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Three ways people respond to a problem (other than solving it)

improvesomething.today

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Re: Three ways people respond to a problem (other than solving it)

#161
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So that's a great example of conservatives preferring to punish people instead of actually solving the problem. Minsk people must live in fear of losing their homes, knowing that if they do, they will be disappeared.

Such people always have a choice of taking a job at a state factory and a room at its dorm plus enough salary to stay poor but fed and housed. If they refuse such option and willingly deny social norms, they're detained, sent to a labor camp, and forced to work there without right to leave, basically a prison. The good ol' socialist way of solving a problem.

Implicit in this is the assumption that the person is capable of being a productive worker. An awful lot of the homeless are psychiatric cases.

Re: Three ways people respond to a problem (other than solving it)

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm genuinely curious about even a hypothetical more detailed example of how some group would go about preserving a problem like homelessness, even unintentionally. I can't wrap my mind about how it would actually happen beyond simplistic sayings. I live in Portland, OR where we have a large homeless problem and I continually hear that the groups being given money to help are incentivized to keep homelessness high fo…

> would go about preserving a problem like homelessness My state chose to outlaw homelessness [0] and to make it illegal for cities & counties to offer places to lawfully camp unless the campsites are basically enough to be KOA Campgrounds. Actually solving homelessness is politically unacceptable, therefore it will be criminalized & preserved. Notes: 0 - The crime is "unlawful camping".

That's just pushing the problem around. You aren't doing anything about the actual cause.

Re: Three ways people respond to a problem (other than solving it)

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They might agree that they would be a better person if they returned their shopping cart. But how many would sincerely state "I won't return the cart because I don't care about putting any effort into being a good person"? I'd bet you'd get a litany of complaints about the parking lot, the cart, the store, the weather, anything but their own decisions.

Yeah. What it boils down is "I don't want to put in even a tiny effort or suffer any inconvenience to do a simple chore that helps other people" Which isn't something I think good people say

I think usually they say something like "I'd put it back but I'm late for my next appointment" or "I already buckled my kid in the car and I don't want to leave him," maybe some variation on "well they pay someone to come gather these up so I don't have to."

Re: Three ways people respond to a problem (other than solving it)

#164
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such people always have a choice of taking a job at a state factory and a room at its dorm plus enough salary to stay poor but fed and housed. If they refuse such option and willingly deny social norms, they're detained, sent to a labor camp, and forced to work there without right to leave, basically a prison. The good ol' socialist way of solving a problem.

Implicit in this is the assumption that the person is capable of being a productive worker. An awful lot of the homeless are psychiatric cases.

If after sobering up during detention or camp they're not able to work for mental reasons and a court agrees with medical picture then they're placed into asylum, often permanently. Either way, people are not afraid letting kids play unsupervised, travel to school on public transit and taking shortcuts through a park during a night.

Re: Three ways people respond to a problem (other than solving it)

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any concrete examples of this? I'm having trouble picturing these.

I think GP means "masking" instead of "mashing"? And then: Conservative: "homelessness is a problem! make homelessness illegal and people will get homes because they are homeless by choice!" ("is there any evidence that people are homeless by choice?" *crickets*) Liberal: "defund the police!" ("but who would deter petty crime?" *crickets*)

I think you have made up a strawman here. Nobody actually thinks people just decide one day "I want to be homeless." The conservative position is they are homeless due to their own bad choices, which is absolutely true in a lot of cases. Their error comes from assuming that they can just reverse the situation by not making those bad choices anymore, but in reality it can be a one way door.

If you want dumb conservative positions on homelessness I would suggest "just lock them all up", "just make them get jobs", "just get them out of MY neighborhood."

Re: Three ways people respond to a problem (other than solving it)

#166

This is a gross oversimplification of my experience with conservative vs. liberal friends. But there is enough truth in it to at least be worth the humor. My conservative friends respond to a problem by mashing all its symptoms, and often operate on assumptions they have never tested. And would resist testing. My liberal friends respond to a solution, veering away hard from the solution's costs, without first asking…

Do you have any concrete examples of this? I'm having trouble picturing these.

A couple examples. They are both common viewpoints that came up in low-key conversation. Other cases are similar. Self-described conservatives vs. liberals I know, seem to adopt a different set of highly correlated views.

Self-described conservative friend: Specific views about dealing with cultural differences that require some kind of resolution. The desire for immediate "simple" solutions, without any signs of awareness or respect for the "others" and why solutions were not attempted before.

My view: Patience is necessary for a real solution. Resolving these kinds of differences takes time, and often is best done case by case directly by the people involved in each situation until a common pattern emerges. The people needing accommodations deserve some extra respect, for the lack of it that made them invisible until recently.

Self-described liberal friend: Inability to consider economic closure over environmental costs, so the market maximizes resource/impact efficiencies relative to their actual costs. The dissonance being this would raise prices.

My view: We are destroying the environment, which economically should be viewed as a commonly held asset, not an unowned asset. The result is we are not optimizing its future value. Any (slowly introduced) rational pricing optimizes both costs and efficiencies, and incentivizes improvements for both. The longer we wait, the more damage our economy subsidizes.

These are reasonable intelligent people. I cannot tell you their nuanced views, just their reactions and a common human theme: reluctance to go deeper.

Re: Three ways people respond to a problem (other than solving it)

#167

There’s a fourth: deny

There's a 0th: empathy. They want to hear you say you heard them, hear you say the problem is a problem, and have you say the problem is making things harder.

Fascinating demonstration of denial

Re: Three ways people respond to a problem (other than solving it)

#168
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Implicit in this is the assumption that the person is capable of being a productive worker. An awful lot of the homeless are psychiatric cases.

If after sobering up during detention or camp they're not able to work for mental reasons and a court agrees with medical picture then they're placed into asylum, often permanently. Either way, people are not afraid letting kids play unsupervised, travel to school on public transit and taking shortcuts through a park during a night.

Americans have this assumption that homeless people are violent. American homeless people respond by being violent, as it's required to defend themselves from the psychotic non-homeless people. For some reason, homeless people in other places aren't violent.

Re: Three ways people respond to a problem (other than solving it)

#169
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If after sobering up during detention or camp they're not able to work for mental reasons and a court agrees with medical picture then they're placed into asylum, often permanently. Either way, people are not afraid letting kids play unsupervised, travel to school on public transit and taking shortcuts through a park during a night.

Americans have this assumption that homeless people are violent. American homeless people respond by being violent, as it's required to defend themselves from the psychotic non-homeless people. For some reason, homeless people in other places aren't violent.

I'm not American but if I would not been 190cm tall white man I would not take such risks, my wife doesn't, and it's always sorry to hear. Broken windows as is.

Re: Three ways people respond to a problem (other than solving it)

#170

My favorite is ignoring or downplaying a problem. 95% of apparent 'problems' are best ignored in favor of solving the worthwhile 5%. Sometimes this means 'creating' a new problem by pointing to something unconsidered that's 10x more important.

Yeah, benign neglect is a good response for a wide variety of problems. FWIW, I also call it "the healing power of apathy".
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