Test predicts which children will grow up to be drain on society | Hacker News Reader

Test predicts which children will grow up to be drain on society

telegraph.co.uk

25 pointsghosh14 comments

I dunno if this is pointless moralizing, but I have a problem with the expression "burden on the state."

Some citizens consume a disproportionate share of society's resources, but words like "burden" and "drain" seem to be examples of heavy editorializing on the part of the author and/or editor.

Reading the article, we could just as easily say that the test optimizes resource allocation by providing assistance earlier to those who would otherwise need greater amounts a decade later.

I might just be depressed by recent developments, but the tone smells like a lead-up to proposing that if we really want to eliminate these "burdens," we load them onto cattlecars at age three.

I agree with everything you're saying. Additionally, "burden on the state" is both an antiquated statement and, in a global economy, more and more tied to opinion than fact. An simplistic example of such could be a very wealthy person, who despite paying a lot in taxes, causes considerable (far greater than average) damage to the environment - causing longer term externality and burden on the "state" than immediately recognizable.

Furthermore, Is the "inverse" of this burden an asset to the state? If so, does that mean high taxpayers are valued moneymakers for the "states" coffers? Does that not go outside of the scope of what a government is supposed to be/provide?

Finally, I'd be very careful to read the actual research and compare it to Telegraph's reporting. There are some laypress misinterpretations that are confounded but dont cause as much harm - such as the belief "eating chocolate everyday will make you live longer." Then there are far more toxic laypress misinterpretations that have far worse consequences (such as this article) if people were to accept it as fact.

> An simplistic example of such could be a very wealthy person, who despite paying a lot in taxes, causes considerable (far greater than average) damage to the environment - causing longer term externality and burden on the "state" than immediately recognizable.

Or a wealthy person who causes great damage to the environment, pays no taxes, and takes public subsidies anyway. The greater burden on the state are the people exploiting the society around them without giving back.

I completely agree, the phrase "burden on the state" makes you think of eugenics. Which is really unfortunate, because the crux of this article is actually more optimistic. The key quote is: "Being able to predict which children will struggle is an opportunity to intervene in their lives very early to attempt to change their trajectories, for everyone’s benefit and could bring big returns on investment for government." They are advocating using this sort of testing to identify people to receive additional social welfare and assistance early. This means we can provide better quality of care to those in need and save money in the process.

I agree, and I was heartened to note that several of the first Telegraph commenters pointed this out. If I were a UK parent, I would be wary of allowing my child to be subjected to such a potentially stigmatising test. State intervention takes many forms, and few of them are pleasant.

Is it possible that some people are a burden on the state? If someone is a recidivist violent criminal they might have some redeeming qualities but their net effect may be negative. They have a financial cost on the state and an emotional cost on the people they interact with.

I think one thing that is crucial when we look at titles like "burden on the state" is they are not things that define a person, but may sum up one aspect of their current state. A state that can change.

They are not nice words, but there are individuals that cause problems for society as a whole. Does it do them any favours to sugar coat this?

I don't think the article was suggesting loading them into cattlecars. It's more about finding predictors that can help identify individuals that could be better helped. How awesome would it be if we found a way to turn around these lives before they started getting into trouble.

The Telegraph is a UK Right of centre newspaper. This "burden of the state" language is prominent amongst similar newspapers, and the Telegraph is actually much less horrible than other similar papers.

I agree with you though.

What a disgusting title.

It can't possibly be that the society is unlivable for some people.

Not to mention that there are far more harmful effects out there, such as messing up the climate, but nobody says those people are a danger to society.

[also, something something growth mindset]

It's quite hard to take anything objective from this article. Unless I missed it, I don't see any link to the source material and there is no mention of what the specifics of the test were, or the sample (aside from the sample size). The three links provided on the article are links to mentioned universtiy landing pages or a link to another Telegraph article regarding a /different/ study.

It would be interesting to see the details of the study to determine if there is potentially more of a link to some other criteria (e.g. wealth) than the test questions themselves (which are never mentioned).

The actual questions will probably never be distributed publicly, if they are planning on actually using this for something. If people can see what the questions look like ahead of time, it can bias them and lead to inaccurate results, so it's standard practice in psychology to keep the details private.

But yeah, there isn't a lot of content here regardless.

Here's the research paper.[1] "At 3 years of age, each child in the cohort participated in a 45 minute examination that included assessments of neurological soft signs, intelligence, receptive language and motor skills. The examiners (having no previous knowledge of the child) then rated each child’s frustration tolerance, resistance, restlessness, impulsivity and lack of persistence in reaching goals. This examination yielded a summary index that we have termed brain health, a global index of the neurocognitive status of three-year-old children. Variation in brain health at three years of age significantly predicted economically burdensome outcomes in each sector, except injury claims."

The Prof. Terri Moffitt quoted in the article has a web site.[2] The data seems to come from the Dunedin Longitudinal Study, where all 1,037 babies born in the city of Dunedin, New Zealand, between April 1972 and March 1973 were followed for their entire lives.[3]

[1] http://www.moffittcaspi.com/sites/moffittcaspi.com/files/fie... [2] http://www.moffittcaspi.com/content/terrie-moffitt [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AITcsYRjZuo

Another WMD (Weapon of Math Destruction) ready to be deployed.

Why (on earth) was this article flagged?

If anything, it seems to serve as a (most prescient) warning on the dangers of this nefarious cottage industry known as "predictive analytics."

Kindly do please actually read the article, and unflag.

Did I miss it or does the article not go into the nature of the testing?

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