You'd be surprised. A good friend of mine is an Afghan who grew up sleeping on a dirt floor alongside his 5 siblings. When he was 15, his parents sent him off to their family village in order to fight the Taliban.
I first met him at our PhD program orientation in the US. He speaks four languages and and is one of the most well educated people I've ever met. Granted, he's an exceptional person but by no means of a unique one.
Edit: can't help sharing something that just happened last week, I was with my wife in Athens, where she had just started her thesis research, interviewing Afghan refugees in one of the big Greek refugee camps. She befriends a 17 year old Afghan kid named Javad, no family or money, speaks nothing but Dari, and one of the first things he asks her is "can you send me a PDF of an intermediate to advanced level mechanical engineering textbook?" We're planning on sending him an ipad with a bunch of PDFs and sci hub articles.
I realize these are just two personal anecdotes but they have definitely changed my mind on this subject. Curious people tend to be curious regardless of their life circumstances.
This is not a terribly substantive comment, but a Kindle Fire might make a little more sense than an iPad. I'm thinking it's less likely to be stolen, more likely to have extra available charging cables.
I wouldn't have guessed this, but after looking it up it seems the battery life of the iPad mini is advertised at the same length as the Kindle Fire.
His cell phone. He buys data 5 euro at a time from a shop in the town or goes to cafes to download English and engineering textbooks. That's what my wife's thesis project is about - specifically figuring out the best ways to share useful information with refugees who have cell phones but not much else, especially women who might not have a chance to go out in public much, or have a formal education. It's not my field at all but I find her work to be fascinating.
If you're interested, This American Life just did two whole episodes from a Greek refugee camp. In the second episode they interview a guy who patched into a power line under a tree to charge 6 cell phones at once! The group that both TAL and my wife were talking to is really doing good work, they're called the Greek Forum of Refugees.
This is a salutary anecdote which I wish we could convey to all those people who think that having a smartphone makes you "not poor". It's the exact opposite: it's so useful that even people who have not much else will go through hell or high water to keep their link to the world.
What a great thesis project, I hope something good comes of it. It's incredible both how much resolve people can have to change their circumstances and how detached I am from parts of the world and society sitting here in my kitchen on my MacBook.
The thinking behind giving an iPad mini is purely just because we have one lying unused in a drawer. Here's an excerpt from what he actually had to say (rough draft translation by my wife from Dari so the wording is a little off, I.e "mechanical physics" should be mechanical engineering):
Anthropologically speaking their was a lot of free time in ancient agrarian societies. I wouldn't be surprised if their is in fact a fair chunk of time that could be diverted to education if the resources were both available and accessible.
From a study of modern Asian and Pacific "free time" [1]:
"People in Cambodia (note the caveat of age – the sample is of those 5 years and older)
and Pakistan have the largest amounts of free time (Figure 1.4). Cambodians have more
than 16 hours of free time per day (1 000 minutes), whereas in Mongolia, which is the
country where people work the longest, people have only 13 hours (800 minutes) of free
time. Generally speaking, men have slightly more free time than women (Figure 1.5),
reflecting longer total working time for women (Figure 1.1)."[2]
[1]: "Free time" is defined as time not spent working, and can be subdivided as "personal care time" and "leisure time". Furthermore, personal care includes time spent sleeping and accounts for > 3/5 of "free time" usage in most cases.
It's a really interesting article. It leads to the corollary of "How and why do people in poorer countries spend their leisure time differently then those in wealthier ones". My personal opinion is that the differences between both demographics where narrow down over time such as "Both poor and rich spend an average of 2hrs/day on Netflix".
> their was a lot of free time in ancient agrarian societies
Isn't it disappointing that with all the automation and advanced technology we have today, people on average have less free time?
I changed jobs recently, and at my new company, my team consistently works from 9 am to around 7pm. I feel pressured to stay as I don't want to be the only one walking out the door at 5:15pm (and since that'd be frowned upon). My commute is one hour each way, so I'm not free from 8am to 8pm.
I really wish I had more free time for intellectual pursuits and personal projects. :(
An expectation of 10 hour days? Ridiculous. You might be the only one walking out at 5:15 the first few days, but you might get followers, and improve the culture at your workplace in the process. If you're meeting your tasks and deliverables, your hours as a butt in a seat shouldn't matter.
Alternatively, start working from home 2 days a week. Approach your boss with the idea you're more productive without the commute time sucking up 1/4 of your workday
>If you're meeting your tasks and deliverables, your hours as a butt in a seat shouldn't matter.
Alas, there are many companies where that's directly against the culture of 'shared torture'. If you're not killing yourself like everyone else, "you don't believe in the dream and you're only a clock puncher".
Just have a spine and leave at the normal time. What happens, happens. Its insidiously nerdy and meek to be in an office full of people who are all afraid of the "usual time to leave"
Serious question: Why did you take the job? Assuming it wasn't your only choice or you had to get a job ASAP and took the first one (if so, ignore the rest), why?
I've made the same mistake before: Working at a place where everyone works late or at home after work, or even on weekends. Not for me—I make sure to ask during interviews about working hours and expectations.
Not winter_blue but I imagine it sneaks up on people. I think when you enter an office (and sign the offer sheet) you're in a honey moon stage and tend to see only the benefits you are now receiving with a certain position. Then over time you see the worst parts of people creep out and as managers etc. get a better understanding of your thresholds they will push you accordingly.
Well, people in such agrarian societies don't have a good standard of living, at least from most of HN's perspective. I think things like computers would be pretty expensive for them.
Would this study hold for ancient societies thought? There is very, very little we know of pre-historic societies.
Early farmers did not have pesticides, or advanced machinery. They were working with crops only recently domesticated, and with little knowledge of best practises. There was no social order, so bands of thieves may have been more common.
This would suggest that much time would have been spent weeding and protecting crops from pests and thieves, although there can be only speculation on this part. However, I would be cautious of accepting that ancient societies had it as good as the people in the study. Once societies formed it probably got worse, eg. the life of a farmer in ancient Egypt.
Severe sampling bias. News in the West is focused on all the bad things that happen there. That doesn't mean that there can't be a small percentage of the population that has the time and motivation to educate themselves. I've met my share of Syrians, Libyans, and Iraqi graduate students who were educated in and lived through pretty difficult times pre- and post- dictator-overthrow.
