> Working in software
is a heluva lot better than stoop labor, what people have done for millennia. Every time I work on the yard I'm reminded again at how hard stoop labor is, and how I'm glad to work sitting in a comfy chair in a warm house with the stereo playing in the background. And I can play on HN when waiting for the test suite to run.
To an extent. Some people are predisposed to addiction and the poor are much less likely to have the knowledge or support required to recognise or battle addiction.
I wager that poor people are far better at recognizing addiction than non-poor. I hired a stoner once, not recognizing it. He robbed the company blind to pay his dealer.
Social workers are always trying to get the homeless addicts into rehab. They generally refuse to. It is their choice, not lack of money. In fact, I suspect that the lack of money is caused by their choice to be addicted. After all, addicts lose interest in their jobs and employers don't want stoners and drunks coming to work.
I.e. I think we overestimate how much of a 'choice' certain outcomes are for most people.
I’ve often contemplated that given that the part of me that has a poor work ethic and refuses to get help has generally won out, I would easily be on the streets if I was born into a family of low socioeconomic status, rather than having lots of savings and living in a nice apartment. Also, I’ve spiraled downwards many times, and I’m lucky that food, isolation, internet are my vices, rather than hard drugs.
In the times I’ve finally “decided” to improve my life, I honestly have no explanation for why I did that, versus continue to spiral downwards.
It's interesting how much these kinds of choices are affected by people around you. E.g. when I had classmates depending on me to finish a part of a project, or a partner needing a good night sleep, I am much less likely to goof off into the wee hours of the night playing video games or such.
Makes me wish I could have recognized this way earlier and set up periodic "check-ins" with a group of friends. I've seen some people accomplish this via "life coaches." Some people have really involved parents. Explains why people with poorer backgrounds may do worse - less of this kind of involvement. Conversely I wonder if church/temple participation helps the other way.
> How much of a choice is it to be attracted to a given individual?
Don't confuse ones' choices with ones' desires. You have free will, you can indulge in the bad predilections, or not. Your choice.
Nobody said making the better choice is easy.
If I had my druthers, I'd eat nothing but donuts and ice cream all day. But I choose otherwise.
Choices or no choices, or free will, doesn't absolve someone of consequences, responsibility, or reality stemming from actions being undertaken.
At least when it comes to addiction, there can be no recovery unless there is a conscious choice to do something about it. Nobody can save these people unless they want to be saved.
A fairly useless way to think about when it comes to solving problems in our society.
At the end of the days, people's choices are determined by large number of factors, most of which we are unaware of or currently ill equipped to understand.
It would be like a person having a seizure and people deciding to blame said person for making a choice to be corrupted by a devil.
Nobody chose anything without being dictated by physics, biological, sociological, and cognitive factors.
Assume we know the person's addiction and subsequent dysfunction is from said mental illness. The person doesn't want to be treated, as is often the case. Do you
A: let him carry on as is, resulting in both self-harm alongside other externalities
B: Violate his right to self determination and have him committed to a mental institution.
The majority of addicts are people who have experienced trauma. Often this is childhood trauma, specifically sexual, emotional or physical abuse. Of course it may also have occurred in adulthood. Veterans are one common example but there are millions of other causes.
Shit happens man. You can be an armchair judge but it’s all too easy to go off the rails in this world. Be compassionate! Instead of “you made some bad choices” maybe try thinking, “there but for the grace of god go I”.
It seems to me your language above suffers from a false dichotomy.
One might start with a binary question such as "Do we have free will or not?".
However, a better question is "Under what conditions and to what extent are we conscious of our choices, rational in how we evaluate them, and informed enough to predict how they will play out?"
> I know that some people
Addiction is NOT a choice, and it is a form of chemical imbalance that happens in our complex brain that makes the person get into addiction with any substance. It could be said like any other mental health illnesses. AND when the person who got addicted doesn't get enough support and the compassion (likely not from you) to the way where they can be able to stay away from their addiction, there is a possibility that such person could go worse.
Drinking alcohol is a choice, so is sticking the needle in your arm.
> likely not from you
I support programs for treatment for addicts. Successful treatment, however, involves the addicts accepting responsibility. Nobody ever said recovery is easy. It isn't. Compassion is in order to help them recover.
But ultimately it's still up to them to make the choice.
In the end, you can say it is a choice, but what is a choice worth, if you don't know anything about preconditions (the knowledge, the impulse control, the education, the emotional point of reference, earlier experiences, etc). Not talking about how drugs affect your ability to choose and execute what you have chosen to do.
I think the evidence suggests a different understanding:
1. One individual’s willpower varies significantly over time (over a day for example)
2. One individual’s set of options varies in many ways — not limited to education, awareness, culture, economic opportunity, and luck.
3. Many important actions are not consciously decided.
This plays out in many ways.
Many individuals that achieve some kind of success mistakenly over-attribute it to hard work or intelligence —- and downplay the role of culture, opportunity, privilege, and luck.
I don't buy it.
Furthermore, when people take responsibility for their lives, they tend to have much better outcomes. I'm old, and I've observed this play out constantly. Blaming others and circumstance might make one feel better, but it is completely useless.
And lastly, successful treatment for addiction and alcoholism involves the person taking responsibility for the addiction.
I didn't assert that.
That's a big claim to make. Do you have any sources?
"60 Minutes" also ran a segment on the Seattle homeless a couple years ago. They went in looking for people who were down on their luck. They found drug addicts and alcoholics.
I haven’t seen these videos yet, but I’m curious if they went to shelters or streets.
This is a take on the issue by the Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/why-are-p...
Drug addiction and alcoholism is the proximate cause of a lot of calamities in peoples' lives.
https://our.news/external/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fhotair.com%2Far...
You wrote "90%" -- a specific figure -- as opposed to writing "most" or "many". Why did you choose this number? Do you have a reference you can share?