Comment by ElProlactin
5 days ago
> poor and uneducated people can be quite smart about navigating poverty without education
Care to elaborate?
5 days ago
> poor and uneducated people can be quite smart about navigating poverty without education
Care to elaborate?
I read an article along these lines with a title like "how would you go about buying a car for $500." The gist is that folks in poorer rural areas would have the experience and contacts to buy the car. In contrast, most middle class folks would have no idea how to by such a car.
That's resourcefulness and I would argue that being resourceful is not the same thing as being smart. There can be a relationship between resourcefulness and intelligence, but they're inherently different.
About the car example: most middle class folks don't live in places where there's a substantial market for these types of cars. The availability of these types of cars is environmental.
>That's resourcefulness and I would argue that being resourceful is not the same thing as being smart.
You could argue that but you'd be wrong. Resourcesfulness is highly correlated with intelligence.
Also, what's the idea we're discussing here? That poor people can't be extremely intelligent?
1 reply →
I would put resourcefulness as a form of intelligence. So it may be that I have a more expansive definition of what can be smart, and what can be stupid, than you do.
[flagged]
> Care to elaborate?
That poor people know how to survive on much less money, whereas a lot of educated people get deep into debt when they lose their source of income making stupid mistakes such as not giving up restaurant visits or an apartment they now can't afford. Sometimes this goes as far as making plans to avoid debt collection as long as possible (which, of course, makes things worse afterwards).
And, especially, that poor people understand and expect the basic mechanism companies use: cheap or even free up front price for a million different things with lots of expensive traps that come a little bit later, and they're ready for it. Whereas people who have fallen out of their income fall for 10 of these traps at the same time.
Read some articles about charitable organizations that help people get out of debt and you'll see this everywhere.