Impulsive Rich Kid, Impulsive Poor Kid

http://priceonomics.com/impulsive-rich-kid-impulsive-poor-kid/

98 34 11 years ago

r00fus• 11 years 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• 11 years 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.

swombat2• 11 years 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.

Sammi2• 11 years 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

lifeformed• 11 years 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?

drxzcl2• 11 years 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• 11 years 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• 11 years 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• 11 years ago

Meditation, mindfulness, respect

hristov• 11 years 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• 11 years ago

Are you putting off trying CBT?

bravo_alpha2• 11 years 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• 11 years 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_offens...

eruditely• 11 years 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• 11 years ago

Maybe a solution would be:

  JailTime = MinJailTime * Last7YearsConvicted

drxzcl2• 11 years 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• 11 years 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)

Sammi2• 11 years 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.

Impulsive Rich Kid, Impulsive Poor Kid

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