Learning about investing : whitepeopletwitter

[-] schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 103 points 2 days ago

This is based on the marshmallow test. A child is left alone in a room with a marshmallow. If they don't eat it, they are promised a chocolate bar or something better. The study followed up participants and found that the marshmallow resisters were more successful in life.

Later research has shown that this is just another correlate of wealth. Children with wealthy parents will more likely be in a stable environment where they have access to candy and more likely to trust authority figures to be reliable. They will also, of course, be more likely to get better, stable jobs, and then turn around, like all wealthy people, looking for individual traits that make them deserving of their success, unlike all those short-sighted marshmallow munchers. How are you going to make your first billion by thirty if you can't even stop yourself from eating a fucking marshmallow for 60 seconds, jesus christ.

[-] The_Picard_Maneuver@lemmy.world 40 points 2 days ago

Yes, studies show that delayed gratification correlates with parental wealth, achievement, home stability, etc. However, as always, it's quite hard in psychology to conclusively separate environment from heritability, because some portion of our temperament, impulse control, and intelligence is passed down from parents to child and would also influence things like achievement and delayed gratification. All we can say for certain is that the correlation is there, and that it's probably a combination of both nature and nurture.

[-] schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 13 points 2 days ago

A broader question is what the value of doing research is if only research supporting the dominant social narrative is widely believed and disseminated regardless of evidence, while no amount of evidence is enough for a countervailing hypothesis to be accepted.

The older, I get the more I see people just want confirmation of what they already believe, and more cynically, that power structures promote messages that benefit them; most specifically, the just world fallacy must be maintained at all costs if personal anxiety and social revolution is to be avoided.

[-] The_Picard_Maneuver@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago

I think neither the nature or nurture hardliners would be satisfied with the answer to most of these types of questions in psych, because it likely lands somewhere in between.

I also share the frustration with the field being so susceptible to trends of ideology: proposed topics of research, what gets approved, what gets replicated, what gets published (not to mention sloppy methodology that always seems to err on the side of the desired results). In the past, research was rigidly flavored by genetics/evolution/immutable traits because it was built on the model of biology/medicine. In recent history, it's been influenced by the idea that we're largely blank slates, because the questions that would come up if we're not are socially uncomfortable.

As I've gotten older too, I've also had to get more comfortable with the answer being "it depends" or reframing it to a purely objective-oriented perspective (i.e. "Ok, can we actually do with this information?").

[-] schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 5 points 2 days ago

What it noticed in my small family system and from working with two- and three-year-olds, we are definitely individuals on a biological level, though this obviously acts (and interacts) with the environment.

I also think that “nature” and “being like your parents” are two different things that often get conflated; there such wild variation everytime you pull the lever on the chromosonal slot machine, you may be naturally quite different from your parents.

I trained as a therapist and was quite shocked to learn how poor the research is on modalities on close examination. For instance, every study automatically selects for people who are congruent w/ the treatment because anyone who isn't, drops out; so any study will have higher success rate than it ever would in the real world where therapists think in terms of conditions and not personal fit.

[-] The_Picard_Maneuver@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

Very true. I've never worked with kids, but after having kids myself and seeing this "chromosomal slot machine" pull in action, it's so apparent that a lot of personality is baked in. I used to be quite the behaviorist/blank-slatist too.

On the note of research selection bias, how about the realization that most research is done on college students who are trying to get class credit, and that most of the research work is also being done by students? And that it's almost never going to be replicated? I think the general public has this idea that most science is being done by a bunch of specialized men/women in labcoats with decades of experience, not hungover 20-somethings talking to hungover 20-somethings. In reality, that's probably 99% of it.

[-] EvilHankVenture@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

I see this so much with my family. One hundred stories that disagree with their viewpoint are ignored and 1 anecdote that supports their narrative is incontrovertible truth.

[-] OpenStars@piefed.social 1 points 2 days ago

Some of us actually change our minds when presented with evidence to do so. Hence, if some people will believe whatever they want regardless of evidence, and perhaps still others are mercurial and believe whatever they feel like in the moment, these are "uninteresting" and can be ignored, leaving only those of us in the middle who are amenable to changing our minds.

And like politics, the entire outcome of life depends upon those of us in the middle, swaying back and forth.

[-] schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 days ago

It's certainly possible, but have you ever considered an underlying belief has shifted before you accept the evidence? The emotional determinants of reason are overwhelming.

[-] OpenStars@piefed.social 1 points 1 day ago

True, but part of it lies in wanting to be correct. Imagine if you ask someone how to get to XYZ place - you go down the street but do you take a right or a left? It makes no difference to you then, except that one leads to your destination while the other takes you in the exact opposite direction.

And if you had no idea before asking someone, then you were sitting at only a 50:50 chance of arriving correctly, whereas after asking someone, presumably you now have much better odds.

[-] schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago

Yes, if you really are seeking the truth, that is to say, if the truth is a core value of yours.

Most people would rather manage their anxiety, belong to a group, have a structured worldview with meaning, etc.

If "knowing the truth" was really what people cared about, then the first exposure to it would convince people. If someone's seen the truth presented to them a million times and time million + 1 they believe it, obviously something else has shifted for them..

Take for instance this liberal media apparatchik.... I forget his name at the moment, but he was a big time commentator and everyone respected his opinion. He released a video this year reporting that he had changed his mind on Israel--from support to oppose. He presented all his evidence.

The thing is, as one youtube commenter pointed out, they were all reasons for ANYONE to be against Israel at ANY time since its creation. What he didn't answer was why he specificially changed his mind, because the facts had always been there, all while he was a highly educated, highly intelligent, highly verbal, highly sought-after commentator. The information had not changed, HE had changed.

My cynical opinion is that Israel was leading us into a disastrous war in Iran and that public opinion had shifted radically away from Israel to the point where he would be damaging his career to get ahead of it, but the relevance to this conversation is that facts alone rarely change anyone's minds about anything that is personally meaningful to them.

[-] OpenStars@piefed.social 1 points 1 day ago

There is a lot to unpack there - first and foremost how in any kind of for-profit media there is a difference between what is said vs. truly believed. It is difficult indeed to convince someone that a fact is true when their salary depends upon them not believing it. Which is why in my earlier statement I clarified that these are the "uninteresting" ones who are not likely to be convinced.

Therefore we should not depend upon that happening. Which reveals a foundational weakness in straight democracy itself (e.g. FPTP), although that is not to say that other forms of decision-making are more viable, especially compared with more nuanced (e.g. ranked-choice) and supported (e.g. with heavy funding into education) forms of democracy.

[-] UnspecificGravity@piefed.social 13 points 2 days ago

Yep. A girl in my class mentioned this years ago:

If I leave marshmallow behind in my house its going to be gone and no one is going to give a shit about it.

[-] lemming@sh.itjust.works 8 points 2 days ago

Relevant SMBC: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/marshmallow

[-] jtrek@startrek.website 9 points 2 days ago

Right. For someone in an unstable environment, having a good now is a better choice since it probably won't be there later.

I do wonder what you'd find if you controlled for wealth and stability. I feel like some people have really poor impulse control and delayed gratification despite coming from a stable home life

[-] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 days ago

It's not quite another correlate of wealth. What they found was that resisting the marshmallow was correlated not to being distracted from thinking about it, but to doing something that helps with the frustration.
Later data review showed a correlation with certain life outcomes, and further study showed that nurture played a bigger factor than biology and finally that the marshmallow isn't a predictor of life outcomes.

Money and the things you mentioned are one of the factors for better ability to lessen feelings of frustration. But so is coming from an Asian household, but only if the marshmallow isn't in a box. People from European cultural upbringing do better when the treat is in a gift box.

Getting dismissive of the study makes you miss out on what they were primarily trying to learn about: how do you successfully resist temptation?
All the rest was just a side effect of normal number crunching after the fact. They knew they had a biased sample of kids from the beginning since they were all sourced from the Stanford on prem daycare. They didn't expect that to have much impact on what they were actually studying. And then it took ~20 years for follow up studies to finish, since the kids need to grow up after eating their marshmallows.

(Asian heritage households reported that they tended to have food visible to children that they had to wait to eat more often than European heritage. European tended to have gifts be a special occasion where the norm was to wait to open them, where Asian had more instances of common, small gifts given and immediately opened. So one set simply had more practice not feeling frustrated about seeing food they couldn't eat, and the other with waiting for permission to unwrap a gift)

[-] schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago

Thank you so much for sharing all those little details.

So, in your rundown, you point out that the marshmallow test is, in fact, NOT a predictor of life outcomes.

Problem: I have never heard the marshmallow test brought up without it mentioing that it DOES predict life outcomes. Maybe like Zimbardo's Prison Experiment, it entered the culture as research, was thoroughly discredited, but then lived on as myth because it supports core social beliefs.

I feel like studies that make a splash, that have an impact, that get quoted in Ted Talks, etc., really have to be investigated from the standpoint of, "Why are people so desperate to believe this? What beliefs and values is it supporting?"

[-] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago

So, this might be a case of differing sources of information. I've never actually heard much emphasis out on the life outcomes angle, it's always been in the delayed gratification techniques part.
It's a case where I'd hesitate to use the phrase "discredit" because they actually did demonstrate what they were looking to show with the marshmallow test, and their findings do correlate with life outcomes: specifically delaying gratification and managing frustration. It's just that childhood marshmallow skills don't imply anything about study diligence in teenagers.

It would not at all surprise me if people used it to create a misleading narrative, I just haven't actually seen it personally.

[-] Blurntout@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 days ago

Have you explored the philosophical debate over free will? Nature vs nurture shenanigans mixed in it’s no wonder a few generations later the wealthy spawn are degenerate lol they never had the opportunity to wait for their marshmallow

[-] schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 7 points 2 days ago

Ah, the "good times create weak people who create bad times who create strong people who create good times" theory῾

[-] Blurntout@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago

Oversimplifying the we are the culmination of everything that’s ever happened to us personified in primate sinew and neurons theory is crazy

[-] fodor@lemmy.zip 8 points 1 day ago

Right, that was the whole point of the classic delayed gratification experiments. Poor kids don't believe parents like that.

[-] CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de 16 points 2 days ago

I grew up with a family that would have respected the ownership of the gummy bears; my partner didn’t. It’s low level around sweets, but it’s ultimately traumatic if your parents literally steal your stuff.

[-] texture@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago

why wait till he leaves? eat them in front of him and establish dominance like a real alpha chad. smh

[-] MoffKalast@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago

Have them painstakingly save up gummy bears day after day, and then just before they eat them, buy twenty bags and leave them all over the place. Teach them about pump and dumps early. Then teach them about diabeetus afterwards.

[-] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago

Aaaaannnd - it's gone.

[-] whotookkarl@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 2 days ago

Background picture looks like what an alien draws from a description of a human being but never actually seeing one

[-] thefluffiest@feddit.nl 3 points 2 days ago

Good for you. That’s how you raise true revolutionaries!

[-] RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

Good news. Packages of gummy bears included four gummy bears at the absolute minimum. Sometimes up to, like 20 or 40. Insane, I know but it's true.

[-] jwiggler@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 days ago

when did chad get merged with cool mac

People Twitter