131–140 of 300 posts
> 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.
If you look for an evil of the world, it is often written down in the rules and laws.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
IDK about ya'll but the ~25-30% (or whatever) I pay in taxes/SS/medicare isn't going to be a significant enough bump to enable me to eliminate homelessness... Where we can actually take the government out of the equation and actually help people: Zoning. In places without governments like Haiti you can raise a family in a relatively simple structure. It's not ideal but it's how humans have been not-homeless for the e…
Without government interference, someone who is stronger/more brutal than you can kill you and take your property, partner, and anything else they like. It is in the top 10 in the world for homicides. Haiti is a horrifying place to live, for most people. The UN says that 85% of the capital is controlled by gangs, and they are spreading out into the rest of the country.
I cannot understand how people can idealize anarchy. It is as if they read some cool novel and believe that a world without functioning government is going to be something comfortable and safe.
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…
> when they closed down all the mental institutions. Why on earth did we do this? I look back at period pieces - films showcasing the 40s, 50s, etc., and it seems like mental institutions would be a wonderful way to house these folks and keep them fed and warm. I know there were abuses, but we have cameras now. And that's surely better than leaving them on the streets to freeze to death. I can't imagine it would cost…
We balance many difficult and inherently conflicting goals, such as:
1) minimizing treatment, which is expensive and does have bad side effects
2) sufficiently good access to treatment where it’s economical for prevention
3) fear of being wrongly hospitalized (error, political motivation, etc.)
4) sufficient ability to lock other people up for frightening or violent behavior in public
It’s a tough problem, but I think the tradeoffs are managed near optimally, granting that the rights and interests of the mentally ill don’t matter at all to most public officials or voters.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. IME religion facilities this phenomenon. In-group members (esp men) get forgiveness and freedom from consequences (perhaps conditioned on saying magic words). Whilst out-groups get "forgiveness" with extra consequences.
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.
I expect they need it more (very broadly speaking; people have very different disabilities do different degrees), because it's harder to adapt and survive without it, and therefore more traumatizing and destabilizing.
There is plenty of evidence, and it's common sense, that having a stable shelter and all the things I listed above would greatly help anyone. Humans in every culture have sought shelter for all of history - it's absolutely fundamental to humanity (and other animals!). Depriving people of it results in unending trauma - not a state to begin getting your life together, harm from others and the environment, an inability to accumulate assets, and spending all your time trying to survive.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everyone’s situation is different. But typically the reason this offends is because for a stay at home mom a vacuum is a work tool. If the current vacuum is broken then you should just get a new one. It shouldn’t take the place of a Christmas present, which is the opportunity to get her something related to her personal interests rather than her job.
Interesting point of view. But it's common for a man to get a work tool as present (e.g. a drill or a set of wrenches), with the obvious implication that the man will usually be the one who will have to use that tool to fix things around the house - and I have never seen anyone find that offensive. So what makes the vacuum cleaner different?
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…
> In the US, the homeless population exploded, in the 1980s, when they closed down all the mental institutions. ... and for good reason, because it turns out that people with no support network (which most mentally ill people and a lot of prisoners are) are perfect victims for all kinds of abuse - both from other inmates and from "wardens". They didn't end up in an asylum randomly, they ended up in there because thei…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everyone’s situation is different. But typically the reason this offends is because for a stay at home mom a vacuum is a work tool. If the current vacuum is broken then you should just get a new one. It shouldn’t take the place of a Christmas present, which is the opportunity to get her something related to her personal interests rather than her job.
Interesting point of view. But it's common for a man to get a work tool as present (e.g. a drill or a set of wrenches), with the obvious implication that the man will usually be the one who will have to use that tool to fix things around the house - and I have never seen anyone find that offensive. So what makes the vacuum cleaner different?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In the US, the homeless population exploded, in the 1980s, when they closed down all the mental institutions. ... and for good reason, because it turns out that people with no support network (which most mentally ill people and a lot of prisoners are) are perfect victims for all kinds of abuse - both from other inmates and from "wardens". They didn't end up in an asylum randomly, they ended up in there because thei…
No, the reason was to save tax money by making mental healthcare a personal responsibility instead of a social one. There were many justifications (abuse, new drugs, etc), but the reason was cost. Abuse was/is a reason to improve controls over abuse and increase funding to improve conditions. It is not a good reason to abandon inpatient care wholesale. Imagine if we had made the same decision about hospitals or schoo…
Yeah, it was supposed to be replaced with a kinder/gentler system, but that never came. They shut down the support system completely with a "we'll figure out how to fix this later" and that never came.
I think the solution is pretty obvious, TBH. Pay people to take care of their family with disabilities. It's often a full time job to take care of someone with a severe disability. Some states do make allowances to pay out to family caregivers, but it's a convoluted system where you have to be employed by a private care agency which is ultimately reimbursed for the care. There's a pointless private business in the way just adding on admin fees.
But there desperately needs to be something in place for people without that support. Parents die/leave/are incarcerated and we really don't have any sort of system setup to handle that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> “Overall, 76% of female murders and 56% of male murders were perpetrated by someone known to the victim.” > https://bjs.ojp.gov/female-murder-victims-and-victim-offende ... Lets say M is "being murdered" and A is "stranger in the house", "not A" is "person known to the victim in the house". The numbers you're quoting say that P(not A | M) is large, implying that P(A | M) is small. However, to make a decision on whe…
I don't think statistics are relevant at all. Suppose the stranger is wielding a kopesh, an ancient Egyptian sword. What we want to know is not "how many murderers use kopeshes?" (none of them), but "is this guy a murderer?", and that seems in line with what you're saying about statistics. However, the question "how many wielders of kopeshes are murderers?" is also irrelevant, and the answer is still none of them. Si…