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Comment by valar_m | Hacker News Reader

I am from Bell County, Kentucky, ranked 3110 out of 3135 counties. I no longer live there, but my parents do. I was there just yesterday for Thanksgiving.

It may be tempting to dismiss the problems plaguing this region as being self-inflicted, a mere product of backward ways and a collective refusal to catch up. These problems, however, are infinitely more complex than that. Countless politicians at every level of government have tried to find a solution.[0] In the end, they all failed.

It occurs to me as I type this that I don't have a precise thesis for my comment, other than to say this: It is not easy. If it were easy to fix, we would have.

[0] http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=9518

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This report reminds me of a passage in "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman. Prestigious foundations such as the Gates Foundation pumped millions (billions?) of dollars into smaller scale education because a report identified that the worst performing schools had large classrooms in poor, rural counties. Much later, a second review of the data revealed that the best primary schools had large classrooms in poor, rural counties. The results were merely statistical outliers caused by small sample data.

It would not surprise me if the easiest places to live have identical demographics and characteristics as the hardest places to live. The correlation might be dual, but the causation is near impossible to identify.

Edit: long term memory fail.

> It would not surprise me if the easiest places to live have identical demographics and characteristics as the hardest places to live.

I gather you haven't travelled much. The difference between poor scoring places (pick a town in Kentucky) and high scoring ones (Seattle for example) is absolutely huge. Almost to the point of feeling like being in a different country.

Considering I am a European that has only traveled to the USA's west coast once in his life, you are right in this sense.

> It would not surprise me if the easiest places to live have identical demographics and characteristics as the hardest places to live.

I think a big part of the problem is that the article explicitly uses "demographics and characteristics" to determine difficulty of living, so the above statement is false by definition. I think you do make a good point though, unfortunately, I'm not sure how to phrase it any better.

That book is by Kahneman, not Pinker

> Countless politicians at every level of government have tried to find a solution.[0] In the end, they all failed.

You can lead a horse to water...

As long as people insist on believing that the earth is 6000 years old, that lowering taxes on rich people is going to make their own lives better, and that the best way to preserve freedom and peace is unfettered access to firearms, there is only so much you can do for them. At the end of the day you simply can't help someone who steadfastly refuses to help themselves.

I don't think it's not so much that. I think it's more culture driven than anything else. You can take religion literally, but still believe in education and progress, etc.

I think for some people the way they presently live is the only way they know to live and so can't fathom a way to impart anything different in their children to overcome the difficulties. In other words, they're in a vicious cycle of their own culture. Religion, views on firearms, etc. have little to do with how well they do in life. It's more their culture --their way of life which they cannot escape.

> You can take religion literally, but still believe in education and progress, etc.

That depends on what you mean by "literally". I don't think it's possible to be a young-earth creationist and still believe in education and progress. The cognitive dissonance is just too great.

But my comment was not really so much about religion per se as considering it a virtue to cling to beliefs even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. That applies to political as well as religious beliefs.

> they're in a vicious cycle of their own culture

Exactly right.

> I don't think it's possible to be a young-earth creationist and still believe in education and progress. The cognitive dissonance is just too great.

I have spent more than half my life being an evangelical christian where this was the dominant beliefs. Our youth leader was successful in the fashion industry, our 'worship' leader was a top-level manager at a big bank, and our members included quite a few realtors, the owner of one of the largest jewelry stores, and one of the elders (the non-paid pastors) was a high-level mathematician. I think he even won a prize once for solving some problem.

I'm not saying that there is no correlation between education level or intelligence and 'crazy fundamental religious beliefs', but your statement is just wrong.

If there's one thing I learned from my religious background, it's that humans have an amazing capacity to believe crazy things and be highly skilled, educated and intelligent. I often try to remind myself of this whenever I'm too certain of something, because if I could've been so utterly wrong once, how big are the chances that I could be incredibly wrong again?

And perhaps my mistakes are more subtle and harder to figure out now precisely because I find myself in the majority these days.

> your statement is just wrong

That is certainly possible. I don't know any YECs personally (thought I know a few ex-YECs) so all my opinions about them are based on what I've read. But I've read a lot, including a lot of YEC literature, because I do think it's important to understand the opposing point of view. (In fact, if you know any YECs who are open to discussion their beliefs I would be very grateful for an introduction.)

I will also say this: individual success has a very high variance, so in a large enough population you will always be able to find outliers. Notwithstanding, I don't find your counterexamples very convincing. Being successful in the fashion industry or the jewelry industry, or even in banking, doesn't actually require a lot of problem-solving skills. Quite the opposite: the requisite skills in those industries are empathy and a willingness to conform to societal norms.

A YEC mathematician would certainly be an interesting data point, but such a person would definitely be an outlier. If such people actually exist, I would truly welcome an opportunity to have a chat with one.

I was merely giving a counter-point to your statement that it's not possible to be a young-earth creationist and still believe in education and progress. Clearly, it's possible, and common enough that I have known personally a large number of very highly educated individuals that are YEC, or have similar beliefs (demons, exorcisms, etc.).

I do believe there's an inverse correlation between education level and intelligence on the one hand, and fundamentalist beliefs on the other. Whether they're outliers or not is another question, but I think you might be surprised how many of them there are.

What I meant by that is whatever they believe "If I don't find a job, I can go ahuntin'" I don't need college, my uncle promised me a job cuttin' weeds, why do I need to learn maths? I ain't never gonna need no trig cuttin' weeds. It's more the thinking for today rather than long term, which is the cultural issue.

Religion and politics are just a distraction in discussing their issues. The south used to be Democratic --I think it flipped Republican in the 1970s. So, really, politics and religious injection into their situation just distracts from the mindset which holds those people down.

> The south used to be Democratic --I think it flipped Republican in the 1970s.

That's right. And why did it flip? It's because Democrats passed the Civil Rights Act, and Republicans under Richard Nixon's leadership very cynically seized on the South's entrenched racism in order to capture power. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

Kansas used to be Democratic too. If flipped after Roe v. Wade, and they are only now starting to pay the economic price. There are many other examples, but Kansas is the most obvious. I don't have a reference handy, just Google for "Kansas economy". Things are worse in Appalachia because this has been going since before the Civil War.

What a ridiculous comment. So if they don't subscribe to liberal values they deserve their fate? You sounds like lke the rednecks i've met. "Those dumb city folks just don't know any better!"

Science is not a liberal value.

Looking down on folks who don't think like you apparently is.

Facts are non-negotiable.

Treating people with respect should also be non-negotiable.

I'm always amazed at the folks who are "open-minded" and at the same time feel a need to "correct" anyone who doesn't think the same way they do.

What is the harm if folks have different beliefs than you?

The problem is not that their beliefs are different. The problem is that in places like rural Kentucky, doggedly clinging to beliefs even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary is widely considered to be a virtue. That is not an attitude that is conducive to problem-solving, and so, unsurprisingly, problems tend to go unsolved.

I don't think that pointing this out is in any way disrespectful.

> What is the harm if folks have different beliefs than you?

When policy is enacted based on votes from the uneducated that flies in the face of science.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Facts are ground in reason, evidence, and proof, and therefore not up for debate.

You really should travel a bit more, it might help getting out of that very narrow mindset. There are plenty of places with precisely those beliefs that are doing quite well.

Really? Can you give me a few examples of places where people overwhelmingly subscribe to young-earth creationism that are going "quite well"?

(Oh, and BTW, I was born in Germany. I have been to over seventy countries. I grew up in Tennessee, and went to college in rural Virginia, and spent two years hanging out with homeless people in LA. So I'm pretty sure my "narrow mindset" is not due to not having seen enough of the world.)

If you've been around that much, you really don't have much of an excuse for such a ridiculous position.

The northern suburbs of Atlanta qualify, for one area. High on the fundamentalist Christian scale, higher on the gun ownership scale, and extremely high on the lower taxes scale. And all doing well on this chart, many in the top 10%.

Large swaths of the west would qualify as well.

I'm really curious to hear how your explanation for how belief in gun ownership causes people to be trapped in poverty.

I didn't say that "belief in gun ownership causes people to be trapped in poverty." What I said was that belief that "the best way to preserve freedom and peace is unfettered access to firearms" causes people to be trapped in poverty.

But I probably shouldn't have cited this as an example because it's too politically charged. What causes people to be trapped in poverty is doggedly clinging to beliefs even in the face of overwhelming evidence that those beliefs are false. That is a personality trait that prevents people from solving problems, so it is no surprise that in places where most people have this personality trait, problems tend to go unsolved.

It's not a personality trait --it's something called belief perseverance. People tend to hold on to their beliefs more irrationally as more available evidence shows the opposite view. You see this in conspiracy theories, climate change, etc.

If you showed a climate change believer opposing evidence, they'd discount it; if you showed a climate change denier opposing evidence, they too would discount the evidence.

But belief perseverance is a personality trait, no?

Wouldn't it be extraordinary to have so many people with nearly identical personality traits to live so closely to each other?

Not "identical personality traits" plural, one common personality trait, singular. And it's not everyone, merely enough to keep effective problem solvers out of government.

So are you saying that successful people don't cling to beliefs that have a lot of evidence against them?

Because that's even more generally wrong that what you initially stated.

No, that is not what I'm saying (please stop putting words in my mouth and raising straw-man arguments). I'm saying that clinging to false beliefs is not conducive to problem solving, and so if a society considers it virtuous to cling to false beliefs, problems will tend to go unsolved. It may well be that clinging to false beliefs has other societal benefits, but IMHO those are outweighed by the cost.

I also believe that, all else being equal, an individual more likely to succeed if they don't cling to false beliefs, but that's not what is under discussion here. But if you want to discuss that, there are two important things to keep in mind:

1. All else is never equal. Societal conformance is very important to success, so in a society where clinging to false beliefs is considered a virtue, an individual may well do better by doing so.

2. Individual outcomes have a very high variance, i.e. they are due as much or more to luck as a person's choices. So in a population of millions you will always be able to find individuals who were successful despite doing all the wrong things (and vice versa by the way).

I'm not raising strawmen, I'm asking you things that quite logically follow from your statements.

All I can say at this point is that your theory is definitely in conflict with my observations of the world. So much so that I see the theory as wishful thinking about how things ought to work than how they actually do.

My apologies, I misread what you wrote as a statement rather than a question (I swapped the words "you" and "are". Maybe I'm developing late-onset dyslexia.)

So let me try this again: no, I am not saying that "successful people don't cling to beliefs that have a lot of evidence against them". I am saying that a society that considers it virtuous to maintain beliefs in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary is going to be less effective at solving problems than a society that does not consider it a virtue, and so problems will tend to go unsolved more than if the society did not consider this a virtue.

What observations of the world have you made that contradict this?

Yeah, and Appalachia isn't one of them. Maybe it's time to try something else.

"I no longer live there..."

Not saying it isn't a complex problem, but you're not exactly helping to enrich the area and stem the likely brain drain. And, I am not judging you or others like you. It's completely rational to avoid suffering and seek out an environment where you can thrive.

Diffusing positive cultural influencers instead of hoarding them in cities or places like SV would probably help. But, I really doubt that's a practical solution. It may just be that we need to build out from the bright spots rather than spread ourselves too thin with a sweeping social experiment. We may be stuck with deserts of backwardness for a while.

"State choice" and urban migration strikes me as similar (albeit with a slower generational period) to school choice. Some areas will attract more "good" students and teachers while others will slouch and drag behind in a fractal failure. How far are we obligated to go? Similar questions came up in the wake of Katrina. Personally, I think replacing vicious cycles with virtuous ones will almost always be a good investment.

> It may be tempting to dismiss the problems plaguing this region as being self-inflicted, a mere product of backward ways and a collective refusal to catch up.

Neoliberalism and individualism are too popular(ly convenient) in this country, so much so that even if you had

> a precise [and uniquely substantiated] thesis for [your] comment

, we would have found a clipart way to dismiss it using the very perspectives you said are uninformed.

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