Human Error, Infamous Heroin, High IQ
My remarks at Princeton + links and recommendations
You can now watch my recent remarks at Princeton University:
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The paperback version of Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class is now available.
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Audible (I narrated the audiobook myself)
From the archives:
Daniel Kahneman’s Final Exploration of Human Error
Links and recommendations:
The Epic Grandeur of Vanity Fair by Charles F. McElwee
What the Infamous Heroin Study Said by
We Live Like Royalty and Don’t Know It by Charles C. Mann
Do children improve your life? Do parents regret having children? by
The Life of the Mind and the Importance of Embodiment by
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Three interesting findings:
1. Extraverted people build rapport with others by unconsciously mimicking their behavior—moving their bodies in ways that channel or mirror the emotional states of those around them. It’s a skill they can turn on or off, depending on what they’re trying to accomplish. (source: The Person: A New Introduction to Personality Psychology).
2. At every level of education—from kindergarten through PhD—girls are leaving boys in the dust. While gender disparities are relatively small at the upper end, among the wealthiest families, they become significantly larger as we move down the socioeconomic ladder. In other words, boys and girls in rich families don’t differ much in terms of educational attainment. But in poor families, boys lag far behind girls. (source: The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt). I noticed this myself where I grew up. Of my five closest guy friends, none of us went to college right after high school. But among the girls in our friend group, about half went off to college.
3. In Vonnegut's short story “Harrison Bergeron,” the handicapper general forces everyone with a high IQ to wear an earpiece that loudly buzzes every 20 seconds to interrupt sustained thinking. This is designed to bring them down to the intelligence of the average citizen.
Also meant to include: I’ll be livestreaming today Wednesday (4/9) at 8pm ET. Tune in on the Substack app.
Isn’t it the case that more often the poor families have no stable husband/ father? It’s no surprise that boys without dads, or with intermittent guys, have far more trouble.
I’d like to see research on the 20-40, & 40-60%, middle & middle class boys compared to top 80-100%, both sets with married bio fathers. There’s not enough research that compares poor boys of married married parents with rich & middle class boys of married parents.
My guess is that stable marriage dominates income in predicting outcomes from boys, tho very low income might dominate. Because both are likely influential, comparisons should be made separately between married bio fathers, vs other families. And the range of other family types, boyfriends, step dads, occasional bio father contact, might well become quantitatively intractable. So much social truth is too complex to allow as much definitive answers as desired.