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Comment by JoeAltmaier | Hacker News Reader

I'd blame poor folks for shooting their entire income on lottery tickets. That would be a reasonable thing. Its a choice, truly.

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I don't understand this point of view. I think often in saying this the implication is that you wouldn't make the same choice. That somehow you would resist the same urges that poorer people face. But who are you to say you wouldn't if you were in their shoes? You don't know the stress they face or their desperation, their life experiences. We're all human.

Been in their shoes. Didn't make those choices.

So you believe everyone has perfect control over their own choices, actions, reaction, faculties, in the face of all the overt and hidden influences that others seek to have upon them?

Straw man.

I believe we each make our own choices. I've been poor. I didn't spend my money on gambling or lottery tickets.

It's not a straw man, and you didn't answer the question. Rephrased, do you believe that all the choices you have made are the same as they would have been if you had been free of outside hidden influence? Do you believe that is true for everyone's choices?

Of course we make our own choices, but the question is whether those choices are completely ours, an expression of full conscious agency, free of any polluting influence. And for all our choices, both the ones we think hard about, and the ones when we're exhausted and our attention is split.

Do you believe "personal accountability" extends to accepting the blame for someone else's manipulative intent?

The question was specious and insulting. To impugn me as some idiot believing in extreme views is a cheap tactic, and I ignored it.

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