of plain obvious that your childhood upbringing and experiences shape and affect your adult world significantly and considerably. Imagine children from war torned countries that experienced extreme adversity at some point of their life like Vietnam and the latest Ukraine people who witnessed not only gun violences but also all out war (e.g bombs, war machinery, jet fighter) with extreme insecurity food depreciation, malnutrition, etc will be several more times badly affected compared to these children reported in the study that are primarily based on developed and stable countries. Then imagine people who are residing in a continously intermittent conflicts/wars and oppressed regions (without a valid country) for example Palestine people that experienced the injustices and atrocities happening over several generations not years, badly affecting the childrens with family member's and friends got killed prematurely, and some with no parents or worst dependents left. To think that how the people of the world ever allow, tolerate and even sponsoring the prepetrators of the oppression and injustice is beyond me. I think the only solace for these people in the region is that hopefully there will be easiness after hardship, and there will be justice sooner or later, here in this world or hereafter [2]. These are the sentences that really caught my attention, they say they are the peacemakers, but in rwality they are the real troublemakers or the root cause of the very problems and atrocities [3]. [1]Designing with the Mind in Mind: https://shop.elsevier.com/books/designing-with-the-mind-in-mind/johnson/978-0-12-818202-4 https://shop.elsevier.com/books/designing-with-the-mind-in-m... [2] https://quran.com/ash-sharh/5-6 https://quran.com/ash-sharh/5-6: 5 - So, surely with hardship comes ease. 6 - Surely with that hardship comes more ease [3]https://quran.com/ms/al-baqarah/11-12 https://quran.com/ms/al-baqarah/11-12: 11 - When they are told, “Do not spread corruption in the land,” they reply, “We are only peace-makers!” 12 - Indeed, it is they who are the corruptors, but they fail to perceive it.
• Glyptodon 3y ago
  One thing I've been curious about but can never tell from the no/some/4yr+ income breakdown they always do is how trades like mechanics, electricians, welders, and plumbers actually do. Which box are they in? Do they make no degree multi-modal, or even more skewed to poverty than we think?
  • jaza 3y ago
    Don't know about the US, but in Australia at least, mechanics / electricians / welders / plumbers / etc ("tradies" as we call them) generally do quite well financially. Income often above the average for a university graduate. Often more job security. And often significant tax breaks due to being self-employed. Also, income aside, I don't think that tradies belong in the broad "no college education" group, as almost all of them have a tertiary qualification (apprenticeship + TAFE diploma in Australia, maybe community college is the equivalent in the US?), even though it's not necessarily a bachelor's university degree.
    • Glyptodon 3y ago
      In the US it's never clear which box they get included in, at least to me. But apprenticeship + cert would I think generally be no college.
• pandothegod 3y ago
  [flagged]
• dnedic 3y ago
  The quote saying that people from 18 to 25 need a safe environment to "explore the world" and "find their purpose" seems very infantile and backward. First off, it's not realistic at scale and presents a very sheltered worldview. Majority of worlds workforce is between those ages and no automation, nor AI will change this. Second, even in the first world it's backward because you can also explore the world and find your purpose while working, infact working will teach you much more about the world than any college and you can always decide to get education when you're more mature and better off financially.
• 1024core 3y ago
  I don't know why they concentrated on college alone. For a lot of people, learning a trade like welding, carpentry, plumbing, auto maintenance, etc. is worth a lot more than going to college. They _can_ make a good living learning a trade. We should be looking more at sending the poorer kids to trade schools. Plus, working with your hands and building stuff is a mood-uplifter.
• l0c0b0x 3y ago
  I was Alex (my name is not Alex). Graduated high school in 97, but with a 2.1 GPA (yeah, pretty bad). Went to community college while working part time, living in a 'separated' household (mom/dad did the splits), supported both my parents both emotionally and financially (as much as I could) through their transition and new living arrangements. We were all immigrants, and still learning the ropes in this wonderful country. I did not graduate college, but instead went the part-time/apprenticeship/gain-experience route, while going through many roles. My baseline was to be a good citizen. A good son, a good partner, good friend, good husband and a good dad (4 wonderful kids). There were many good times, but also sad times, including when we lost our house and cars (2008), and that month when we literally didn't have money for food... but this country gives you many opportunities. There are safety nets, use them! You just have to focus on the goal: Move forward! There is always someone else who needs more help than you. Stay the course, and try not to lose perspective. I'm one of the luckiest people alive because I live in this country, and was always able to surround myself with supportive, positive and forward thinkers. I don't know why I shared this. Maybe because I don't care to blame society for my adverse experiences. Through those experiences, I learned to lead. I learned to listen. I learned to value and appreciate. I learned to live.
  • ciupicri 3y ago
    Are you talking about USA? What safety nets are available in the US? P.S. It's just a question. Not everyone lives in the US. Heck, maybe the OP was even talking about another country, say Denmark.
    • petesergeant 3y ago
      Earned Income Tax Credit, Supplemental Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the Child Care and Development Fund, housing assistance, Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program, Special Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Women, Infants and Children
      • 3y ago
• ziptron 3y ago
  An interesting silver lining is that reported happiness (shown near the end) seems to be inversely related to all of the other negative effects. At least from first glance at the data.
• throwaway2037 3y ago
  Right away, I was struck by the early chart "Parenting style" which shows about 75% with "Two parents uninvolved". Pardon my language: What the fuck does that even mean? I call bullshit. The whole article is nothing more than typical doomerism that spikes the reader's emotions with clickbait. Another one from "Household income vs. poverty line": > And a lot of kids are growing up extremely poor – which, in and of itself, can be traumatic. Here, the phrase "a lot" is absolutely an editorial phrase. It would be more clear and less emotional to use a percent value. Instead, they chose the clickbait route. Interestingly, they chose the term "extremely poor", but their own chart does not use it, nor include a definition of it. The lowest income category simply says "In poverty". In past discussions about poverty, many people on HN have shared their personal poverty experiences and the range of poverty. You can be right at the poverty line, but making ends meet. Or you can be deep in poverty, struggling terribly. Again, the article fails to provide necessary nuance.
• luxuryballs 3y ago
  > In one year, the US will elect Donald Trump as president – a man who constantly insults poor people and calls them "morons." This is blatantly false and yet for no reason at all is embedded here. It makes it harder to trust the author for everything else when they do stuff like this. “Trump Derangement Syndrome” is clearly much more than just a meme.
• reactordev 3y ago
  This is fascinating. Also kind of helps explain why my experiences aren’t relatable to the people I work with as they (mostly). This is my peer group too! So cool to see how our experiences shape us. For better or worse.
• unobatbayar 3y ago
  I'd like to share some of my experiences on this topic. Growing up, I faced several adversities. My parents divorced when I was young, and I lived with my mother until the age of 13. Unfortunately, my mother struggled with alcoholism, often bringing friends over, even during my early school years. However, in hindsight, I believe she deeply missed my father and coped with her pain through drinking. Despite her struggles, I know she loved me. Life became even more challenging when my stepfather entered the picture. I endured multiple school absences due to injuries like broken noses and ribs. Eventually, I reached a breaking point and called my real father, expressing my desire to live with him. One day, I left my mother's home and never returned. Transitioning to life with my father brought new dynamics, including a stepmother and stepbrother. While our financial situation improved, a different form of abuse emerged, one that was emotional and insidious. I often found myself unfairly blamed and punished for things I hadn't done. Despite evidence implicating my stepbrother, I was consistently scapegoated. To extended family and relatives, I became the problem child, while my stepbrother was seen as an angel. My stepmother's behavior shifted when my father was present, exacerbating the emotional turmoil. My academic performance suffered, contrasting sharply with my previous success under my mother's care. I developed a video game addiction, became extremely thin and struggled with dissociative identity disorder, challenges that persisted into my university years and adulthood. Despite graduating with a GPA of 2.7 and needing an extra year to complete university, I was able to secure a job, thanks to the kindness of the people I met during an internship. I faced numerous exam retakes due to heavy gaming. Financial stability, facilitated by my father, spared me from experiencing poverty and enabled my education. Now, at 26, I'm married with a baby on the way in May. I'm determined to provide unwavering love and support to my child and wife, drawing from my own experiences of feeling blamed and unloved. Reflecting on my past, I regret leaving my mother's home. A mother's love is irreplaceable, transcending monetary value. However, I don't blame anyone except myself. In conclusion, I might have been an unlikable and unlovable brat, often inciting displeasure and animosity. On top of that, loving a stepchild is undoubtedly challenging. Yet, I believe that surviving abuse and adversity can catalyze personal growth in ways we may not immediately perceive. Most importantly, it's crucial to have someone who loves you, whether it's a significant other, partner, or friend, especially if you're unable to find that love and support within your own home.
  • 3y ago
• MathYouF 3y ago
  "Bachelor's degrees have become essential for well-paid jobs in the US." The lies we continue to allow ourselves to tell as a society.
• atlas_hugged 3y ago
  Poverty is expensive. I’m about to be 40 and I finally feel like my family has escaped it.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• yosito 3y ago
  I read this, and I'm shocked at the number of people who seem to make it through life with no adverse experiences. And I also note how by almost every measure, there is a similar ratio of people with adverse experiences who are found at every level. Life is hard. I used to think that it's hard for a majority of people. But this article has convinced me that quite a lot of people have relatively easy lives, which, as someone who had my fair share of adverse experiences, I think is wonderful.
• Kwinnoble10 3y ago
  [flagged]
• joshuahutt 3y ago
  Life seems to be a crapshoot for most people. Most people seem to be born into families not adequately equipped to raise children, and the ones that succeed and survive seem to do so despite what they missed out on, developing elaborate coping strategies that survive on into adulthood, which ironically, can lead to more underserved children. Few seem fortunate enough to find a time to "pause" in their lives, examine what deep seeded issues they have developed from the process of surviving childhood, and finding and embarking on a path to a more balanced and mature, "adult" life. But hey, it might be a sampling bias. I also imagine there is a silent majority of well adjusted people that don't show up on the internet or the news, projecting themselves all over everyone and everything within their reach.
• jackbauer24 3y ago
  I am familiar with this documentary. The current presentation style is quite spectacular.
• NewByteHacker 3y ago
  Parents and family are so important to a child's growth.
• donatj 3y ago
  Probably an unimportant detail, but the "weights today" are strangely low and seemingly unrepresentative of the general US population. A VERY strangely high percentage between 90lbs and 120lbs, and very few over 200lbs.
• acjohnson55 3y ago
  The format is very creative and technically impressive. I don't want to launch into criticisms without acknowledging that. However, I find myself underwhelmed, for a few reasons. - It's hard to compare the different cohorts, because of the different widths. - The definition of "adverse experiences" seems too limited in scope of what's counted, leading to small numbers and small differentiation between the cohorts. - The biggest difference appears to be "no adverse experiences" vs everyone else, but I think the narrative describes other things. - Somehow, the viceral differences in experience between folks who come from healthy, happy, wealthy families and those that don't feel kind of flattened. I'm deeply concerned for social justice and equity of opportunities. I'm sure the underlying research of this longitudinal study is fascinating. I just think that the execution of this summary misses the mark a bit.
  • aprilthird2021 3y ago
    I'm honestly not sure what conclusion to come away from this data with. It seems to be bolstering a (typically conservative) viewpoint that parenting is really important and that bad or unfit parents need to be kept in check by the state because the harm they may do to their kids can last a lifetime. This article focuses on shootings, neglectful parents, etc. But what if we focused on more controversial things like only having one parent in the home or missing, specifically, a father figure, religious attitudes of parents, or even (to be maximally controversial) same-sex vs opposite-sex parents? If those things were found to have impacts on children that last into adulthood also (since the data implies that our childhood shapes us so much), I doubt the author would agree that we have a collective responsibility to keep children from experiencing the negatives of those scenarios
    • acjohnson55 3y ago
      I don't think it's at all unique to conservatives to believe that parenting is important. I would say conservatives tend to want to enforce (and sometimes preferentially support) "traditional" households, leaving up to people to self organize their support systems. Liiberals tend to want to accept households as they are but put in place systems to compensate for the specific conditions that might be suboptimal in a child's environment. I'm biased, but I believe the liberal perspective takes a more open mind to letting people live the ways they want, under the assumption that this is likely to be locally optimal versus trying to coerce people into externally imposed lifestyles. I don't think it's controversial to say that two parent households correlate with better outcomes. But that doesn't mean that every family is better off that way. Some children are way better off if it's easy and unstigmatized for a single parent to get sole custody if the other parent is abusive.
• INTPenis 3y ago
  "This is a US teenager". Wouldn't be hard to add that right? We're not all american on the internet.
• bbqq 3y ago
  age of first sex? n/a. age of the first of a long series of rejections from the opposite sex was quite a young age. I guess we all have our own positive and negative deviations from the mean across different aspects of life's 'expected' outcomes.
• aszantu 3y ago
  This girl was unlucky, she got hit a few times when she was young. By mum, by "friends", bullied in kindergarden and bullied and bossed in school and when it looked like it would all be okay, the parents divorced. She felt like she's not good enough for this world, but eventually she found out she had been depressed for 25 year and blessed/cursed with adhd. When she fixed her diet, it all turned around and she got her first stable income at 37 and went up the ladder a bit. She happy? No. Happiness is for others. Today it's enough to not suffer too much.
• ozim 3y ago
  I think in Europe no one holds back in the grades, school will push a kid forward. When I was a kid they did hold kids and they were usually worst bullies and bad influences. Wonder if it still the case in US or “Alex” would be born somewhere 1990ish or earlier?
  • mdekkers 3y ago
    > I think in Europe no one holds back in the grades, school will push a kid forward. That is hilariously incorrect. I had an adverse childhood, my dad died when I was 8, and my mom was literally not around, she was on the other side of the country and not interested. I was in care. I was passed around middle and high schools like a hot potato, nobody wanted me, simply because I was in care. The folks in care told me I was going to do exceptionally well in life, as my IQ tests were incredible - they were the only really structured approach to testing at the time. I ran the computer labs at all the schools I was at (C64 FTW!), because I was known as a “whizz kid” and could be trusted with that, but before ever setting foot in any of those schools I was already “branded” because I was in care. The teachers, all of them bar one, literally didn’t give a fuck. The one that cared, cared deeply. He was the music teacher, steadfastly wore punk t-shirts to class, and taught me drums and percussion. I still think of him often, but music lessons are not enough. As for the rest of the bastards, my questions and educational needs were ignored, I was told to “just don’t bother” by many. I was great in the computer lab of course, English, and history. I struggled with many other subjects, but was deeply motivated to do well in school - I saw all the _other_ kids in care around me and was absolutely positive that I did not want to end up like that, but as I said I simply was ignored. Not only can I not do math until today, the “European schools (Netherlands, to be precise) experience” traumatised me to an extent where any kind of formal learning causes some kind of brain freeze and I simply cannot. I was relentlessly bullied at and outside of school, until I learned to stand up for myself, at which point it went in a kind of binary fashion directly to outlandish punishments for standing up for myself. Punching back in self defence can, in fact, land you in a straitjacket and in isolation for a week, who knew?! That was also where my deep distrust and rejection of any kind of authority figure or structure comes from. I never finished school, I emancipated myself from care and dropped out when I was 17, and got the fuck out of the Netherlands. I am, until this day (54 years old now), unable to get a degree as I dropped out and as I am unable to study in a traditional sense. I was homeless and living rough a few months later, and it took me years to fight my way out of that shit. By good fortune and stubbornness I was able to learn and work in stage lighting, and did that for many years. I designed shows, clubs, bars, and ran the lights at too many events to count. I was at the forefront of the (then new up and coming) move away from pure analog lighting and into digital control and moving lights. I eventually pivoted into IT professionally, again at a time when this was all new for everyone, and managed to build a career. I did well for a very long time and love the work. As a certified Old, I now struggle to get the contracts I need to keep going, companies want young blood and believe that deep skill and experience is overrated, so we will see what the next stage of life will bring. Nothing special about European schools. They suck just as much as all the others.
• badpun 3y ago
  Regarding low-income as a result of adverse childhood experiences. This ignores the fact that some jobs just don't pay a lot, and even if everyone had super-duper childhood, some portion of those people would still end up working minimum-wage jobs - because somebody has to do them. The way our economy works is just stack-ranking, but at a nation-wide scale. In consequence, if you help one teenager, you'll lift them further the bottom of the stack - at the expense of everyone else who they've surpassed thanks to your help. Another corollary is that, if we want people to not have low incomes, we need to change how our society functions (as say Scandinavians did it, with very high minimum wage), as helping individuals will not matter that much. The one effect helping individuals has is making them more efficient and better adjusted to the economy, so that maybe they'll be slightly better waiters or burger flippers, which produces slighly more GDP for the nation to spread via welfare state policies - but, for simplest jobs, that effect can't be huge.
• helboi4 3y ago
  To respond to a lot of these ridiculous responses here: The answer to this is that we should optimise society towards less inequality. It is our collective responsibility because the privileged people who have disproportionally better results do so BECAUSE systems of inequality that keep wealth in certain areas of society exist. This doesn't mean you didn't work hard, obviously. The evening out of such inequalities require much more radical policies than stuff like affirmitive action. We need things that address the root of the issues with how our society works. Nobody is willing to do that. But yeah, its not the fault of the parents alone. I'm sorry that's some incredibly neoliberal individualist bullshit. There are so many factors listed here that poorer parents cannot sheild their kids from. They cannot live in a nicer place that they can't afford. They cannot just stop having chronic illness at a higher rate because of their own disadvantaged lives. Etc etc. Everyone should take responsibility over their own life and do as much as they can to not let anything hold them back, just for the sake of their personal happiness at least. However, saying that does not then abdicate us from our other responsibility to make the world a better place. Telling people to work hard does not make societal factors go away.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• ConnorCallahan 3y ago
  “ The world we've built has shaped his life. So he is our collective responsibility. They all are.” I don’t understand how it’s our responsibility that he is “sometimes depressed”. I didn’t make him not study.
• m101 3y ago
  The problem with 1) blaming early trauma on all outcomes and 2) saying it's out responsibility to support them, is that it sends a poor signal about personal responsibility. What kind of society would be created if we sent that message?
• ErigmolCt 3y ago
  The data is really interestingly presented!
• ckemere 3y ago
  Lots of discussion about the conclusions relating childhood trauma to adult outcomes. One intermediate comment that struck me was the idea of college as a temporal/physical space for necessary growth in the 18-20s age range. I need to ponder more about this. BUT, it struck me that one of the outcomes of the pandemic was the recognition that a major function of school for kids is childcare (as opposed to learning), and it’s funny to imagine college as the modern equivalent for older “kids”.
• kjgkjhfkjf 3y ago
  This website is neat, but please keep in mind that you cannot establish causation from an observational study.
• cchi_co 3y ago
  [dead]
• mayerwin 3y ago
  Worst visualization ever for a study about obvious correlations (that are misrepresented as a result of the poor display of data).