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I'm open to this correlation. But I wonder about causality. Adverse childhood experiences are significantly associated with both impulsivity and future earning

I'm open to this correlation. But I wonder about causality. Adverse childhood experiences are significantly associated with both impulsivity and future earning potential. Breaking the cycle of poverty is difficult, but I'm not an expert on where the best investments to solve this problem would be.

bawolff 25d ago
I also wonder if its rational behaviour at the end of the day. If you don't have anything to your name, why delay gratification? Its not like you'll get benefits of delaying, and you may very well suffer a loss if you wait. I think you have to have a certain amount of wealth before the types of behaviours that actually make you wealthy make sense in the average case.
- cucumber3732842 24d ago
  It's rational within a really crappy local maximum.
datadrivenangel 25d ago
The original marshmallow test fails for this reason, but also it's true that poor impulse control makes it harder to break out of situations that do not reward delayed gratification.
p-e-w 25d ago
> Adverse childhood experiences are significantly associated with both impulsivity and future earning potential. But that’s just another correlation without a proof of causation. There’s no clear definition of what causation is. You can invoke the tired “correlation doesn’t imply causation” any time you want, but the same quip disqualifies any alternative causation mechanism you propose, unless you serve up an actual criterion for distinguishing the two along with it. Asserting that one seems more plausible than the other isn’t enough.
jandrewrogers 25d ago
If the parents have poor impulse control then the children often do as well. This is a selection effect; children growing up in poverty often inherit a significant contributor to their parents' persistent poverty. People who are incidentally in poverty usually have children that aren't. I grew up in pretty abject poverty and saw this pattern over and over again too. My parents didn't have poor impulse control, it was circumstantial. All of my siblings were able to grind their way to a successful life despite having the deck stacked against them -- and none of them work in tech. It is extremely frustrating. I have persistently poor friends who are unambiguously above average in both intelligence and work ethic, and with great personalities. Yet despite that, they constantly sabotage their future with poor impulse control. With good impulse control they'd be solidly middle class at a minimum. I don't know how to fix the above situation. I've tried many times. They can't really explain why they make the stupid decisions they do, it just kind of happens.
walrus01 25d ago
> But I wonder about causality. Adverse childhood experiences are significantly associated with both impulsivity and future earning potential. There's fairly good statistics that a large portion of the people living in a cycle of poverty and drug addiction in Vancouver's downtown eastside suffer from a number of documented risk factors: a) fetal alcohol syndrome b) documented abuse by parents at an early age, or became wards of the state and entered foster care system, were not placed with any family members c) drug/alcohol abuse by parents d) molested by parents, relatives, "friends" of parents at an early age

bawolff 25d ago

I also wonder if its rational behaviour at the end of the day. If you don't have anything to your name, why delay gratification? Its not like you'll get benefits of delaying, and you may very well suffer a loss if you wait. I think you have to have a certain amount of wealth before the types of behaviours that actually make you wealthy make sense in the average case.

cucumber3732842 24d ago
It's rational within a really crappy local maximum.

datadrivenangel 25d ago

The original marshmallow test fails for this reason, but also it's true that poor impulse control makes it harder to break out of situations that do not reward delayed gratification.

p-e-w 25d ago

> Adverse childhood experiences are significantly associated with both impulsivity and future earning potential. But that’s just another correlation without a proof of causation. There’s no clear definition of what causation is. You can invoke the tired “correlation doesn’t imply causation” any time you want, but the same quip disqualifies any alternative causation mechanism you propose, unless you serve up an actual criterion for distinguishing the two along with it. Asserting that one seems more plausible than the other isn’t enough.

jandrewrogers 25d ago

If the parents have poor impulse control then the children often do as well. This is a selection effect; children growing up in poverty often inherit a significant contributor to their parents' persistent poverty. People who are incidentally in poverty usually have children that aren't. I grew up in pretty abject poverty and saw this pattern over and over again too. My parents didn't have poor impulse control, it was circumstantial. All of my siblings were able to grind their way to a successful life despite having the deck stacked against them -- and none of them work in tech. It is extremely frustrating. I have persistently poor friends who are unambiguously above average in both intelligence and work ethic, and with great personalities. Yet despite that, they constantly sabotage their future with poor impulse control. With good impulse control they'd be solidly middle class at a minimum. I don't know how to fix the above situation. I've tried many times. They can't really explain why they make the stupid decisions they do, it just kind of happens.

walrus01 25d ago

> But I wonder about causality. Adverse childhood experiences are significantly associated with both impulsivity and future earning potential. There's fairly good statistics that a large portion of the people living in a cycle of poverty and drug addiction in Vancouver's downtown eastside suffer from a number of documented risk factors: a) fetal alcohol syndrome b) documented abuse by parents at an early age, or became wards of the state and entered foster care system, were not placed with any family members c) drug/alcohol abuse by parents d) molested by parents, relatives, "friends" of parents at an early age