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Comment by nineplay | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure if you are alluding to this or not but the most obvious correlation between the marshmallow test in poverty is that people who grow up in poverty do not believe in future rewards. Their experience is that if someone tells you that you will get a marshmallow later, that marshmallow will never arrive.

"A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" accurately describes the experience of many people who grew up in poverty. It's a proverb for a reason.

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> Their experience is that if someone tells you that you will get a marshmallow later, that marshmallow will never arrive.

Precisely. And the problem is that experience does not map to reality in all situations. Thus Poor Brain. It leaves you physically unable to see the long term risk/benefit. Loan a friend $20, and Poor Brain will demand it be paid back over and over again, even if it's not crucial to their survival, even ruining the friendship over it. Rich brain never mentions it, and uses it indirectly as leverage in every possible situation, far outweighing the original value of the $20. Call it $10 or $1 or whatever is a trivial amount of money to even a poor person in your society. Having Rich Brain does not require you to not need the money, only that you understand how much more valuable not getting the money is. It's about understanding the value in your relationships with people and how that vastly outweighs your own skills/talents/ambition/resources.

I'm not sure what kind of poverty you've seen, but the kinds I'm familiar with both personally and from studies place far more emphasis on maintaining relationships and social capital because that's what they have. Lending or pooling money is not only common, but often without the expectation of direct repayment.

>I'm not sure what kind of poverty you've seen, but the kinds I'm familiar with both personally and from studies place far more emphasis on maintaining relationships and social capital because that's what they have. Lending or pooling money is not only common, but often without the expectation of direct repayment.

Fair, in that the experience I'm describing is among the poor whites of the US; a notoriously atomic and individualistic group. This probably does not map to other cultures as neatly.

I grew up in that poor white demo. My experience is that there's the idea of individualism - ie. "I won't ask for someone to solve my problems" - vs the practice of constantly trading off skills with your network of family and friends to stay afloat. Uncle A is good with cars, so he does everyone's repairs, Uncle B does all the plumbing. Their best friend growing up is useless, but they still help him anyway and maybe get some help next time they have to move, etc.

> the problem is that experience does not map to reality in all situations

There is no way to know the reality until after the decision to take the marshmallow, one always has to make the decision and the decision is going to be based on prior experience. That is how all our minds work. "Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different outcomes" and that sort of thing.

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