9 ms·

Impulsive Rich Kid, Impulsive Poor Kid

r00fus 11y ago
Interesting takeaways: * They mentioned some degree of "mentorship effect", but didn't clarify how they controlled for this. * Cash handouts (ie, basic income) prevented desperate measures. The societal cost of the cash could be less than the aggregate cost of the crimes.
- mason55 11y ago
  > The societal cost of the cash could be less than the aggregate cost of the crimes This is the idea behind a basic income. Some experiments are also finding it cheaper to just give people houses than to continue to run homeless outreach programs.
  - swombat 11y ago
    It's part of the idea behind basic income. There are two major angles I think: economic and moral. Economically, there are a lot of costs that are taken out of the system if we implement basic income, everything from means-tested support (the means testing is very expensive and prone to fraud, etc), to crime that you mention, to the terrible and yet unmeasured opportunity cost of still having the majority of the population working in jobs they hate but need to survive. Imagine a world where everyone is working on something they've chosen to do, which they can feel passionate about (and yes, I do believe people can feel passionate about any job that has a useful purpose, including picking up trash, cleaning the streets, and all those other currently low-status jobs). The moral side is equally important, though. We live in a society where we don't need everyone to work, not even close. A great many people today work in jobs whose only purpose is to exist as jobs, which don't actually have a net benefit to society other than keeping people out of unemployment. Many others are unable to contribute to society because their skills are not in demand, thanks to automation, outsourcing, etc. Those people are currently made to feel morally guilty for not working, their self-worth as human beings is attacked, debased. This is fundamentally wrong, and is the major challenge of our generation: transforming from a society that liberally distributes shame to people who are not in a position to work for money, to a society that accepts that paid work is just one of the activities a human being might partake in in their life, and neither necessary nor the highest. If we fail at this challenge, the cost will be unrest, perhaps revolution, probably a regression in the progress of mankind. We have a tough few decades ahead.
    - wslh 11y ago
      I agree with the premise that there will be fewer jobs but not that basic income is the solution. Not working can be very unhealthy for most people and I imagine people doing nothing instead of being "artists and scientists".
      - eru 11y ago
        How about basic income and abolishing any minimum wage? (And other barriers to low income employment.)
        pessimizer 11y ago
        Basic income creates a de facto minimum wage by setting a wage for a complete lack of labor. I'd think any other minimum wage would be redundant.
        eru 11y ago
        A welfare system that abruptly stops paying out when you've got a job sets a de facto minimum wage. A basic income doesn't prevent you from working for a small amount of money. (And people might even elect to do that, if the job has other good sides.)
      - tonyedgecombe 11y ago
        Not working and not having your basic needs met is probably worse though.
      - polymatter 11y ago
        I'd be interested to hear any other potential solutions. Seems to me the choice is either: a) basic income, or b) all the unemployed who can not get a job in the new economy are given a government job. The work in the job doesn't matter, as long as it provides a fig leaf to allow the government to give them the money they desperately need to live. If its not entirely clear, I think that these non-jobs are are an unfair and incredibly expensive way of giving out benefits. The richer would be better off with a basic income (free money! smaller more efficient government meaning taxing the rich less!). The poor would be better off with a basic income (no social workers or benefit admins judging you! future is predictable so able to start investing for the future!). Its only annoying for those of us in the middle, those who will not benefit much from a basic income (because it won't be a huge amount of money, our taxes are unlikely to decrease) but will also not see much benefit from it (I probably already had a safety net in terms of friends and family, and the basic income will be too small to support the lifestyle I am used to anyway).
  - Sammi 11y ago
    I like the idea of basic income, but this does not necessarily need to be basic income. Basic income is a small regular payment to every adult no matter if they have a job or not. A system where you just pay those that don't have a job a minor income would be enough to stop desperate people from doing desperate things. The reason it makes sense is because the consequences of these desperate acts are more expensive than the payment to stop them from happening
    - eru 11y ago
      Oh, but you need to think a bit further about incentives. Ideally, you don't want people to lose the small but regular employment the moment they pick up a (possibly unsteady!) job.
lifeformed 11y ago
> Of course, evaluating whether the therapy itself was the relevant factor here is pretty messy. There’s a lot to these classes other than CBT, and on the surface it looks like a lot of these things could have impacted the results: The programs were administered by adults, who could have created a “generic mentorship effect.” Or maybe simply requiring that they show up to class week after week taught participants self control. Couldn't they control this by having the other group go to a class, but not do anything?
- drxzcl 11y ago
  I was thinking the exact same thing reading the article. It would have to be an actual class, preferably taught by the same person (to control for personal charisma etc) that does not directly translate into behavioral modification but does teach something useful (to avoid dropout/motivation differentials) Music? Sports? I'm not sure.
- azernik 11y ago
  Absolutely. They tried to correct for this by controlling for all the confounding variables they could think of, which is a GIANT red flag for any study.
solson 11y ago
To one degree or another authority implies the threat of violence. For the person confronted with violence, subconscious automatic action is required for survival. Mistakes may be made, but trust in your training is essential. It is the same in sports (football, basketball, ice hockey, tennis), if you have to hesitate and consciously think, you are "in your head" and you'll be beaten. Some of us have been trained to react automatically by our environments. The best training ground for criminal behavior is juvenile detention and other forms of incarceration where hesitation will get you in trouble quickly. Our system is creating these kids who act on auto pilot. If they lose respect they have lost nearly everything they have.
ajcarpy2005 11y ago
Meditation, mindfulness, respect
hristov 11y ago
This is interesting. I want to try CBT myself. I am not prone to violence (thank god) but I do have some bad habits I want to get rid of, such as procrastination.
- StavrosK 11y ago
  Are you putting off trying CBT?
- bravo_alpha 11y ago
  I started seeing a CBT therapist this year to be more productive at work (I was also a big procrastinator). It was very effective
vonklaus 11y ago
I read this article twice and I did find it interesting. However, this title doesn't make sense within the context of the article. Other than a contrived example they made up about rich kids possibly submitting to criminals while poor kids may not, this article focused solely on poor communities and mentorship programs. On balance, the programs seem to work well in helping people get their lives together by giving them information, mentorship and resources. This does beg the question though: Are people being arrested because they are impulsive or disadvantaged as they did not provide contrasting evidence. Also, in America nearly 50% of the population are in for drug offenses according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons data current as of may 30th, 2015[0] If all drugs were legal, and convictions on all other crimes collectively didn't double, less people would be in prison. [0]http://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offenses.jsp http://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offens...
eruditely 11y ago
Impulsiveness and Executive Functioning deficits contribute an extreme amount to crime, one of the primary sources of executive functioning ADHD has a number of great treatments. XR Stimulants work, many people in prison have ADHD and wouldn't have been there if they had taken their meds, recently it has become popular to doubt ADHD(See barkley for evidence) it's real and a big deal. The fact that it is so treatable is a miracle. Stop the nonsense.
huuu 11y ago
Maybe a solution would be: JailTime = MinJailTime * Last7YearsConvicted
- drxzcl 11y ago
  Did you read the article? They quite clearly make the point that there is no clear, direct relationship between offense rate and severity of punishment (17 vs 18 year olds), and they speculate this is because much of the behavior in question happens on autopilot. Hence CBT.
- roel_v 11y ago
  Variations of this have been tried and studied for decades if not more, and if there is one thing blindingly, unequivocally clear, it's that this does not work to reduce crime. (the debate could be about whether that's the (only) goal, my point is that for crime reduction it does not work)
- Sammi 11y ago
  The whole point of the article is to educate you on the fact that people most often don't think of the consequences when doing crime. That's partly why punishment works so badly.

Interesting takeaways: * They mentioned some degree of "mentorship effect", but didn't clarify how they controlled for this. * Cash handouts (ie, basic income) prevented desperate measures. The societal cost of the cash could be less than the aggregate cost of the crimes.

mason55 11y ago
> The societal cost of the cash could be less than the aggregate cost of the crimes This is the idea behind a basic income. Some experiments are also finding it cheaper to just give people houses than to continue to run homeless outreach programs.
- swombat 11y ago
  It's part of the idea behind basic income. There are two major angles I think: economic and moral. Economically, there are a lot of costs that are taken out of the system if we implement basic income, everything from means-tested support (the means testing is very expensive and prone to fraud, etc), to crime that you mention, to the terrible and yet unmeasured opportunity cost of still having the majority of the population working in jobs they hate but need to survive. Imagine a world where everyone is working on something they've chosen to do, which they can feel passionate about (and yes, I do believe people can feel passionate about any job that has a useful purpose, including picking up trash, cleaning the streets, and all those other currently low-status jobs). The moral side is equally important, though. We live in a society where we don't need everyone to work, not even close. A great many people today work in jobs whose only purpose is to exist as jobs, which don't actually have a net benefit to society other than keeping people out of unemployment. Many others are unable to contribute to society because their skills are not in demand, thanks to automation, outsourcing, etc. Those people are currently made to feel morally guilty for not working, their self-worth as human beings is attacked, debased. This is fundamentally wrong, and is the major challenge of our generation: transforming from a society that liberally distributes shame to people who are not in a position to work for money, to a society that accepts that paid work is just one of the activities a human being might partake in in their life, and neither necessary nor the highest. If we fail at this challenge, the cost will be unrest, perhaps revolution, probably a regression in the progress of mankind. We have a tough few decades ahead.
  - wslh 11y ago
    I agree with the premise that there will be fewer jobs but not that basic income is the solution. Not working can be very unhealthy for most people and I imagine people doing nothing instead of being "artists and scientists".
    - eru 11y ago
      How about basic income and abolishing any minimum wage? (And other barriers to low income employment.)
      - pessimizer 11y ago
        Basic income creates a de facto minimum wage by setting a wage for a complete lack of labor. I'd think any other minimum wage would be redundant.
        eru 11y ago
        A welfare system that abruptly stops paying out when you've got a job sets a de facto minimum wage. A basic income doesn't prevent you from working for a small amount of money. (And people might even elect to do that, if the job has other good sides.)
    - tonyedgecombe 11y ago
      Not working and not having your basic needs met is probably worse though.
    - polymatter 11y ago
      I'd be interested to hear any other potential solutions. Seems to me the choice is either: a) basic income, or b) all the unemployed who can not get a job in the new economy are given a government job. The work in the job doesn't matter, as long as it provides a fig leaf to allow the government to give them the money they desperately need to live. If its not entirely clear, I think that these non-jobs are are an unfair and incredibly expensive way of giving out benefits. The richer would be better off with a basic income (free money! smaller more efficient government meaning taxing the rich less!). The poor would be better off with a basic income (no social workers or benefit admins judging you! future is predictable so able to start investing for the future!). Its only annoying for those of us in the middle, those who will not benefit much from a basic income (because it won't be a huge amount of money, our taxes are unlikely to decrease) but will also not see much benefit from it (I probably already had a safety net in terms of friends and family, and the basic income will be too small to support the lifestyle I am used to anyway).
- Sammi 11y ago
  I like the idea of basic income, but this does not necessarily need to be basic income. Basic income is a small regular payment to every adult no matter if they have a job or not. A system where you just pay those that don't have a job a minor income would be enough to stop desperate people from doing desperate things. The reason it makes sense is because the consequences of these desperate acts are more expensive than the payment to stop them from happening
  - eru 11y ago
    Oh, but you need to think a bit further about incentives. Ideally, you don't want people to lose the small but regular employment the moment they pick up a (possibly unsteady!) job.

lifeformed 11y ago

> Of course, evaluating whether the therapy itself was the relevant factor here is pretty messy. There’s a lot to these classes other than CBT, and on the surface it looks like a lot of these things could have impacted the results: The programs were administered by adults, who could have created a “generic mentorship effect.” Or maybe simply requiring that they show up to class week after week taught participants self control. Couldn't they control this by having the other group go to a class, but not do anything?

drxzcl 11y ago
I was thinking the exact same thing reading the article. It would have to be an actual class, preferably taught by the same person (to control for personal charisma etc) that does not directly translate into behavioral modification but does teach something useful (to avoid dropout/motivation differentials) Music? Sports? I'm not sure.
azernik 11y ago
Absolutely. They tried to correct for this by controlling for all the confounding variables they could think of, which is a GIANT red flag for any study.

solson 11y ago

To one degree or another authority implies the threat of violence. For the person confronted with violence, subconscious automatic action is required for survival. Mistakes may be made, but trust in your training is essential. It is the same in sports (football, basketball, ice hockey, tennis), if you have to hesitate and consciously think, you are "in your head" and you'll be beaten. Some of us have been trained to react automatically by our environments. The best training ground for criminal behavior is juvenile detention and other forms of incarceration where hesitation will get you in trouble quickly. Our system is creating these kids who act on auto pilot. If they lose respect they have lost nearly everything they have.

ajcarpy2005 11y ago

Meditation, mindfulness, respect

hristov 11y ago

This is interesting. I want to try CBT myself. I am not prone to violence (thank god) but I do have some bad habits I want to get rid of, such as procrastination.

StavrosK 11y ago
Are you putting off trying CBT?
bravo_alpha 11y ago
I started seeing a CBT therapist this year to be more productive at work (I was also a big procrastinator). It was very effective

vonklaus 11y ago

I read this article twice and I did find it interesting. However, this title doesn't make sense within the context of the article. Other than a contrived example they made up about rich kids possibly submitting to criminals while poor kids may not, this article focused solely on poor communities and mentorship programs. On balance, the programs seem to work well in helping people get their lives together by giving them information, mentorship and resources. This does beg the question though: Are people being arrested because they are impulsive or disadvantaged as they did not provide contrasting evidence. Also, in America nearly 50% of the population are in for drug offenses according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons data current as of may 30th, 2015[0] If all drugs were legal, and convictions on all other crimes collectively didn't double, less people would be in prison. [0]http://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offenses.jsp http://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offens...

eruditely 11y ago

Impulsiveness and Executive Functioning deficits contribute an extreme amount to crime, one of the primary sources of executive functioning ADHD has a number of great treatments. XR Stimulants work, many people in prison have ADHD and wouldn't have been there if they had taken their meds, recently it has become popular to doubt ADHD(See barkley for evidence) it's real and a big deal. The fact that it is so treatable is a miracle. Stop the nonsense.

huuu 11y ago

Maybe a solution would be: JailTime = MinJailTime * Last7YearsConvicted

drxzcl 11y ago
Did you read the article? They quite clearly make the point that there is no clear, direct relationship between offense rate and severity of punishment (17 vs 18 year olds), and they speculate this is because much of the behavior in question happens on autopilot. Hence CBT.
roel_v 11y ago
Variations of this have been tried and studied for decades if not more, and if there is one thing blindingly, unequivocally clear, it's that this does not work to reduce crime. (the debate could be about whether that's the (only) goal, my point is that for crime reduction it does not work)
Sammi 11y ago
The whole point of the article is to educate you on the fact that people most often don't think of the consequences when doing crime. That's partly why punishment works so badly.