This is what nobody wants to admit, whether it's nature or nurture doesn't matter because you're not in control of either of them. You were born into so and so of a family, and they brought you up with such and such care and values.

The idea that you've been "force of willing" it through your whole life since infancy and are therefore solely accountable for your outcome is absurd. We know that at some level and yet still can't help taking credit for our nice things and passing judgment on others for their failings.

▲

esikich 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This site is so fuckin out of touch with the average American I can help but get pissed off after a few beers on the weekend. The tech stuff is good, but the social/political stuff here drives me nuts.

▲

gonight 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

As someone who grew up on food stamps, I'd fully believe the mean and median income on hackernews are six figure numbers.

	▲	esikich 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		At least. And also living in a metropolis, in a burrough where SaaS is the only way of life and all of the benefits of society come from NPCs.

▲

georgemcbay 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> This site is so fuckin out of touch with the average American I can help but get pissed off after a few beers on the weekend. The tech stuff is good, but the social/political stuff here drives me nuts.

A lot of people on this site have no concept of what it is like to grow up unprivileged (they think they do, but to them that means growing up merely upper middle class as opposed to ridiculously wealthy) but as bad as it can be sometimes it has actually gotten a bit better in recent years.

There used to be an even higher concentration of ultra-libertarian "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" posters who clearly never had to do that themselves to anywhere near the extent they believed they had.

▲

Terr_ an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> taking credit for our nice things and passing judgment on others

Do you think it's more Fundamental Attribution Error [0] (not exercising empathy or an incomplete view of others' problems) or more Just World Fallacy [1] (believing the universe works a certain way)?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_fallacy

▲

RcouF1uZ4gsC 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> We know that at some level and yet still can't help taking credit for our nice things and passing judgment on others for their failings.

Is that blameworthy?

	▲	esikich 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yes.