That's how I feel about a very similar situation.

A corollary I think for me was that for many of the same reasons I didn't recognize the problems -- or maybe because I didn't recognize the problems -- others really couldn't grasp the depths of them either. Sometimes I think other people are better at recognizing problems than you are if there's a bad situation, but sometimes (maybe more often than society realizes) I think people just tend to assume that their functional situation applies everywhere, and so interpret things through that lens. So if you complain about X, they tend to (subconsciously maybe even) think "oh they must have not really meant X, they must have meant less serious version of X".

Every so often essays posted to HN really hit home and this is one of those times. I feel like this topic has been central to a lot of frustrations I've had in recent years.

A lot of the discussion here seems to be focused on individual agency and how much people are responsible for their circumstances or not, but for me many of the underlying issues are really about lack of understanding on the advice-givers.

Sometimes someone is capable of changing their circumstances, but just doesn't know how to go about it. They just never were taught how, or whatever, and when they turn to others for help, they get bad advice. The people they turn to might really care about the person and want to help, but just aren't good mentors.

The avocado toast example is important as a flawed position not necessarily because of broader issues about individual versus societal responsibility, but because it illustrates how completely ignorant people can be about their fellow humans' circumstances. This has a whole host of consequences that are extremely powerful, including not providing advice that would actually help, to not recognizing that good people sometimes just make mistakes, that good or bad mentoring actually does matter, and so forth and so on.

So maybe someone is entirely capable of improving their financial situation. But is telling them it's because they're eating avocado toast too much really going to help them? No, because the worldview that avocado toast is causing financial ruin is just as flawed as the worldview that everyone is a completely helpless victim. Cruel optimism isn't just cruel optimism, it's ignorant optimism, and proves the point by its very nature that the system is broken in some way: a person who believes avocado toast is the source of financial distress themselves probably is not sound in their financial reasoning, and if they are not in financial distress, it's probably not because of their sound financial reasoning, but rather, other factors.

If you cannot correctly identify the systemic impediments to someone improving their situation, and offer realistic advice to them in those circumstances, you're part of the problem, or at least, you're not recognizing the problem. Avocado toast is kind of a perfect example of opportunity costs applied to moral reasoning or something: it's not that it blames the victim, it's that the advice is actively harmful if for no other reason that decent advice is not being given, and then becomes an example of the very thing it's trying to argue against.

Thank you very much for your kind words. It makes me incredibly happy when I hear that something I write resonates with others, if only because it validates my own feelings.

> If you cannot correctly identify the systemic impediments to someone improving their situation, and offer realistic advice to them in those circumstances, you're part of the problem, or at least, you're not recognizing the problem

I'd say it's similar to telling someone who is cleaning, "you missed a spot". Technically helpful, but annoying, but misses the larger point. But, at the end of the day, it's advice that you can take or leave. Why get so offended?

The meaning of speech is inseparably entangled within the context of both the speaker and the listener, with the most commonly significant piece of that being "Why did you say anything at all?". In the case of "You missed a spot", the speaker is exerting their desire for a spot to get cleaned onto the person already doing the cleaning. Best case scenario, the cleaner is already cleaning for the speaker, in which case the implied command to clean the particular spot is merely a redundant part of a broader command to clean in the first place. In the more commonly aggravating scenario, the speaker is not the intended beneficiary of the cleaning, and the act of commenting on it at all is met with the hostility appropriate of some one trying to control you.

In the example of the avocado toast guy, why did he say anything at all? The subtext of "all you have to do to save money is stop spending money on frivolous things" is that it is a defense of the status quo: "You shouldn't complain about our unfair economic system, your suffering is your own fault". But why make that statement? Because the speaker is broadcasting to the world that he thinks he's better than the avocado eating proles.

The choice to say anything at all is an even bigger choice than what to say.

Why am I saying anything right now? Because I believe I have some value to share with the world, or at least another person. Aggravating as advice and comments can be, they can be a small building block to a better world, including helping someone do a better job, even for its own sake.

It's surprisingly hard for us as listeners to advice to remain calm and interpret it objectively. Why? Resistance to being controlled is a big part of it as you said. When is that a productive emotion? Are there times it holds us back?

> If you cannot correctly identify the systemic impediments to someone improving their situation, and offer realistic advice to them in those circumstances, you're part of the problem, or at least, you're not recognizing the problem.

A personal example I can think of has to do with how I managed my spending in the past: I would make sure not to overdraw from my checking account. Not because I am incapable of budgeting but because I didn't know any methods of budgeting. If I were to hear someone lament about their lack of making ends meet despite good income I would first try to get an understanding about how they budget since I know that was the actual mechanism that helped me make the decision not to buy the proverbial avocado toast.

Of course, finances could still be difficult due to cost increases not being matched by income increases; that is a genuinely unfortunate situation which I'm not sure how to fix. In this case, I would offer condolences over advice ("shit, that sucks, I'm sorry" not "just get a better job, lol") because I don't know what I would do in that situation.

I agree with you that the exercise example is a little soft, but my sense is it was meant to be one of many, and you might inadvertently be supporting their argument a bit.

There's probably some term for this phenomenon in formal logic or argument, and if there isn't, there probably should be, but...

It seems to me often with these kinds of things you can always say "if you want X enough, you can find a way," and that's logically true, but in practice the effort involved or the threading of the needle is exactly the problem. People have lives, and maybe taking the bus isn't feasible because you're working two jobs, have kids, and literally don't have the time without jeopardizing those things. It's some kind of logical trap, where you can provide all these examples of things to do, in some imaginary context where nothing else in life matters, or where success comes by making exactly the correct sequence of N steps of complicated decisions that is extremely implausible once uncertainty and normal levels of human error are taken into account.

The authors also basically provided an example of the neighborhood not being walkable and then you offer walking around the neighborhood as a solution. I bring this up not to be antagonistic or hostile to you, but I think this is part of what they're talking about: someone has X obstacles, and then in the course of getting advice, those obstacles are ignored in part or in whole. Even if it's unintended, it creates a loss of credibility on the part of the person giving advice (whether or not that credibility loss is warranted or not): "if you're ignoring my problem X, do you really understand my situation? And if not, can I trust that what you're saying will work out?" Then they might even ignore good advice, which then makes the problem worse.

I agree that you can still lose weight if by no other means than not eating as much, and I'm deeply skeptical of someone's inability to lose weight in the absence of some kind of internal physiological limitation. But as someone who's sympathetic to where you're coming from, I kind of read your comment and felt like you were just kind of illustrating the author's points. At what point at a population level do we start recognizing that these systemic factors are in fact causing problems for individuals, and that individuals cannot just bootstrap their way out of it completely? In the same way that you can come up with a complicated series of excuses for a person, you can also do the opposite, whatever that is termed -- you can come up with a complicated series of explanations of how they are culpable by not doing exactly the right series of things that would never be even discussed about a whole other subgroup of society.

I guess it seems to me that dismissing "obsessing on the fact that it's easier for someone else," and asking them instead to obsess about their own situation, is basically the thing the authors are talking about.