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We invited a man into our home at Christmas and he stayed with us for 45 years

bbc.co.uk

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Re: We invited a man into our home at Christmas and he stayed with us for 45 years

#101

Post by zahlman »

fragmede wrote: post #32
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happy Christmas, folks! > please have some humanity about the homeless In the US, the homeless population exploded , in the 1980s, when they closed down all the mental institutions. Before that, there was a far less pervasive homeless population in urban areas. Being "on the spectrum," myself (but highly functional), I can attest to how easy it is for an autistic person's life to go sideways. Many autistic folks have…

Thankfully LLMs have ingested enough of human writing that one afflicted in such a way can describe the exact set of circumstances and ask the LLM how they made the other people feel, and figure out why they got expelled from the group this time. It never stops happening for us. I'm 42 now and it's happened twice this past year. But at least now I can figure out what it is I did wrong and how to prevent that from hap…

Such a large fraction of human communication is non-verbal (and, unless you're actively studying this sort of thing as a neurodivergent person trying to fit in) unconscious that it's hard for me to imagine this working very well on average. The LLM simply couldn't possibly get enough relevant input. And even emotional reactions purely to words are informed by context that the LLM didn't experience and the user won't know was important, so the LLM can only wildly speculate.

I'd like to encourage you to resist the "what I did wrong" framing, because it's definitely not a given that you did anything wrong in any given circumstance. Sometimes neurotypical people are just completely unreasonable, and sometimes they will try to manipulate you (and each other).

The strange part to me is that neurodivergence is commonly explained in terms of inability to see things from another point of view (see the classical "what will X person say is in the box?" test). But supposedly neurotypical people demonstrate what seems to me like a stunning lack of empathy (or more generally, ability to comprehend other worldviews) all the time. Especially when politics is involved.

Re: We invited a man into our home at Christmas and he stayed with us for 45 years

#102

Post by wnevets »

cogman10 wrote: post #13

Beautiful story but with a sad undertone. A large percentage of the homeless have autism [1]. And that really sucks. If these people don't have support, their lives can turn miserable fast. And unfortunately it's just way too easy for these people to end up in abusive situations. It's a lot of work to care for people with autism (moderate to severe). There is no standard for what they need, their capabilities can be…

>A large percentage are there because society does not care for those with mental disabilities.

This is why it's so frustrating to hear people smugly say we just need to build more houses to solve the homeless crisis.

Re: We invited a man into our home at Christmas and he stayed with us for 45 years

#103

Post by aleph_minus_one »

DougN7 wrote: post #95
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The default instinctual reaction of nearly everyone to someone who lets the mask slip and exhibits spectrum behaviours is somewhat like they would react to seeing a large spider. The knee jerk baked in emotional response is a mix of fear, disgust, and 'other'ing. OP isn't making some claim that neurotypicals are consciously intolerant. I would, however, make the claim that regardless of what actions people consciou…

If the reaction is actually knee jerk/automatic before the upper brain(?)/concious tolerant/empathetic side can take control, is someone a jerk for having that primal response first. I consider myself very tolerant and empathetic and I do my damndest to be that way, but my wife says sometimes it’s not the first thing that shows. I’m trying as hard as I know how. Should I be condemned?

> Should I be condemned?

You shouldn't be condemned, but as I wrote, people should stop the hypocrisy and virtue signalling of pretending to be so insanely tolerant if they have such a primal response.

Re: We invited a man into our home at Christmas and he stayed with us for 45 years

#104

Post by zahlman »

fny wrote: post #73
cogman10 wrote: post #13

Beautiful story but with a sad undertone. A large percentage of the homeless have autism [1]. And that really sucks. If these people don't have support, their lives can turn miserable fast. And unfortunately it's just way too easy for these people to end up in abusive situations. It's a lot of work to care for people with autism (moderate to severe). There is no standard for what they need, their capabilities can be…

In the US, homeless individuals foremost suffer from financial hardship not mental illness. Consider 39% of homeless individuals are in families [0: Page 17] while 40% have a serious mental illness or drug problem.[1] Many develop these problems while homeless. Homelessness in the US has also increased by 47% since 2018. [0: Page 2] I doubt homelessness or drug abuse has increased accordingly. People make the mistake…

> People make the mistake to think otherwise because its not the homelessness you often see.

Indeed. Those homeless people without mental illness likely have more interest in not being seen, and more ability to avoid it.

> Homelessness in the US has also increased by 47% since 2018. [0: Page 2] I doubt homelessness or drug abuse has increased accordingly.

Not sure what the typo is in here. Surely homelessness has indeed increased in accordance with homelessness.

Re: We invited a man into our home at Christmas and he stayed with us for 45 years

#105

Post by toast0 »

phantasmish wrote: post #89
afiori wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A reasonable solution is to get a free "address" from the post office with optionally phone notifications for mail

When we were making a long move and temporarily without a stable address I looked into getting a PO Box and it seemed impossible without a real address. I ended up finding some kinda sketchy-feeling services aimed at people RV living, and not much else. I wasn’t able to find an official solution to the problem of “I need to receive mail but have no address” (there may be one, but in solid 60-90 minutes of searching I…

I'm not sure if you need an address to sign up for a private mailbox at places like UPS Stores.

But a lot of people might receive mail at a friends' address with permission. But, you still need to have a friend or family with a stable address who is willing to help.

Re: We invited a man into our home at Christmas and he stayed with us for 45 years

#106

Post by bbarn »

speleding wrote: post #77
moondowner wrote: post #60

> The homeless centre told them Ronnie needed an address to get a job, Rob said, but "to get an address, you need a job". > "That's the Catch 22 that loads of homeless people are in." Breaking this systemic barrier would make life easier on a lot of people.

Yes, it's not just homeless people with this bootstrapping problem. When I first arrived to the US in the nineties as a student I needed a social security number, for this I needed a P.O. Box (they did not accept the dorm house as address). For the P.O. Box I needed a social security number. Most international students ended up breaking the deadlock by making up a social security number.

I had a similar issue living abroad. My wife had a work visa (which was the reason we we moving) and I was allowed to go being a spouse, but once there getting a permit to work for myself was impossible without a job, and a job was impossible without a work permit.

There were ways around it, but it took finding a job at a really big company to make it work - they had dealt with it and had HR people that specialized in it. Once "on paper", I was pretty free to move around. I would not be surprised if their method was just putting in all zeros in the system or something until the permit number came back.

Re: We invited a man into our home at Christmas and he stayed with us for 45 years

#108

Post by paulryanrogers »

lynx97 wrote: post #78
idiotsecant wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The default instinctual reaction of nearly everyone to someone who lets the mask slip and exhibits spectrum behaviours is somewhat like they would react to seeing a large spider. The knee jerk baked in emotional response is a mix of fear, disgust, and 'other'ing. OP isn't making some claim that neurotypicals are consciously intolerant. I would, however, make the claim that regardless of what actions people consciousl…

> initial reaction is hard to hide and is profoundly impactful to the people who see it a million times I can relate this very much, and I am "just" 100% blind. I believe what we are talking about is not "neurotypicals" vs "non-neurotypicals", it is really the way society treats anyone with a pertceived disability. We are, even though society tries to keep the mask on, outcasts, and we are regularily enough treated l…

> I will never feel like a "normal" person, they will make sure I never will.

Saying "make sure" suggests intent. I would hope the discomfort causing reactions are an unintentional side effect of ignorance. Because if so then there's hope that even the masses can learn to be more considerate and inclusive.

Ultimately, nearly all of us will develop some physical or mental impairment due to accidents or aging.

Re: We invited a man into our home at Christmas and he stayed with us for 45 years

#109

Post by aleph_minus_one »

zahlman wrote: post #101
fragmede wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thankfully LLMs have ingested enough of human writing that one afflicted in such a way can describe the exact set of circumstances and ask the LLM how they made the other people feel, and figure out why they got expelled from the group this time. It never stops happening for us. I'm 42 now and it's happened twice this past year. But at least now I can figure out what it is I did wrong and how to prevent that from hap…

Such a large fraction of human communication is non-verbal (and, unless you're actively studying this sort of thing as a neurodivergent person trying to fit in) unconscious that it's hard for me to imagine this working very well on average. The LLM simply couldn't possibly get enough relevant input. And even emotional reactions purely to words are informed by context that the LLM didn't experience and the user won't…

> But supposedly neurotypical people demonstrate what seems to me like a stunning lack of empathy (or more generally, ability to comprehend other worldviews) all the time. Especially when politics is involved.

Politics is about power fights: whose argument will convince the mass that in this case violence (laws -> state authority) is appropriate or not appropriate.

So even if the other person is able to comprehend other worldviews (which I would claim is actually often, though not always, the case), there exist very strong incentives to ignore these other world views in your actions when politics is involved.

Re: We invited a man into our home at Christmas and he stayed with us for 45 years

#110

Post by vidarh »

marky1991 wrote: post #97
fragmede wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not going to share a personal example, but eg plug "I bought my mom a vacuum cleaner for her birthday. Why did she get mad at me? she keeps complaining about the old one!" into ChatGPT vs find me any human willing to sit down and have that as an actual discussion with me as a human of any age. I'm just supposed to get it? I'm a fucking monster and unworthy of being loved because I need that explained to me? "You shou…

I have no idea why someone would get mad about getting a vacuum cleaner as a gift. It's boring, sure, but if you keep complaining about your old one, it seems pretty thoughtful.

The implication is that it implies vacuuming is that persons responsibility to the point of giving them "their" tools instead of it being a shared purchase for the house.

Not everyone will care, but this is a stereotypical type of present likely to trigger anger and resentment in the recipient for a reason.

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