Quote of the Day

schools should include a class called Truth Is Hard, where u get bombarded with examples of confused eyewitnesses, incorrect public outrages, studies that failed to replicate, super convincing arguments that fall apart with one additional fact u didn’t expect, etc.

Aella @Aella_Girl
Posted on X March 27, 2022

Nice idea. But I don’t think it would ever be accepted in todays K-12 schools. There are far too many people who have false beliefs which they could not tolerate being faced with overpowering evidence of their falsehood. It would disrupt the social order.

At the college level classes which include similar material do, or at least used to, exist. The book Is it really so?: A guide to clear thinking, no longer in print, was used in one of the classes I took in college. It was written by the grandfather (or perhaps great uncle) of one of my college classmates. A few days ago I went looking for it in my library and I could not find it. I’ll look again someday. I remember it as being like a one hour read. I would like to read it again.

By the same author I also had, and perhaps still have, Who Should Have Children?: An environmental and genetic approach. It is still in print. I find it to have the potential to be far more threatening to the social order. But, I expect that is not how the majority of people see it.

Quote of the Day

A comment I am now unable to locate pointed out that fake-working-class trustafarians can be identified by their subscription to a mythical idea of what poverty is.

[this is the comment he was looking for]

The sound of a poor neighborhood in the United States is not the shouts and laughter of children at play, the music floating from the open window of abuela’s kitchen as she makes empanadas, the chatter of men playing dominos on a folding table on sidewalk.

It is the shriek of a child as his single, crack-addict mother beats him, the ceaseless barking of the vicious and unsocialized pitbull in the fenced-off yard, the unmuffled exhaust of the cheap sports car with peeling paint as it pulls up across the way to disgorge a trio of angry drunks.

To this observation, I would add:

The socialist trustafarian’s idealized notion of poverty is drawn not only from Hollywood, but from socialism’s own profoundly wrong ideas about what poverty is and where it comes from.

Middle and upper class socialists think poverty is lack of money.

Thus, whenever they are confronted with a member of the underclass, or, more often, the abstract idea of a member of the underclass, they think he is them, minus money.

And that’s how they expect him to act, right up until the point they get stabbed.

This is also why they think the problem of poverty can be solved simply by taking money from those who have it, and giving it to those who don’t.

Now, at some times, in some parts of the world, this sort of poverty may indeed have existed. When economic conditions are so depressed that great swathes of otherwise-functional people are poor, then they may, indeed, build vibrant, functional neighborhoods with a strong sense of community.

But in a capitalist, or capitalist-adjacent system, that’s not what happens. Sure, becoming wealthy is always hard, and often needs to be a multigenerational process, but capitalist systems do not hold talented, stable, high-agency people in utter poverty for long.

In capitalism, poverty is lack of the ability to secure an income.

This means that poor areas in first world capitalist countries are not filled with cheerful urchins selling newspapers, but with people who have some issue preventing them from being functional wage-earners.

Typically this has to do with mental health, addiction, or life skills. And it means that poor neighborhoods, in, say, the US, aren’t just filled with broke people, they are filled with people who do antisocial things.

You cannot fix this by moving resources around.

And if you subscribe to a mental model (socialism) that ascribes virtue to poor people, and evil to rich ones, then you end up having to do absurd mental gymnastics to try to characterize every prosocial behavior, such as training your dog not to bark, and not running the leaf blower at 0730, to be acktshoeally problematic in some weird way.

The wealth of the wealthy comes from inhabiting a culture, and subculture, where social encounters are a source of opportunities and mutual benefit, rather than conflict. Measurable financial wealth is important, yes, but it is downstream of existing, and functioning, in this sort of high-trust, cooperative, networked society.

Some behaviors of wealthy people are a consequence of wealth. But others are a cause of it, and still others are symptoms of more fundamental attitudes that lead to it.

And one of the major reasons why people buy houses in expensive neighborhoods is so avoid inconsiderate people.

Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_
Posted on X June 16, 2024

I found this resonated well with my half-baked view of things. I have thought, perhaps, a big problem with very poor cultures was they have a very poor sense of time. In particular, there is no urgency in getting things done.

I have done reasonably well for myself. My station in life, my wealth, my children, my spouse, etc. are significantly above average. I see a fair number of people who have not, and will not, do well in life. In almost all of those cases I can quickly point out a half dozen or more things they could have done or should do, or not do, to make their lives much better. But they can’t seem to do them. They keep making what I think are stupid decisions and blame others for the poor outcomes.

These are simple (to me anyway) things like show up to work on time. Get things done. Don’t use (or use very little) recreational drugs including alcohol and tobacco. Be presentable to your employer and customers. Don’t complain about problems, find solutions to problems and/or get the help of others to implement your solutions and/or help find solutions. Don’t insist on being weird.

Your mileage may vary.