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It's not just a choice in a vacuum, there are other things that contribute significantly to you making right and wrong choices, and specifically when it comes t

It's not just a choice in a vacuum, there are other things that contribute significantly to you making right and wrong choices, and specifically when it comes to making good life choices, a lot of those decisions are influenced negatively by poverty.

growupkids 13y ago
Citation please. No but Seriously. This is just a series of platitudes: decisions are influenced negatively by poverty? Yes, and some are influenced positively by poverty, as in "this sucks and I don't want to be hungry anymore". I know it motivated me to see my parents struggle, to eat government cheese, and to move all the time because of the need for new work for my dad. Experience is a great teacher, and it motivated me to not make the same mistakes my parents made. Its not a zero sum game. Even being poor isn't poor anymore. When I was little, and we were poor, dirt poor in the backwoods of Tenessee we didn't have a phone, we had one kerosene heater, we lived on a dirt road, no health care, and we got our milk from the neighbors cow ( real milk kids is gross ). Compare that with the average "poor" person today, cell phone, government health insurance, clean safe water to drink, a government provided debit card to go shopping ( no govt cheese for them), paved roads! Yep, life's tough. They'll never get out of poverty. Maybe you're right. If it's too nice, why bother. I definitely didn't want to be backwoods poor, it positively influenced my decisions. I ain't poor no more.
- skunkworks 13y ago
  You're welcome to dismiss my argument as a series of platitudes, but you should also agree to allow me to dismiss your story as a platitude, about how you were so determined not to be poor that it drove you to succeed. I'm not actually dismissing your story -- I am in no position to judge fairly -- but I'm trying to point out that the fundamental attribution bias and the closely related actor-observer bias (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor%E2%80%93observer_bias http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor%E2%80%93observer_bias) are both powerful. What if your personality type made it such that you had a high likelihood of success whether you were rich or poor? Finally, with all this talk about "choice", let me go ahead and throw out a controversial statement: we have a lot less free will than we want to believe we do.

growupkids 13y ago

Citation please. No but Seriously. This is just a series of platitudes: decisions are influenced negatively by poverty? Yes, and some are influenced positively by poverty, as in "this sucks and I don't want to be hungry anymore". I know it motivated me to see my parents struggle, to eat government cheese, and to move all the time because of the need for new work for my dad. Experience is a great teacher, and it motivated me to not make the same mistakes my parents made. Its not a zero sum game. Even being poor isn't poor anymore. When I was little, and we were poor, dirt poor in the backwoods of Tenessee we didn't have a phone, we had one kerosene heater, we lived on a dirt road, no health care, and we got our milk from the neighbors cow ( real milk kids is gross ). Compare that with the average "poor" person today, cell phone, government health insurance, clean safe water to drink, a government provided debit card to go shopping ( no govt cheese for them), paved roads! Yep, life's tough. They'll never get out of poverty. Maybe you're right. If it's too nice, why bother. I definitely didn't want to be backwoods poor, it positively influenced my decisions. I ain't poor no more.

skunkworks 13y ago
You're welcome to dismiss my argument as a series of platitudes, but you should also agree to allow me to dismiss your story as a platitude, about how you were so determined not to be poor that it drove you to succeed. I'm not actually dismissing your story -- I am in no position to judge fairly -- but I'm trying to point out that the fundamental attribution bias and the closely related actor-observer bias (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor%E2%80%93observer_bias http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor%E2%80%93observer_bias) are both powerful. What if your personality type made it such that you had a high likelihood of success whether you were rich or poor? Finally, with all this talk about "choice", let me go ahead and throw out a controversial statement: we have a lot less free will than we want to believe we do.