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Vladimir_M comments on Review: Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids - Less Wrong
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It depends on the concrete place and people we're talking about. There are ways to escape falling into the underclass even with very little money, but that requires luck and talent that many (and I'd even say most) people don't have.
Well, in 15 years I'll let you know whether my decision to live and reproduce in a city that has poor people has turned my kids into underclass wrecks.
It would be mere anecdotal evidence. I kind of feel you are trying to tell or signal something other than offering to eventually share with us the results of a long term experiment.
...you're right, I'm not making housing and childrearing decisions with the main goal of providing a useful data point to LW 15 years in the future. And I am trying to signal that I think poor people are not a crocodile pit. Enough so that I am choosing to share a neighborhood with them.
I don't think he was painting it as a crocodile pit, I read him as pointing out that negative effects on life outcomes are to be expected on average. It seems a highly probable hypothesis.
How do you interpret "it means being thrown, together with your kids, right into the dreaded underclass in which all sorts of frightful social pathologies are rampant. It's like precariously holding onto a rope above a pond full of crocodiles" ?
I think you are being unfair when you imply that I identify poor people (i.e. those who are merely not affluent) with the underclass (i.e. those social groups that display high levels of dysfunction). In a place where poor people are generally non-dysfunctional, so that a drastic fall in economic status means only that one will have to live frugally among others doing the same, clearly none of what I wrote applies. However, in a place with a large dysfunctional underclass, a similar fall in economic status is a much more dreadful prospect for someone who is used to the norms and customs of the middle class.
Now, I probably should have omitted the "above a pond full of crocodiles" part in the above quote. It came out when I was looking for a vivid metaphor for the situation of people who struggle to keep themselves above a certain level of economic status below which bad things will happen, with the crocodiles symbolizing a general feeling of fear and danger, rather than being a straightforward metaphor for underclass people. Now I realize that the way I wrote it, the latter reading is natural, but it wasn't my intention. (It also suggests incorrectly that the main problem with falling into the underclass is the physical danger of crime.)
Point taken.
To be fair, maybe this was part sarcasm towards the middle classes' secretly hypocritical and overly fearful social attitude, as Vladimir sees it.
As Julia said, people are offended by the suggestion to treat their own class position with extreme cynicism, and to believe that there's, like, a separate species of people in their country - their compatriots, mostly, not just illegal immigrants - who are dangerous animals to be avoided at all costs. While certainly such a position could increase personal safety, I'm adamantly against it.
For fuck's sake, I grew up in Russia in the 90s - a time of danger, opportunity and rampant inequality/unfairness - and no-one back then had a "bubble" (well, except for the top 0,1% maybe), so I mixed with kids from rough neighbourhoods and not-so-good families, was even friends with one (after we fought for years and then grew up a bit). Our school was an ordinary one, but well-run, with good and savvy teachers, so there was no violence outside of the usual scuffles and playing at gangs; I think that every one of us would be offended were our parents to try and "bubble" us away from the "underclass".
Juliawise said she does not believe that she is throwing her kids into a pit of crocodiles. You seem to be saying that she has an obligation to throw her kids into a pit of crocodiles.
I'm saying that she has an obligation, whatever she does, not to think about her society as a pit of crocodiles (except hypothetically, for abstract arguments, etc - never in semi-conscious daily thinking, as a matter of "attitude"), because that'll only increase the class divide and its problems. Society is affected by its members' perception of it, and if everyone just wanted to maximize safety for themselves and their families... why, that society would be utterly helpless! What's the difference between civic responsibility in the face of war or natural disasters and civic responsibility in the face of social division and alienation?
If the middle class just evacuates from everywhere where they have any contact with the "underclasses", so that the latter are left in utter and visible isolation, like the "Untouchable" castes in India... do you think that spells any hope of survival for the American nation, its culture, its spirit?
This sounds much like a tragedy of the commons. Remind me again what the rational response is if one has little hope of organizing measures to overcome it.
Where is the evidence that living with the underclass benefits the underclass more than it hurts the middle class? In case you haven't notice the underclass has due to social changes nearly fully assimilated the wrecked working class that existed in the United States at one point and its cultural norms and dysfunction are spreading and becoming worse. I believe the non-blue collar middle class is next and nearly all social indicators seem to be moving in that direction.
For a brief overview of just how far the cultural class divides have grown I suggest reading Charles Murray's "Coming Apart". Why group such different cultures under the marker "American culture" in a sense beyond geographical designation?
= "Remind me again what the rational response is in non-iterated PD when you're sure your partner is a stupid Defect-Bot." And my answer to that is, if you value something beyond one-turn success, you'll at least consider that the PD might be iterated after all, in the historic long run. But if no-one on the "reasonable" side acts like it's iterated, it wouldn't be, and the Defect-Bots will eventually tear apart everything you love.
How much can society last in such a way before the abandoned and despised "underclass" finally boils over? I don't think that it's more than a few generations. Would you want a somewhat nicer and safer life for your children without a future for their children?
Indeed that was my intended message.
I think it is unavoidable. As to saving "everything you love" or rather salvaging the things I value about our civilization. I have spent a lot of time on this problem. Let us say that my current best hope is FAI. Any effort towards which I consider nearly certain to fail horribly, yet still think should be attempted.
What does this tell you? But let me try and put it another way, especially since you bring up the stupid always-defect-bot. Imagine you have a unfriendly self-improving AI. Now imagine it is built out of people's brains, brains that you care about. Those brains have dreams and values of their own, but they are not the dreams and values of the uFAI that is running on them. It will continue running and self-improving making their dreams and values matter less and less for how the universe is ordered and indeed it will edit and change those values arbitrarily and unpredictably. Imagine the only alternative to this is that it pretty much blows itself up together with all the brains it contains.
This is the world I think I am living in.
But in that world, defecting to ensure your own short-term gain is best replaced with wireheading; nothing fragile survives anyway, so why rob and oppress other brains for a fleeting illusion of contentment? Therefore, we should find happiness in simple things, avoid increasing strife and competition for resources and, ideally, just stop being troubled by the whole mess.
Oops, looks like I accidentally Buddhism.
Depends on my estimate of how little that hope is, and of how many other people like me there are.
If my society is a pit of crocodiles, I want to believe my society is a pit of crocodiles! I'm sure German Jews in the 1930s, or Cambodians intellectuals (or short-sighted people) in the 1970s would agree with me.
Nowadays the standard way of solving coordination/tragedy-of-the-commons problems is through the government; for example Singapore has quality public housings that house 85% of the population and have ethnic quotas to prevent self-segregation.
Singaporeans and Americans probably both want to maximize safety for themselves and their families, but the incentives in Singapore mean that sticking to "people like you" is not as attractive a strategy as it is in the US.
A lot of your posts leave me with the impression that you think the right wing has all the facts on its side, but it only means you need to oppose them that much more heroically. This is a terribly perverse point of view, all the moreso because there are some facts that support left wing opinions too.
For instance, you'll note that Vladimir_M is perfectly open about the scarcity of scientific literature supporting his gut feeling about peer effects. A parent came along to say she wasn't worried about peer effects for her own children, not that it was her moral duty to throw their safety to the wind.
I'm not actually a parent yet, but I do plan to have kids and to raise them in a mixed-income neighborhood (somewhere in Cambridge MA).
I do think peer effects exist. Having worked in a local school full of both "underclass" kids and professors' children, which is the mix you get in Cambridge, I do think the poorer kids have a somewhat negative effect on the richer kids. I expect there will be some negative effects to my kids from not living in a bubble. However, I love the area and I think that living there will be good for the family, better than going into the kind of debt Vladimir_M mentioned to afford all-rich neighborhoods or private schools. We like living in a city, we like not owning a car, we having no debt. Those things mean living near some poor people.
I accept the correction, but now I don't see a difference between your points of view. Certainly what you write above is more delicately phrased than "poor people are crocodiles", but VMs comment was also more delicately phrased than that.
Huh? Um, perhaps you have a point here, but why did you reply with that to my comment above specifically? I thought that, of all things, cross-class solidarity and opposition to the splintered modern society can be construed as just as much of a right-wing value as a left-wing one. Hell, fascists used rhetoric similar to mine.
Such values are pretty right wing for example.
I'm not even convinced this is a right-wing sentiment when it's held by an American.
"What is to be done?" I often scan answers to this question as left-wing, but perhaps that heuristic is a hundred years out of date.
Whether or not "pro-crocodile" and "anti-crocodile" map to "left" and "right", there is something perverse about saying: the evil anti-crocodiles have it exactly right, so we pro-crocodiles have our work cut out for us!
Let's call it what it is, OK? IMO there are two related matters here:
1) What is the size of the groups you're willing to empathize with? and how much relative concern you feel obliged to show for each - your family? neighbours? ethnicity? social class? compatriots? culture? religion? species?
2) What's your attitude towards social alienation and various unsavoury processes that accompany it? Is it just an inevitable side of humanity, to be ignored if possible? Only to be ignored if you're sure it's not about to explode? A moderately tragic natural disaster? A concrete ethical evil, akin to not helping victims in an accident? A disease of the nation-organism, which ultimately concerns all its other parts? A profane/sinful Awful Thing that's an affront to your preferred Grand Design?
I don't have a clear answer for myself, neither logically nor emotionally.
(Great. You try to break shit down into more manageable bits - aligned with LW's mission, it is! - and there's an instant downvote.)
How about an obligation to get good evidence about local groups, rather than listening to people who make a habit of scaring each other?
Your comment has some similar features to what I commented earlier in this discussion (http://lesswrong.com/lw/col/review_selfish_reasons_to_have_more_kids/6onl?context=1#6onl). We both grew up in late communist era. Non-elitarianism was both an official moral value, and it also was enforced by mixing up people geographically. The good neighbourhoods and bad neighborhoods were not so strongly different from each other as they are now. I started wondering for a while, if my attitude is caused by the regime I grew in... Maybe in some countries or areas there is almost nothing in the middle between good and bad neighborhoods. But people describing schools in Cambridge, where profesors' kids mix up with the low class kids seem to have the similar experience as I have.
To summarize my opinion: Creating the bubble is usually unnecessary and deforms the mental image of the world for the child. The child chooses his peers as long as there is some variety available. If the child instinctively wants to go out with little criminals and do wrong things together, it is time to sit together at the table and discuss it in the family. One day the child will grow up and will have to choose his peers on his own, as well as make his own moral decisions. Of course, if reasoning would not work, I would probably proceed to creating a bubble eventually, as a last and desperate measure. But in most cases this stage will never happen, and I would not ruin myself financially to do the bubble thing as the first step.
Nice thoughts, thanks.
The important thing is the neighborhood not the city. I think it also depends on the type of poor people.
Cambridge, MA. Lots of lefty professorial and computer types, also lots of Haitian and Cape Verdean immigrants in housing projects.
In different neighborhoods. Specifically, would your children be playing with the children in the projects?
Probably. They'll certainly be going to school with them. We haven't bought a house yet, but all the areas we're considering have projects nearby.
I'm willing to assign significant probability that when you actually have kids and see them experience first hand the actual quality of the school, you'll arrange for them to go to a charter and/or private school (or possibly even home-school).
Would you please share your own experience with American public schools, if you have any?
I went to an inner city public school for several years. The last year I attended (I was pulled out and homeschooled afterwards), one of my teachers made a cell out of bookshelves to put students who had misbehaved. They were all black. When called on it, she said she was 'getting them used to it.' There was also a lot of petty vandalism, bullying, and the educational quality was pretty miserable. If it makes you feel any better, I'm almost certain this experience was an outlying data point.
I wasn't in an "inner city" school.
I was. The experience was good. I learned to double-dutch jump rope, and play the dozens. I didn't learn to dance the Cabbage Patch, no matter how many times my classmates tried to demonstrate it for me, but that was my failing and not theirs.
Then I took the SAT, got a good score, and on the strength of my high school and my zip code was offered a good scholarship to a private liberal arts college.
What I'm trying to say is: the piece Eugine_Nier is missing is how drastically parental wealth, income, and educational attainment affect the kids' educational outcomes. If you look at the research, these factors drastically outweigh the quality of the school or the teacher. That's not to say that teachers have no effect; but, so far as these things have been quantified, the family background is more important by an order of magnitude.
In other words -- if you are doing relatively well, and if you read a lot of books, it almost doesn't matter where you send your kids to school. In fact, sending them to a diverse "inner city" school could be very helpful from a social point of view.
It was for me.