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Show HN: I Built Paul Graham's Intellectual Captcha Idea

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Re: Show HN: I Built Paul Graham's Intellectual Captcha Idea

#31

Post by southerntofu »

littlestymaar wrote: post #22
snissn wrote: post #4

This is weird political propaganda. The first post misrepresented annual costs of housing.

The first one is utterly stupid. Housing is a very complex issue that goes well beyond the sheer cost of the housing unit. Do I think “solving homelessness” is easy with $10B? No. Does the calculation made in the answer makes any sense: absolutely not.

Came here to say this. It takes political will, but money is certainly not the issue. It's just like with healthcare, free healthcare for all costs much less per person than privatized healthcare like they have in the USA. It's just a matter of designing the system properly so the money doesn't get siphoned off by parasite investors.

Re: Show HN: I Built Paul Graham's Intellectual Captcha Idea

#32

Post by zarzavat »

airza wrote: post #9

I opened it, it told me it was impossible to build a house in california for less than 350K, i closed it

Let's assume that the tweet is proposing to spend $10 billion per year to end homelessness in the entire US, since it contrasts it with genocide which is clearly a national objective not a local one.

A quick Google gives on the order of 1 million homeless people in the US. That's $10k per person per year which is the correct order of magnitude for the price of housing someone.

I believe OP missed the "per year" in the tweet that's why they are comparing to house prices rather than the yearly cost of housing, which is obviously much smaller because houses last longer than 1 year.

Re: Show HN: I Built Paul Graham's Intellectual Captcha Idea

#33

Post by Windchaser »

_alternator_ wrote: post #3

Two mild concerns: first, I missed one and it told me I didn’t miss any at the end. Second, some of the logic problems have flawed premises (eg All licensed pilots must pass a medical exam. Jake is a licensed pilot, therefore Jake passed a medical exam.) If you see the flaw in the premise (it assumes no fraud) then the conclusion does not follow. Im not sure you’re going to be able to actually improve human discourse…

> If you see the flaw in the premise (it assumes no fraud) then the conclusion does not follow.

Right. Or he could've been grandfathered in.

But more basically: this is logically valid, but not logically sound. These are two different ways in which something may be "true" or "false", and in this format, it's not completely clear, soundness vs validity. Based on context clues like the absurd premise of pilots -> medical exam, I assumed validity, but it's still a weird format.

Re: Show HN: I Built Paul Graham's Intellectual Captcha Idea

#34

Post by zug_zug »

Well, fun little experiment, at the very least.

I'll also pick apart this question "The mainstream media gave Trump an 8% chance to win the 2016 election. Him winning clearly shows they were biased and wrong."

Well, defined biased. Pollsters weren't using perfectly random models, so there was systemic bias (as there always is when you can't have a truly representative sample). There was also a sense of group-think that "This couldn't possibly happen, this is beneath our country" from a lot of individuals in and out of media.

That said it doesn't prove a deliberate attempt to deceive, but it certainly was a wake-up call to many in the media.

Point here being -- almost all emotional discourse is taking very nuanced situations and trying to cram them into semi-arbitrary judgmental terms like "fair" and "legitimate" and "biased."

Re: Show HN: I Built Paul Graham's Intellectual Captcha Idea

#37

Post by Kwpolska »

littlestymaar wrote: post #22
snissn wrote: post #4

This is weird political propaganda. The first post misrepresented annual costs of housing.

The first one is utterly stupid. Housing is a very complex issue that goes well beyond the sheer cost of the housing unit. Do I think “solving homelessness” is easy with $10B? No. Does the calculation made in the answer makes any sense: absolutely not.

Also, how do you solve homelessness? Giving every homeless person a subsidised house isn't going to work out if that person can't afford it (especially when the subsidies run out), because they're also unemployed, or because they have a drinking problem which means they trash the house or spend all their income on alcohol and can't afford rent. For some people, temporary free housing, rehab, and help with finding employment could be a cheap and effective way to get them back on track and able to afford a place with their own income after a few months.

Re: Show HN: I Built Paul Graham's Intellectual Captcha Idea

#39

Post by littlestymaar »

Kwpolska wrote: post #37
littlestymaar wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first one is utterly stupid. Housing is a very complex issue that goes well beyond the sheer cost of the housing unit. Do I think “solving homelessness” is easy with $10B? No. Does the calculation made in the answer makes any sense: absolutely not.

Also, how do you solve homelessness? Giving every homeless person a subsidised house isn't going to work out if that person can't afford it (especially when the subsidies run out), because they're also unemployed, or because they have a drinking problem which means they trash the house or spend all their income on alcohol and can't afford rent. For some people, temporary free housing, rehab, and help with finding emp…

> Also, how do you solve homelessness?

That's the problem: there are many completely different situations that lead someone to become homeless, and the solutions must be tailored to the specific case you are targeting. (it's a variant of the Anna Karenina principle: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”)

And you also need to take into account the role of homelessness as a coercive force in modern societies: it the treat that keeps worker behave at work, prevent unhappy women from leaving their husband, and make sure tenants pay their rent to their landlord and make sure people repay their mortgage before any other expense. Remove it suddenly and then you'll probably end up needing way more housing than what you planned for previously homeless people. And it would absolutely tank the real estate market.

I'm convinced that all of the above would be a good thing for society, but the shock would be absolutely gigantic. It's not just about investing a few billions of dollar, the cost of the housing per se would be negligible in the earthquake that it would cause.

Re: Show HN: I Built Paul Graham's Intellectual Captcha Idea

#40

Post by nailer »

littlestymaar wrote: post #22
snissn wrote: post #4

This is weird political propaganda. The first post misrepresented annual costs of housing.

The first one is utterly stupid. Housing is a very complex issue that goes well beyond the sheer cost of the housing unit. Do I think “solving homelessness” is easy with $10B? No. Does the calculation made in the answer makes any sense: absolutely not.

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