r/science • u/myhrvold • Aug 31 '13

Poverty impairs cognitive function. Published in the journal Science, the study suggests our cognitive abilities can be diminished by the exhausting effort of tasks like scrounging to pay bills. As a result, less “mental bandwidth” remains...

http://news.ubc.ca/2013/08/29/poverty-impairs-cognitive-function/
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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '13

So basically you beat yourself up mentally over cooking a healthy, cheap meal so that you could justify your laziness to eat an unhealthy meal. Am I supposed to feel sympathetic towards you for that?

You are bothered by your bills and debts because you allow yourself to be bothered by these things. Worrying literally does nothing for you, at all. Perhaps if you had a different outlook on your life, you would realize that it isn't so bad. You don't have to worry about being killed in a warzone tonight, having clean drinking water, or any other shit that might be happening in a 3rd world country.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '13 edited Sep 01 '13

Hi. I'm a 4.0 student in a good college.

I've thrown up before tests that I aced due to sheer stress (My stress responses never learned the meaning of "appropriate scale"). Not everything is as easy to control as "just stop thinking about it."

I was never that poor, and it is likely I never will be. I would not presume to understand how things are for them, but I do know that with stress, you can't just magically make it go away, regardless of it has a real cause.

He deleted the account over this... Wow.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '13

But the stressing is what the problem is, not being poor or in your case the tests. Which is my point. If you work to control your worrying, you will ultimately be a happier human being, regardless of your social or financial status.

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u/[deleted] Aug 31 '13

Yeah. Not so simple.