Die young, live fast: The evolution of an underclass

I am not saying that the births are not wanted either. What I am trying to say is that as a result of the environment such children are in they are taught that this is life and there is nothing more they can expect. This doesn't happen explicitly but implicitly through the actions of others.

I really can't explain this. I think that the OP is right and they are well intentioned, but they are making the same mistake over and over again. There is no magic bullet over here.

Of course, you should try to find ways to increase your ability to make change, but there really is not magic bullet.

Of course, you're right, but you forget that these are people capable of making a conscious choice. They are people who if given the right resources and understanding can choose otherwise. Perhaps we have a higher tendency of making such choices due to our genetic makeup, but that's what it exactly is a tendency. It is not an absolute, and my problem isn't the fact that this happens.

It is the fact that this does happen and that despite the fact those people can choose whenever someone meets them they will label them under something like this. We talk about them as mammals and subjects. This is a good thing when you're trying to get down to the facts, but we need to remember this; they are people, human beings with feelings, desires, dreams, aspirations, hopes and pain. If we want to help them we should respect them not label them.

[Edit: Made a few changes to make it more clear]

It has been postulated that American welfare assistantship programs are somewhat to blame. I think it has been discussed here (sorry to repeat it, and for not quoting -- I forgot who mentioned it).

Basically the programs to help "single mothers" was created to help widowed mothers support their family. Eventually some women realized that having a baby is not that bad as they can take advantage of the "single mother" status. There is sort of a logical reasoning behind it.

Now, not that every girl goes through that logical reasoning and decides on having a baby. Rather with time this choice of having a baby become "encoded" in the culture as something else "it is cool" or "it bring attention" or "status". Girls see other girls get attention and acquire status when they have children to they want to emulate.

Basically in this particular case, the welfare system completely backfired and instead of just helping, it started expanding the population segment that would take advantage of a particular feature.

>>>When I lived in such communities<<<

I am happy for you. I know you must have gone through a lot of pain, but it makes me happy that you survived and thrived.

Take care.

In my experience, people who are born and raised upper middle class have absolutely no understanding of the different social classes, or what makes people belong to one and not the other. That makes for pretty irrational arguments. :-)

That said, I agree with you on the whole "shutting down debate", it's rather boring.

Your hyperbole doesn't quite work because we are dealing with human experience here. Poverty is not just a lack of money, it is most of all a very powerful internal human experience. There is no words to describe it. Kind of like there is not words to describe effectively what falling in love or dealing with a loved one's death is. Understanding that is not just a matter of reading an equation, you have to experience it yourself in order to more effectively talk about or try to fix it.

Does that stifle debate? Perhaps. I think the original poster was highlighting that it is important to keep in mind the personal experience before engaging in theoretical discussions about the subject.

> So why do we accept such a statement when it is made about nothing but a different sort of human experience?

The answer is in your question -- because _it is_ a human experience.

It seems to boil down to "how important is human experience?" Well, that's a topic for a new thread or a new philosophical debate...

But remember even cuteness is an evolutionary response. Nature selects for mothers who care for little things with wide eyes and big heads.

If you're interested in evolutionary psychology and the nature-nurture debate I highly recommend The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker.

There's very little way to get out of this cycle, besides either creating a lot of jobs, sufficient that men become useful, or simply increasing peoples' benefits such that strategies like having babies no longer get you a better outcome.

But there is value in accepting this theory, which I might add is reasonably well accepted as far as most other mammals. The value is that your chain of logic blames first the people themselves, and feeds back into the aticle's final justification, that is, while such things as increasing education are politically expedient, they don't actually change conditions. Getting this theory widely accepted can do a great deal for changing how governments fight the problems of poverty.

In my own case, I can thank our free university system for helping me drag myself from middle class to upper middle class, but then again I started with the middle class sentiment that education is always good. If you're working class, everyone in your environment will tell you that university is a huge waste of time, and I don't know how to address that. Throwing money at it won't do anything.

No idea. The point is that it's a substantive claim that could be tested empirically.

> Did they not craft the hypothesis to fit their existing understanding?

I hope so. Using what you already know helps generate interesting hypotheses. They don't pop into existence asexually.

Another problem with your post is that you are conflating males and females sexual and reproductive interests. You speak of certain "families" having more children than other families, but a family is not a cohesive, unanimous group with common interests. It consists of two partners, a male and a female, who both have remarkably different sexual and reproductive interests. You are right in that males’ evolutionary goal-albeit they are often not conscious of it, or at least no more conscious than a frog is-is to propagate their genes which they do by inseminating as many females as possible. However, females do not benefit from such promiscuous behaviour, as they are the ones who have to bear the pregnancy for 9 months and then some. So the behaviour of each member of the family needs to be understood within the appropriate evolutionary context, and not just as a "family".

Now, onto to a theory which does take wealth into consideration when explaining human behaviour: A male is better able to monopolize being born into a wealthy family, that is, attract more mates and produce more offspring because females typically look for resources in a potential partner. Thus, we would expect parents to invest more time and resources in raising male children when they are living in good-i.e., wealthy- conditions, because males would be better able to translate those resources into mates, and, eventually, grandchildren. A female is limited in the number of offspring she can produce in her lifetime, something called reproductive value. But a male, given ample suxual opportunities, can produce pleny of offspring because he is not obligated to carry, give birth, and, in some cases, invest time.resources into raising children. Thus, the best way for wealthy parents to ensure they have plenty of grandchildren is to invest in their male children more than female. In fact, richer families beget more male children than poorer, who, in turn, beget more females. The explanation of this latter fidining is unknown, but several theories have been proposed.

In poorer conditions, however, we would expect the opposite to ring true. That is, parents would invest more time and resources in raising female children because they, of the two genders, are more likely to find a mate and produce grandchildren. A poor son is not a desirable mate, so he is less likely to attract a female with whom he can produce children. The saffer strategy for the parents in this situation is to invest more in their daughers.

So, contrary to what you mentioned above, evolutionary theories do offer predictions for the behaviour of the rich, not just the poor. You’ve just asked the wrong questions, and so have had difficulty finding the right answers.