Your Brain on Poverty: Why Poor People Seem to Make Bad Decisions (2013)

theatlantic.com

18 points·paulbaumgart··3 comments

Having some folks close to me that are trapped in the cycle of poverty this article felt quite refreshing.

I don't know if it's true but it helps explain that I don't understand the plight of poverty because I've never experienced it.

Being an engineer I can think of all the ways people near me in poverty can find a way out. I've even worked with them on some plans to do so. They haven't worked. It's frustrating.

Acknowledging that I don't understand moves me from frustration to empathy which is a much better place to be.

Indeed! I've had many friends who were really poor, and initial attempts to 'help' only lead to failure and frustration.

So far, the only approach that has had some effect was to take them out of their environment entirely. This 'shake-up' of their patterns usually had positive effects, even if they fell back into their previous patterns. But obviously this is a drastic and often impractical measure...

yes, nuerologically true. poverty is lockage in left prefrontal: security. almost total dependency and constant paralysis, waiting for the three unavailable essentials of a self: it's all but locked out of expertise (left frontal), imagination/legacy (right prefrontal) and freedom/assertion/truth (right frontal).

it takes extreme effort to break free of, chemically; it is counter-current from that point to build pathways out, by pure will, which is largely if not totally depleted by fear

Reply on news.ycombinator.com