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Comment by vanderZwan | Hacker News Reader

> I personally know two people who abuse the welfare system

So? You performed what Daniel Kahneman has called "question substitution": replacing a difficult to answer question - "do welfare plans encourage exploitation" - with a simpler one: "are there people who exploit welfare systems".

> sounds like it's throwing any objectivity out of the window right at the beginning

Says the person who draws conclusions based on anecdotal evidence. My money is on the study with data, not the random internet person who actively looks for arguments supporting their existing beliefs.

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"actively look(ing) for arguments supporting their existing beliefs" is exactly his complaint against the original study, hence the complaint about the name; and that's probably true. Would the authors have been open to the possibility that their data demonstrated welfare recipients to be lazy, greedy users? Would they have dared to publish their research in the event that their data supported such a conclusion?

It seems unlikely, and career suicide in any case.

Funny word that "encourage", right? In modern English it can mean anything from "allows something" to "literally tells you to do something".

My conclusion was that the welfare abuser stereotype absolutely does exist in reality and there are people who do become lazy because of welfare benefits on "1st world" countries.

Additionally, it was more of a huge scepticism than a "conclusion" and even that was supported by two additional arguments, not just that anecdotal evidence.

There was this interesting article in Finnish news about a week ago[1 - finnish obviously]. Kela (the Finnish social security agency) conducted a study which showed that underuse of social security costs them more than abuse.

Almost half of the people who would be entitled to some benefits do not apply for them, due to various reasons such as social stigma, lack of knowledge or because they consider all the paperwork too much work. As a result, many people end up with more serious problems (debt, evictions, medical issues, social exclusion) that the state ultimately ends up paying for.

They found that abuse of the benefits exists, but is not very widespread.

[1]: http://yle.fi/uutiset/sosiaaliturvan_alikaytto_tulee_meille_...

Edit: fixed typo edit2: really fixed typo

> Funny word that "encourage", right? In modern English it can mean anything from "allows something" to "literally tells you to do something".

If only there was a context within which I was using these words that made it blatantly obvious which of these uses applied here, like a link to a paper/article discussing if welfare programs made people lazy.

Also, you don't quite grasp what "anecdotal evidence" means in a scientific context.

>Also, you don't quite grasp what "anecdotal evidence" means in a scientific context.

Really? Please explain.

And what I meant was that the two questions are very, very close. Does alcohol encourage alcoholism?

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