Comment by moate | Hacker News Reader

Comment by moate | Hacker News Reader

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>>People wanting absolute guaranteed results for all cases come across as deliberately contrarian.

People making stupid generalizations that "these 3 rules..." are coming across as deliberately stupid. The world is nuanced. Saying "the way to fix poverty is this one simple thing" is useless. You want to have an actual conversation, that's fine. OP is laying down some bullshit. If he want to come back and refine is statement, great. Let's start the discussion I was instigating.

You want to infer meaning and give his bare bones comment a whole bunch of implied meaning, great. I'm trying to figure out if he's trolling or just being trite and dismissive.

The miscommunication here is I was on the same page as OP because I've seen the study he was alluding to (and actually got one of the points wrong). I incorrectly assumed that it was common knowledge. It's referenced here, and yes I am aware that this article is attempting to "debunk" it, but I think the counterpoints it makes are quite weak: https://www.vox.com/2015/7/24/9027195/haskins-sawhill-norms-...

No, I deliberately adapted them ... the rule about having a full time job is kind of ridiculous, however having a minimum education, not doing drugs or being burdened as a single parent will make having a steady job much more likely. Also dont think you need to be married (not that type of conservative) to be a good parent.

Calling them "rules" was probably a mistake. "Principles" would be a better description and of course they dont guarantee anything but I stand by the concept that anyone who aspires to follow them will most likely escape poverty. And while the concepts are simple I fully acknowledge that they could, given your circumstances, be enormously difficult to follow. But do you have a better proposal, do you think throwing some small amount of money will fix it ? Change comes from within and the conceit is that you can "fix" other people.

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