Friday, November 5

Why rush to help older people?

Do you notice that people seem to think a violent crime against older people is especially egregious?  Do you notice that people seem to want to assist older people with everyday activities more than they would want to assist a younger person?

Well, their frailty means they have more trouble with everyday activities, and would have more trouble fending off an attack. In that regard, I can understand people's beliefs.

But think about this: aside from their frailty, there is perhaps no reason to think of older people as being more deserving of assistance.  Why?

Well, older people were young once.  I would think that, proportionately, there are as many nasty and nice older people as there are nasty and nice younger people.

After all, nasty and nice young people age.  I would think a nasty young person would tend to be nasty when they get older, no?

My point is this:  I believe that many people seem to think of older people as harmless, gentle people that are deserving of assistance, when in fact there are likely, proportionately, as many nasty older people as there are young people!

Now, if an old lady is crossing the street, the chances are that she's nice and not nasty, simply because there are likely more nice or neutral people in the world than there are nasty people.  So go ahead and help her, since she's frail.

But just don't assume her age means that she's somehow more likely to be nice than other people are!

30 comments:

  1. I'm curious, what do you think it means to be "deserving of assistance"? Behind the scenes in this (otherwise banal) post, there's some kind of moral system lurking here, where what one "deserves" is based on perhaps a hidden combination of niceness and weakness, I guess? But now I'm putting words in your mouth, so I'll let you answer from here.

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  2. See how you feel about this when you get old. Dooofus.

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  3. I believe that it's admirable for someone to go out of their way to help someone, and I wish society was like that more often.

    Myself, I often find myself smiling at people while I walk down a street full of busy unsmiling strangers.

    When I referred to "deserving of assistance", I was referring to society's overall criteria. Meaning, I believe people would be more likely to help someone if they knew they were nice, or were at a disadvantage physically, etc.

    In terms of what I feel about someone being deserving of assistance broadly, well, I believe society should be compassionate about helping those in need, with an ideal level of social programs.

    After all, someone born with less was no different from someone born with privilege, in the sense that they had no choice about being born!

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  4. In that case, I'm curious what you think about welfare programs in general. And how about immigration? Nobody chooses to be born in another country, after all. Why should it be harder for foreigners to come over here to enjoy the same advantages we do? In what sense are illegal aliens doing anything wrong, other than avoiding paperwork?

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  5. Reader 20,

    I respectfully am going to have to end this discussion here. On the other post series, you've made several claims that misrepresent what I've said, and it is counterproductive to go about correcting so many errors.

    I wouldn't have answered your comments anyway, because I want to comment on these topics in a blog where more readers will notice it.

    However, I will say this: illegal immigration is wrong for many reasons, some of the most important being that they take jobs away from many other non college educated Americans, and mostly because they are willing to work for less and hence they drive down the wages of other Americans.

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  6. Well, in case you change your mind, some further questions:

    "However, I will say this: illegal immigration is wrong for many reasons, some of the most important being that they take jobs away from many other non college educated Americans, and mostly because they are willing to work for less and hence they drive down the wages of other Americans."

    Why are Americans fundamentally more deserving of those jobs, just by nature of being born here (which they had no choice in)?

    And why is driving down the wages of other Americans "wrong"? We all drive down each other's wages, in that if there were fewer of us, workers would be more scarce and thus more valuable. Are we all wrong in that regard, or are aliens wrong because they're "others"?

    If you'd like to answer this in a separate post, please do.

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  7. I'm not sure what you would consider "overly helpful", what you would consider "older", or how you're defining "younger", so this one is hard to answer.

    I'll start at the beginning.
    Q: "Do you notice that people seem to think a violent crime against older people is especially egregious?"

    A: If they're in their fifties, no. If they're elderly enough to be infirm, yes. But crimes against infants are also considered especially egregious, as are crimes against disabled persons...basically, society considers any crime where the victim is considered to be helpless (or nearly so) to be "especially egregious". By the way, nice use of words, there. Do you still believe in your post about toddler speak being as effective as adult speak?

    Q: "Do you notice that people seem to want to assist older people with everyday activities more than they would want to assist a younger person?"

    A: Again, if the person is in their fifties and healthy, then no. If the person is infirm, then yes. The same would apply to assisting the very young and the severely disabled, but these groups almost always have caretakers with them...the elderly often do not.

    Statement: "But think about this: aside from their frailty, there is perhaps NO reason to think of older people as being more deserving of assistance."

    A: Do you understand the value of respect and how it contributes to the smooth functioning of society?

    Sure, frailty is the main reason for assisting the elderly. But respect also plays its role.

    Statement: "I believe that many people seem to think of older people as harmless, gentle people that are deserving of assistance, when in fact there are likely, proportionately, as many nasty older people as there are young people!"

    A: You *believe* that they *seem* to think? Boy, you really hedge your bets, huh? Of course, in this case hedging was a good idea: I've never personally met anyone who would make such a broad-brush assumption about everyone over a certain age. It's not an assumption of "gentleness" or "harmlessness" that motivates helping the elderly; it's the assumption that they may need help, and society's respect for the generations that came before.

    Or is that just my opinion?

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  8. Reader 44,

    I'm glad to see your respectful tone.

    I had considered that there may be other reasons that older people were deserving of respect. I didn't want to go into this in depth, so i used the "perhaps " qualifier.

    Off hand, however, I wouldn't think they deserve more respect, because their personalities, I would think, would tend to be similar to those of all other people except for modifications resulting from more experience.

    I don't think that they should be given more respect simply because of their age, because I think that would imply that younger people are deserving of less respect, and I see no reason for that to be the case.

    I will review the baby talk comments now.

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  9. a really smart person doesnt use facebook for anything.

    your results only mean you are the 74th smartest person who uses facebook, (not an incredible achievment at all), not the 74th smartest person in the world.

    idiot

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  10. Dude.. your continuance and obsession over the fact that you got ranked 74th on a intelligence test does not accurately demonstrate or convince people reading your website or comments that you are really smart.
    The general population on facebook use it as an easy and fluent way to communicate with other humans in their life.
    There are many 'apps' on facebook.
    Many of these applications use randomly generated results.
    I am not saying that yours are!
    The association people have with these innumerable programs is a bad one for the most part (in any case, one of non-recognition).
    If you truly think you are an intelligent being then you will realize the validity of this statement.
    That being said, you should try several other various tests of intelligence from sources more likely to be reliable.
    Record yourself taking these tests and put the videos on your site.
    Then you will show the world (and possible employers) that you are capable of doing all the things you claim to be able to do.

    If you do not understand this argument then you, be no means, deserve the recognition you granted yourself with the second you finished that test since I am writing clearly and articulately, am only 16 years old, and am only half way through high school.

    If you just come up with some response that does not comply with the terms of my proposal then I will be forced to assume that you are not who you say you are.

    I will assume you are a self-centered psychopath.

    Then I will go back to trollin' fb.


    XIV

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  11. @NoSuchThing

    Ever consider that the elderly receive recognition solely from that fact that we live in an age where the wisdom and insight that comes with living for many years is priceless and it would be rude to assume that they are less important or even inferior to anyone else?

    By the way.. that you CLING to the infamous fb 74th score shows your immaturity.
    Your inability to support this fluke with further evidence of intelligence detracts from everyone's opinion of you.
    Just because you know you to use proper grammar (for the most part) and maintain a website does not indicate intelligence.

    You need help.

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  12. You've focused solely on the issue of respect, which is more nebulous, and ignored the fact that the majority of my post focused on the common decency of helping the infirm, regardless of age.

    Respect for our elders has been a longstanding and useful tool for society. Whether or not it is still a valid tool can be debated, but I would lean toward saying that it is. Either way, that was not the main thrust of my point, and I would like to see you address the point.

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  13. Reader 12,

    Please see http://nosuchthingasanopinion.weebly.com/iq-results.html for an explanation of the validity of my results as well as a list of my results on other, traditional tests.

    Reader 44,

    I thought I answered any questions that were implied by your comments.

    I agree with your first A., regarding the egregiousness of violent crime against the infirm and babies.

    When I commented on older people, I was indeed thinking of the infirm. That is what I was referring to when I used the word "frailty".

    I would be comfortable by removing the hedge so that my sentence becomes "many people think of older people as harmless, gentle people that are deserving of assistance..."

    I didn't catch any other questions that you wanted me to answer, if there are any others, feel free to ask.

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  14. You said:

    "My point is this: I believe that many people seem to think of older people as harmless, gentle people that are deserving of assistance, when in fact there are likely, proportionately, as many nasty older people as there are young people!"

    If that was the point of your post, you have missed your mark.

    People generally don't help elderly passers-by because they believe them to be gentle, harmless, or any number of other nice qualities. They help the elderly when it is clear that the person requires help--when they are infirm.

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  15. Wouldn't someone infirm be considered harmless? I would think so?

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  16. While those who are infirm may (for the most part) be harmless, not all who are harmless are that way because they are infirm. Harmless can also be a matter of temperament, or even plain incompetence. You paired harmless with gentle, and went on to say

    "when in fact there are likely, proportionately, as many nasty older people as there are young people!"

    That is a statement of temperament, not ability. "Gentle" is a statement of temperament, and "harmless" can be.

    The sentence--and by extension, your point--was one of assumed temperament. Otherwise your rebuttal (the second half of your sentence, beginning with "when in fact") would have no bearing on the original idea put forth (the first part of your sentence, the part stating that older people were seen as harmless and gentle).

    Either you were wrong or you were unable to get your point across coherently.

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  17. Facebook? I hope you burn in many fires.

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  18. Your opinions and "merits" are laughable.

    Just let it go dude. Let it go. That kind of pride can only ruin whatever gift you may have. The way you flaunt your opinion of your superiority is just going to leave you with no one to listen to whatever it is you say you have to say.

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  19. Reader 44,

    you wrote:

    "While those who are infirm may (for the most part) be harmless, not all who are harmless are that way because they are infirm. "

    I agree. I never disagreed.

    You are correct that "gentle" is a statement of temperament.

    To reiterate, my thesis was that people seem to think of older people as harmless and gentle, when in fact they are just as nasty or nice as younger people.

    I see the point that you're making. I believe you've erred in making it, however, but the fact that you were able to come up with that point and explain it well shows that you are indeed very intelligent:

    OK, here's my thesis again:

    "My point is this: I believe that many people seem to think of older people as harmless, gentle people that are deserving of assistance, when in fact there are likely, proportionately, as many nasty older people as there are young people!"

    Your claim seems to be that the first sentence (harmless, gentle) is incompatible with the second (nasty), because the former refers to ability, and the latter refers to temperament.

    So, let’s group it together using your terms. To word it in your terms, by grouping the terms by ability, it would read: many people think older people are harmless, when in fact they are as likely to do harm as younger people. This is the logical thinking that one would make after starting with the first sentence: “many people think older people are harmless,”

    So, the question now becomes, in the second part of the sentence, is the ability (likely to do harm) compatible with the emotion (nasty). You claim they aren’t compatible, because one is an ability, the other is a temperament. However, when you made the claim, you hadn’t spelled it out like this, so I’m not trying to suggest it was dumb of you not to see the point I’m about to make:

    Respectfully, I would say that “nasty” and “likely to do harm” actually are compatible, and here's what the connection is: If someone is nasty, they are more likely to want to do harm to someone, I assume, and I assume they are hence more likely to follow through and actually do harm, I would think.

    So, that's what I had in mind.

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  20. Reader 44,

    thanks for challenging me. You really had me thinking there, as to how best to explain exactly what I had in mind when i first made the claim!

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  21. That was a very...contorted answer.

    You say:
    "To reiterate, my thesis was that people seem to think of older people as harmless and gentle, when in fact they are just as nasty or nice as younger people."

    I haven't argued that point; my argument stems from the first two sentences of your post, and the connotations implicit therein.

    Those sentences were:
    "Do you notice that people seem to think a violent crime against older people is especially egregious? Do you notice that people seem to want to assist older people with everyday activities more than they would want to assist a younger person?"

    My answer is that those sentences are only true if the elderly person is actually infirm; if they're healthy and capable, people generally do not rush in to assist them.

    Your post, as written, is focused entirely on a misconception...that is, that the reason people feel "overly helpful" to "older people" is because we assume that they are good and "gentle" people.

    Take, for example, your last sentence:
    "But just don't assume her age means that she's somehow more likely to be nice than other people are!"

    Where was that assumption made?

    Nowhere.

    The only thing that sentence relates to is to *your assumption that the reason people help the elderly is because we think they're "nice"*.

    That's the ONLY thing that sentence rebuts.

    Your point was quite clear: people assume that older people are nice and consider it "especially egregious" when something happens to them, but that there's no reason for it, because age doesn't necessarily change a person's temperament.

    My counter-point was that no one is necessarily assuming that old people are inherently "nice"--we all know at least one grumpy old codger, right?--and that the elderly aren't afforded special sympathies that aren't extended to similar groups. They receive assistance when they need assistance, and it's "especially egregious" to harm *anyone* who can't defend themselves.

    You said:

    "Your claim seems to be that the first sentence (harmless, gentle) is incompatible with the second (nasty), because the former refers to ability, and the latter refers to temperament."

    Nope. I said that the second half of the sentence does not address the first IF you mean "infirm" by "harmless and gentle". To simplify, the sentence works just fine like this:

    "My point is this: I believe that many people seem to think of older people as gentle people that are deserving of assistance, when in fact there are likely, proportionately, as many nasty older people as there are young people!"

    because "nasty" is a rebuttal to "gentle"--they're both temperaments.

    But your sentence makes no sense like this:

    "My point is this: I believe that many people seem to think of older people as infirm and in need of assistance, when in fact there are likely, proportionately, as many nasty older people as there are young people!"

    Because whether they are "nasty" or not has absolutely nothing to do with whether they are infirm and in need of assistance.

    cont'd below

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  22. cont'd from above

    We're going round and round about this, but it's quite simple: intentionally or not, you equated people's help and defense of the elderly with a misconception concerning their temperament, whereas I say that people help the elderly when they are infirm, even when they know (or care) nothing about the individual's temperament.

    And then there's this:

    "Respectfully, I would say that “nasty” and “likely to do harm” actually are compatible, and here's what the connection is: If someone is nasty, they are more likely to want to do harm to someone, I assume, and I assume they are hence more likely to follow through and actually do harm, I would think."

    Yes, "nasty" would be a rebuttal to "harmless" IF--and only IF--you meant "harmless" in the temperamental sense.

    My point in my last post was that for your sentence to make sense, you would have to be using "harmless" to refer to temperament, not ability.

    So then, your answer to a post of mine:

    "Wouldn't someone infirm be considered harmless? I would think so?"

    was off-base. Here, you're using "harmless" in the physical sense, which, as we've just shown over and over does not make sense in the context of the original sentence.

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  23. **NOTE: due to editing as I typed, there was an error in my reply.

    I started by quoting your thesis (again), and then saying that I'm not arguing that...obviously, I am. Those two sentences weren't originally combined in that way, and in fact, I get to the part about the flaw in your thesis at the end of my last post.

    This is all off the top of my head, mostly typed as I go. There will be typos.

    It's unavoidable.

    :)

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  24. Reader 44, you wrote:

    "You say:
    'To reiterate, my thesis was that people seem to think of older people as harmless and gentle, when in fact they are just as nasty or nice as younger people.'

    I haven't argued that point; my argument stems from the first two sentences of your post, and the connotations implicit therein."

    I never said that you argued that point. I made the point for reiteration, to provide context for my argument.

    You quote me:

    "'But just don't assume her age means that she's somehow more likely to be nice than other people are!'

    Where was that assumption made?"

    Where was the assumption made? It’s from my theory!!

    The assumption was made in my theory that older infirm people aren’t more or less likely to be nasty than younger people (which would mean they aren’t more or less likely to be nice!).

    That’s the whole point of my post. No offense is meant, but because you aren’t following this, I am going to end the conversation so it doesn’t go around endlessly. But I will address your other points regardless.

    cont'd below

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  25. cont'd from above

    Next topic:

    You say "nope", you didn't find the second sentence incompatible with the first.

    But then you write:

    " I said that the second half of the sentence does not address the first IF you mean ‘infirm’ by ‘harmless and gentle’."

    Well, that means, for the argument's intended purpose(by looking at the definition of words), that the two sentences are incompatible. What else would it mean?

    You also mention that my sentence wouldn't make sense as this:

    "’My point is this: I believe that many people seem to think of older people as infirm and in need of assistance, when in fact there are likely, proportionately, as many nasty older people as there are young people!’"

    I agree that doesn't make sense. But that's not what I said. I said:

    "’My point is this: I believe that many people seem to think of older people as harmless, gentle people that are deserving of assistance, when in fact there are likely, proportionately, as many nasty older people as there are young people!’"

    That does make sense, since someone nasty is more likely to have the intent to harm.

    After prodding from you, at one point I clarified my original statement to say that when I was referring to older people, I was referring to infirm older people, so the sentence then changes to:

    "My point is this: I believe that many people seem to think of infirm older people harmless and gentle and in need of assistance, when in fact there are likely, proportionately, as many nasty older people as there are young people"

    You agree that:

    "Yes, ‘nasty’ would be a rebuttal to ‘harmless’ IF--and only IF--you meant ‘harmless’ in the temperamental sense."

    That seems to me to be incorrect. Even if I meant harmless in the physical sense, it makes sense. Someone can harm someone in the temperamental sense (verbal abuse) and in the physical sense (attacks).

    You then write:

    "’Wouldn't someone infirm be considered harmless? I would think so?’

    was off-base. Here, you're using ‘harmless’ in the physical sense, which, as we've just shown over and over does not make sense in the context of the original sentence."

    Whether it's physical or temperamental, both contexts make sense, as I pointed out about 5 lines above, and will point out now:

    Hence,

    think of this using the physical definition:

    "My point is this: I believe that many people seem to think of infirm older people as harmless and gentle in need of assistance, when in fact there are likely, proportionately, as many nasty older people as there are young people"

    That makes sense, since people would be expected to be more likely to physically harm someone if they have nasty intent.

    Similarly, if you read the sentence by defining "harmless" by temperament, it also makes sense:

    People would be expected to be more likely to want to mentally harm someone (verbal abuse, etc) if they have nasty intent.

    I have to end this conversation, because it’s unclear whether you are intentionally being illogical or not following me. If the latter is the case, then other readers can determine who they think provides the more logical arguments.

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  26. I don't know, man. I don't think I make judgments about people before deciding to help them. I don't help them because I think they're nice, I help them because I want to be nice. I'll let them worry about their own karma.

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  27. Reader 63,

    you don't think people make judgments about who to help?

    Are you saying that if someone fell down several meters from you, you wouldn't hesitate to think that they required help if they seemed big and strong?

    Don't you think people have different ideas about different group members? Of course they do, it's the way the brain categorizes information more easily, they are called stereotypes.

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  28. When you are helping an older person, you are helping yourself. Many if not most people will live to be old enough that they have problems taking out the trash, bringing in groceries and such. Helping others is nothing more than paying forward the help you will need when you are 102.

    There is a genetic advantage to supporting the old. The old have experience that can be used to enrich the lives of the young. With the invention of literature, this advantage has been diminished, the moral obligation has not.

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  29. Re: the "Can YOU outsmart me?" part of your title, any interest in participating in an online Sudoku tournament this weekend? Seems like the sort of test you should approve of, since it's culturally neutral and whatnot. See http://www.ukpuzzles.org/ for info.

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  30. Whoops, I meant to post that in the other thread. Ah well, no sense in reposting; you'll probably see it here.

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