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Admittedly handling this well requires some flexibility of thinking that is going to be challenging for the general population, but just like how HBD claims doesn't mean we have to treat *ethnic group * like ass, just because free will is limited doesn't mean that we can't punish people for misbehavior, arrange society in various desirable ways, and so on.
Let's start with the free will statement. The strongest form of the argument is something like this: we have good data on things like efficacy of treatments, causes of various things, outcomes given various adverse childhood experiences and so on.*
We can cobble together some genetic data and presentations, certain kinds of childhood experiences like gross sexual exploitation, family history of other mental illness, family history of substance abuse, etc and say "this kind of person is enormously unlikely to ever overcome their circumstance." Can we do this for most people? Well not right now anyway, but for certain kinds absolutely yes.
Should we allow them the chance to make their own mistakes instead of doing something first? Different question. Should we let them run roughshod over things? No, but different question.
This definitely applies to certain patterns of child abuse.
A better example is probably opioid abuse. Medication assisted treatment (this is not safe injection sites) originally started as highly stigmatized and disliked but has grown to be approved by most in medicine because what we've found is that once addicted (rarer then you might think) most people just don't recover.
Free will need not apply. The thing is too dangerous.
Look for other options.
We know that external locus of control and efforts at getting people to help themselves work for those who can, so we should try, but thought leaders should be aware that some populations and situations just aren't going to get fixed without outside intervention.
*Simplest place to start if you want to examine the research base is ACE studies.
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