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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 percen

• theicfire 2y ago
  I had very similar takeaways, you said it well!
• tomrod 2y 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 2y ago
  You have to balk when anyone says that anybody is the same person they were 24 years ago.
  • erikerikson 2y ago
    You have to disbelieve anyone who says they aren't a derivation of their previous person states. That's just physics.
    • dumbo-octopus 2y ago
      Oh you have a comprehensive physical model of individual human behavior do you, in particular the decision making process of life-changing choices? I'd love to see the publication.
      • __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
        The future is still a function of the past, even if we lack that function's complete specification.
        • dumbo-octopus 2y ago
          Yes, we can believe many things without any proof or justification. We call that religion, not "physics". Edit: this was in response to a prior edit of the parent that (correctly) explicitly stated their position was a personal belief, not some sort of universally acknowledged axiom as they have since edited it to seem.
          • __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
            The spirit of the edit was for clarity of position, sorry for the misdirection.
        • constantcrying 2y ago
          >The future is still a function of the past If you don't believe in conscious choice the whole debate is moot anyway.
          • brabel 2y ago
            That's not the claim. The claim is that if you're born poor, your chances of being poor when you become an adult are much higher. Perhaps you know that and still think that because the kid who is born poor "chose" to stay poor, but I hope no one capable of having a discussion about this topic thinks like that.
  • jf22 2y ago
    A big part of what makes a person is their unique collection of experiences. You can be the same person but different because of those experiences.
• richardlblair 2y ago
  It's hard to look at visualizations like this and reflect on the experiences of the individuals living through hardship. Even those who 'make it out' may struggle in ways not fully captured in the data or this visualization. I grew up in a 'high risk environment', and experienced all the adverse experiences with the exception of gun violence (yay Canada). I'm one of the few that 'made it out'. Many of my childhood friends are dead (usually overdoses), suffer from substance abuse, or are still stuck in the poverty cycle (on average it takes 7 generation to break the cycle). I look at this visualization and I can feel, to my core, what these folks feel. Even for those that 'made it out', I feel for them. I struggle with my mental health, I've had to actively reparent myself, and I feel pretty lonely. Many of the people I'm surrounded by don't know what it feels like to carry all the weight from your childhood. I do agree that the government shouldn't just throw resources at the problem. There are some things the government can do, though. 1. Teach conflict resolution skills to young children. This mitigates adverse experiences and prepares the children for adulthood (especially if they 'make it out') 2. Address addiction as a health problem and not a criminal problem. Children don't need to see their parents as criminals, they need to witness them get better. 3. Reduce the burden of poverty. For instance, the poorer you are the further you have to travel to the grocery store. The people who often don't have the means to easily travel for food have to travel for food. 4. Access to education. The people I grew up around who have found success did so because our schools were really well equipped. You'll notice I didn't list access to support systems. Honestly, they are kind of useless. As a child you understand that if you open up about your experience there is a solid chance your parents will get in trouble or you'll be removed from your home. No child wants this. You end up holding it all in because you can't trust adults. These are just some of my thoughts. Definitely not comprehensive, I could ramble on about this for ages. (edit - formatting)
  • anon291 2y ago
    Unfortunately a solid number of these things would rely on the moral equivalent of slavery. > Reduce the burden of poverty. For instance, the poorer you are the further you have to travel to the grocery store. The people who often don't have the means to easily travel for food have to travel for food. No one wants to work in these neighborhoods because they are invariably awful. At some point the risk of an employee being murdered / assaulted means stores close down. There's no good answer for this, other than to keep doing what we're doing. Our current economic system has consistently lifted large numbers of people out of poverty historically, and is still doing it today. We should at least give it a go for seven more generations. That's not to say we should do nothing, but large overhauls seem uncalled for given the data.
• __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
  Whether it counts as a collective sacrifice would sort of depend how it balances against the benefits of living among a population with a lower desparate/safe ratio. It may well be a collective investment instead.
• skrbjc 2y ago
  The argument of the data seems to say we should put resources towards those with more adverse experiences in childhood. But I wonder, if you were optimizing for improving more people's lives in a more meaningful way with limited funds, would you come to the conclusion that you could do so by focusing on improving the lives of those in the no adverse experiences group because you might be able to get more "life improvement units" per dollar? Most think resources should be targeted towards groups that "deserve it more" because they are "worse off", but it's interesting to think if your goal is to create more happiness or whatever per dollar, maybe the discussion would lead us to investing in groups that are not on the proverbial "bottom"
  • 12907835202 2y ago
    If you haven't already look up John Rawls he's probably the most famous person who has argued for helping the worst off. Of course reading his books would be the best source but for now here's a link: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rawls/#JusFaiJusWitLibSoc https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rawls/#JusFaiJusWitLibSoc
  • bumby 2y ago
    >Most think resources should be targeted towards groups that "deserve it more" because they are "worse off" I believe there is behavioral game theory research that shows we are hard-wired for "fairness", even at the expense of a more optimal solution. E.g., Two subjects are given $100 to split and one was allowed to determine the split and the other the choice to accept it or both would go with nothing. A "$90/$10" split would often be rejected, even though the decider is giving up $10 and instead choosing nothing because of a sense of being slighted.
    • gowld 2y ago
      We're hard-wired for fairness toward ourselves than to others. That's why $90/$10 splits exist, but $10/$9 splits don't.
      • deleted 2y ago
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• wiz21c 2y ago
  I'm really surprised that you consider it a "sacrifice" to help others. Because when "others" are doing well, I'm doing better too. Give a job or a good life to anybody and you'll see, they'll just be better. Most of the poor/unemployed people are not like that because they choose to but because they had more hurdles to pass and ultimately were more at risk to fail. And it's not because some made it that it proves that the others should have made it too (survivor bias)...
  • richardlblair 2y ago
    I fully agree. OP also ignores the compounded returns. If you lift a person out of poverty you immediately set their children up for better outcomes.
  • thegrim33 2y ago
    You're just being obtuse. The topic is about spending resources in an attempt to achieve a goal. You can't just say "whatever we spend just makes people's lives better so it's worth it". There's a very real cost involved, and a very real effectiveness of spending that cost. To put it to extremes as an example, if we're spending $1 per person to give them a 99% chance of living a better life, that's a much different situation than if we're spending $1 million per person to give them a 1% chance of living a better life. That million dollars per person could have otherwise funded countless other programs which may have had a better positive affect on the population. You can't just say "well others are doing better when we spend that money so it's worth it" with no other thought given.
    • jstummbillig 2y ago
      If parent is obtuse, so are you. The topic is clearly not entirely contained in "spending resources in an attempt to achieve a goal", if how you do it can either be understood as a "sacrifice" or something else entirely (though, to you, it might, if you don't care about the difference). There is a cost that can be measured in money. There is an outcome that can be measured in a variety of ways. And then there is also different ways of how we think about something, that definitely informs what we do and how.
    • 2y ago
• ClumsyPilot 2y ago
  > how much are we willing to collectively sacrifice to move that percentage of people in a positive direction? Thats the wrong question - How many adolescents and citizens of the future are we willing to sacrifice for our comfort today. It will come back to byte us in the ass, condemn adolescents to life of poverty today, and get lost productivity, crime and political instability. Push it far enough and get French Revolution
• hammock 2y ago
  >The conclusion of this data presentation is that so of these people are our collective responsibility, and I just wasn't convinced. That conclusion came out of left field for me. He started off saying these certain adverse events affect you in adulthood. So the logical conclusion would be: Be involved parents, give your kids a quiet place to study, don't have a drug problem as a parent, don't tolerate bullying, don't let your kid fall behind and be held back in school, don't let your kid do things that will get him suspended, don't shoot people in front of kids. The vast majority of these are about good parenting. I would not describe that as a "collective responsibility," though, rather an individual civic duty.
  • James_K 2y ago
    Exactly, and I've always said the same thing about murderers. Why should we pay for police to catch murderers when the murderers could just not murder? This seems like a matter of individual, rather than collective responsibility. If they don't murder, it is better for us, better for them, and better for their victims. Why should we have to protect the victims of murderers when murderers could simply not kill people? Without the sarcasm now, the victims of bad parents are no different than the victims of any other crime. Yes, it may be the parents' fault that their child has a bad life just as it is a murderer's fault that his victims die, but that hardly justifies it happening. A child cannot choose their parents any more than you can choose not to be the victim of a crime. It seems obvious to me that, as a society, we should protect the vulnerable from those who might harm them.
    • liveoneggs 2y ago
      It would be better for society if someone inclined to murder did not. Police do not protect the victim of murder -- they are dead already. Your view appears to say "society" (the police?) should "protect" children from their own parents, if they are deemed "bad"? The line for police intervention should probably not include "living in a bad neighborhood" or "being poor". Those strategies are tried pretty often by evangelicals who steal poor children from vulnerable countries/populations, yet are perceived as bad by most people. If the fault is with the parents then isn't it just as likely with the grandparents? or great grandparents? and so on down the line?
• ransom1538 2y ago
  I took these types of surveys in junior high. All my friends did heroin and were prostitutes. (it was funny). I wouldn't trust a survey like that more than toilet paper and tea leaves. The truly horrifying thing is adults thinking the data is real and making decisions.
  • jeppester 2y ago
    How would you interpret the results then? That there's a correlation between lying in the survey and doing worse in life?
  • wyre 2y ago
    This isn’t a jr high survey. This is a study of select individuals over decades.
• computerdork 2y ago
  Yeah, agree with you that if they used percentages - it would have been much easier to see - disagree with you about what their data is implying. Think it clearly shows that those with less adverse experiences have more success in life. Took another look at their data visualizations, and yeah, look at 2013, for the people with no adverse experiences, it looks like at least 40% make $45k more, while those with multiple adverse experiences it looks something like 15%. And, in 2021, it's harder to see (because looks like people's income rises as they get older), but it looks like for no-adverse experiences, good 50% are making over $60k, while maybe 30% for multiple adverse experiences. ... and actually, do agree with one aspect, it is interesting that the older they get, the less the differences in income and other life attributes are. Maybe it just means that for people who had difficult childhoods, it takes more time to get past all the early obstacles, and live a more stable life.
• maxerickson 2y ago
  And, critically, how much are we willing to collectively sacrifice to move that percentage of people in a positive direction? This begs the question, at least to some extent. A big lesson of modern economics is that lots of things are win-win. For example, if you could eliminate years spent in prison by spending more on K-12 education, that looks like a big sacrifice if you don't have the prison counterfactual to compare to, but it's potentially the cheaper path.
  • lazyasciiart 2y ago
    There are lots of interventions that show massive returns on investment in social welfare: a recent one has been extended availability of support for teenagers aging out of foster care, that takes their outcomes from something like "percentage who have become homeless within one year of their 18th birthday" from 70% down to 30%, and similar for arrest records and pregnancy among girls. But, sadly, many people feel morally injured by spending money to proactively help adults who should be eating their own boots or whatever, and so it is less of a sacrifice to spend 5 times the money on jailing them instead.
    • relaxing 2y ago
      Critically, the industries dedicated to putting people in jail and keeping them there are well-organized and politically-connected. And the industries that could benefit from an expanded workforce are aligned with the pro-jail bloc for political gain.
  • perfectritone 2y ago
    Unfortunately it's not all economics. The prison system in the US exerts its power on the population using fear. The goal is to have a certain amount of people in prison, not to save money by getting them out. There are myriad ways to achieve reducing the prison population if that was the goal.
• deleted 2y ago
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• AndrewKemendo 2y ago
  The person in the story might has well have been me - I repeated 7th grade - Was suspended Multiple times - Lived in 11 different houses - Lived with a teacher for two months - Good friend murdered - Mom of good friend murdered by their Father - Gnarly parents divorce with police etc regularly I joined the AF because I read a book about John Boyd and figured I could pursue technology that I saw in the movies so I got out What could the govt have done? The question is incoherent. Are they going to make my toxic narcissistic parents stop being that way? No, I needed a family and community to take care of me. So unless you believe government = collective community then there’s nothing the govt can do but stop letting businessmen and conservatives keep standing on our necks
  • bglazer 2y ago
    I mean you did join a government organization that provided a (more or less) guaranteed job and training. Also, this is a genuine question, how much of the chaos in your life was due to financial hardship? Do you think just having more money would have lessened the chaos?
    • AndrewKemendo 2y ago
      It’s far from a guaranteed anything actually but I understand your point that we can have a robust government that is useful as a bridge to the middle class - and that’s exactly what it is in a lot of cases Impossible to tell unfortunately but it doesn’t seem like it in my case
      • bglazer 2y ago
        Thanks for the reply
• Red_Leaves_Flyy 2y ago
  The point is, likely intentionally, understated. I cannot speak for the author, but the gist I got is that our society thrusts wholly unprepared people into adulthood and we could get a lot of improvements from just making it harder for people to fail at adulting. IYKYK and if you don’t you will get fucked - repeatedly. Basic life skills are not taught so it’s up to the individual if their family fails. Importantly, it is unreasonable to expect someone to teach another how to do something they don’t know how to do. I’m talking about stuff like navigating health insurance, paying taxes, budgeting, managing credit, home maintenance, vehicle care. Mistakes in any one of these domains can have devastating consequences that profoundly change one’s life. Simple things like single payer health care (only complex because of greedy people demanding a tax for the privilege the laws wrote grant them), personal budgeting education, and teaching basic home improvement skills will markedly improve many people’s lives. We could also discuss more difficult topics like the complete lack of a meaningful social safety net, and the rippling consequences of systemic injustice but that’s less on topic and more likely to get me flamed or trolled.
  • gentleman11 2y ago
    If you say the problem is social class and poverty, and not having available role models to show how adult life actually works, you’ll get flamed and trolled. If you say the problem is racial issues, you’ll get upvotes. I’ll just sit here and await my downvotes now
    • bccdee 2y ago
      Role models are kind of a non-answer to the question. It's like saying the problem is "bad luck." Role-model-based policy solutions are, if not impossible, at least deeply impractical. Childcare subsidies and other forms of welfare, including simple direct cash transfers, have been shown to be strongly beneficial and are much simpler to implement. What people dislike about those is that they involve starting fights with lobbyists. Hence non-actionable perspectives like "the problem is role models" or "the problem is personal responsibility," which are not solutions so much as excuses for collective inaction.
    • 6510 2y ago
• coldtea 2y ago
  >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? What exactly would we be "collectively sacrificing"? Something like, 1% higher taxes? Same taxes, but the use of some of the public money currently massively wasted in all kinds of endless sinks?
• deleted 2y ago
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• 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
  In every society, taxes and government are the lens used to focus collective social responsibility and direct actions that will benefit the society as a whole, and individually. Even in a collectivist society, some work is done to benefit a small group of individuals when it's deemed necessary by the society. And in an individualist society, effort is also undertaken to benefit the whole. The questions you pose are good questions, but they can't be answered by this presentation. Even if you were to ask a much more "fundamental" or "simple" question, like "How much should we sacrifice for sanitation?", the answer is not clear, as it will vary by location and other criteria. This presentation can't answer the questions, but it can cause us to ask them. Let's remember these questions and take them forward into our local communities, and try to focus more on local solutions, and less on one-size-fits-all.
• mortify 2y ago
  The idea that we're collectively responsible is abjectly untrue. The only people with responsibility are the parents because they are the only ones who are allowed to make decisions. That is unless the government wants to take their children away because they're "uninvolved." Not that a government employee or paid foster family is likely to be better. The fact is that people with positive influences and role models will do better. It would be great if we could maximize that, but who chooses who is "better," one of the majority who didn't have those role models themselves?
  • ErigmolCt 2y ago
    I think this conclusion should encourage people to think about the current problem and how childhood can influence success in adulthood
• komali2 2y ago
  > And, critically, how much are we willing to collectively sacrifice If we bring back wealth taxes "we" probably wouldn't have to sacrifice much if anything (not sure if your net worth is > 20 million)
• fergie 2y ago
  The classic answer to that question would be to move to a more Scandinavian model.
• cycomanic 2y 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? What do you mean huge number of people in many adverse experiences making it to college? If you look at the graph from 2011 with highest qualification obtained. There's probably less than 1 in 8 of the many adverse effects that obtained a college degree, while about 50% of the no adverse effects kids did. Those are huge differences. Did you expect that none of the many adverse effects kids make it to college? That's the nature of statistics with humans, yes some succeed but the probabilities are so much different.