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by brabel 795 days ago
That's not the claim. The claim is that if you're born poor, your chances of being poor when you become an adult are much higher. Perhaps you know that and still think that because the kid who is born poor "chose" to stay poor, but I hope no one capable of having a discussion about this topic thinks like that.
2 comments
constantcrying 795 days ago
If they don't want to be poor why are the poor though?

No it isn't "opportunity", there has never been as much opportunity in the world to move up the social hierarchy as it exists now.

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dumbo-octopus 795 days ago
No, that is not the claim. That is a simple statistical fact that is obvious to anyone who looks at the data.

The claim is that folks are nothing more than "a derivation of their previous person states", and that correspondingly there is little to nothing a person can choose to do to escape the path set for them by their start state. I personally think this is blatantly false, and I have many observations to support my position.

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brabel 795 days ago
> folks are nothing more than "a derivation of their previous person states"

FFS that's an unbelievably bad interpretation. Are you just trolling or you really can't see the difference between that interpretation and "what we become depends in great part on where we're starting from"??

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dumbo-octopus 794 days ago
Where does this quote you have made up come from? I am directly quoting the comment I directly replied to, you seem to be quoting... absolutely nothing? It's not on this page or the main article at least. Or do you use quotation marks to mean something besides a quote?

If you don't disagree with my criticism of the comment I replied to, you've certainly picked an odd way to express that.

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__MatrixMan__ 794 days ago
My feeling is that dumbo-octopus wants to fight somebody who believes that we have no agency and that socioeconomic conditions entirely determine our future, but it's not working because there's nobody like that nearby.
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dumbo-octopus 794 days ago
My reply was to erikerikson, who I there directly quoted. Just because y'all jumped in in their stead does not make you authorities on their opinion. That said, I've been happy to disagree with the exact points you've made whenever you've made them. (Excepting, I suppose, your comment about the spirit of the edit, which I have no way to reasonably contest)
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