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Comment by fire_lake | Hacker News Reader

Funnily this is an idea that both the far right and the far left tend to like.

The far right to suggest that there is a sort of cultural memory that immigrants can never integrate with.

The far left to suggest a kind of cultural trauma that requires affirmative action.

The left don't think that trauma can be inherited. They think that wealth and social standing can. If your parents have money they can use their wealth to make it easier for you to have money

If your parents are poor (perhaps due to racism) then you will live in a poor area with worse schools, possibly contaminated with pollution, subject to higher insurance and basic costs.

This doesn't require magic ancestral memories it just requires ecomonics.

> The left don't think that trauma can be inherited.

The epigenetic reaction to trauma is something that may be able to be inherited.

Epigenetic transmission of Holocaust trauma: can nightmares be inherited? - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24029109/

Study finds epigenetic changes in children of Holocaust survivors - https://www.research.va.gov/currents/1016-3.cfm

How Parents’ Trauma Leaves Biological Traces in Children - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-parents-rsquo...

Mechanisms of Epigenetic Inheritance in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10817356/

(Not trying to pose this as a left/right thing - but rather "this is a thing" - and these aren't memories but rather the result of epigenetic changes to the expression of hormones and neurotransmitters that may be able to be passed from mother to child and exhibit differences in how one reacts to certain stimuli)

> The left don't think that trauma can be inherited.

Well, some of them do, as otherwise they would not have told me about it at length in conversation. Scientific literacy varies greatly within every political camp.

I don't know if you can speak for the entire left here, it's really not hard to find articles from the 2010s from otherwise fairly respectable progressive publications which are pretty confident. Usually when I've heard ideologically minded people talking about "transgenerational trauma" [1], it's from a lens of epigenics. I don't think anyone would reasonably doubt that wealth or poverty ripples through many generations, the idea which I hear touted pretty frequently (and is discussed in the article), is that past trauma from war, famine, racism, etc. has a biological mechanism which explains disparities we see today.

As others have pointed out, it's a super convenient conclusion for folks who seek to understand the world in such a way, but at least presently the data just isn't there.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgenerational_trauma

I've never heard any of these ideas. The question in the title is nonsense and you are skewing and distorting other ideas into more nonsense to make something that is already ridiculous political.

I'm not sure where you got the take that the left thinks of it as trauma; it's consequent events (e.g. your ancestors could not get an education, job, and/or buy a house because of racism -> you did not benefit from generational wealth even though there is now less racism).

I'm also not sure where you get the far right idea from; I don't think they believe in "a sort of cultural memory", it's just culture, nothing woo about it.

TL;DR it feels like you're misrepresenting political sides to try and make this article about politics.

I only knew this existed because of the "left" take with regards to people descended from slaves (black only of course)

As someone on the left - there's nothing "woo woo" about systemic racism.

The single greatest indicator of a person's financial success is that of their parents. And that simply repeats generation after generation.

There's nothing magical about it.

Exactly this. My response is usually just asking if they believe in compounding interest. It's the same concept, but with those farther up the curve justifying themselves.

Hence the "woo woo". The promise of delivery of value in the future, of which compound interest is a part of, is an invented construct that hinges entirely on people believing it to be the way things are. If people stopped believing, it would all cease to exist. There is no fundamental property of the universe that makes it so. It is merely religion.

The fact that successfulness of parents predicts successfulness of children is "woo woo"?

I hate racism. It makes people dumb.

The factors that successfulness of parents predicts successfulness of children is "woo woo".

It is not some fundamental property of the universe. It is that way only because people believe it to be the way things are. We could stop believing. It is just religion. But it seems nobody wants to, "the left" included.

Why is that? Because they are a benefactor from it? Because, as you suggest, their racist ways have "made them dumb"? The youth population – those able to offer the most future value and thus responsible for maintaining the status quo – by and large "lean left". It is not a "those other guys are to blame" situation.

> It is not some fundamental property of the universe.

LOL. You don't believe in social patterns?

Ok, well, you might be the only one. I hope you don't invest in stocks or try to start your own company. Or have friends.

I don't have beliefs, but I do acknowledge your point that actions speak louder than words. It is easy to say you are racist, but hard to do something about it, and social pattern data indicates that people are lazy and racist and therefore won't do anything[1] about it.

[1] Posting silly comments on the internet for the sake of entertainment is not doing something as it pertains to this.

Yeah... you take care now.

Is there some concern that Hacker News is going to fall out of care? Or what do you mean by this?

Yeah.

could you give an example?

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