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At St. Paul 'wet house,' liquor can be their life - and death

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Re: At St. Paul 'wet house,' liquor can be their life - and death

#51

Post by vannevar »

ekoontz wrote: post #11
reeses wrote: post #8

Why precisely is this Hacker News material?

Seriously though, I found it interesting and am glad it was on Hacker News. Social engineering is engineering, and engineering is Hacker News. You are minimizing the harm and cost in a society by providing a place where people can safely use alcohol. It's far better and cheaper than leaving them to do it on the streets.

Speaking as an engineer myself, there is more to life than minimizing costs to society. You could argue that the cheapest path for society is to commit mass suicide, reducing our collective social burden to zero. I do think this is a good article for HN precisely because it highlights the fundamental moral question: what exactly is social engineering supposed to optimize?

Re: At St. Paul 'wet house,' liquor can be their life - and death

#52

Post by vannevar »

vannevar wrote: post #50

I find the rationalization that this is a cheaper alternative to be morally abhorrent. Why not make it even cheaper and euthanize them at the door?

Wow, someone downvoted that. Could you elaborate on why you think reducing social cost is a valid argument for promoting suicide? Note that I'm not saying there aren't valid arguments supporting the St Paul's approach, I'm only suggesting that "because it's cheaper" is an incredibly callous and cynical one.

Re: At St. Paul 'wet house,' liquor can be their life - and death

#53

Post by cosgroveb »

joe_the_user wrote: post #18
Groxx wrote: post #7

Interesting. I can see how it would be appealing to long-time alcoholics (the "endless optimism" would get pretty sickening). Not entirely sure what my stance is on it, though - it's essentially long-term non-profit euthanasia. It's what they want, but it's also what they want because they're addicted and it's re-wired their brain so drastically they'll do just about anything to keep feeding it. On the flip side, reh…

Even as something of a liberal, this makes me feel conflicted. It doesn't quite feel like harm reduction - just cost-reduction for the agencies. It's very bleak.

We have treatment programs in place, most of the people in this article had given up on them. Given that this happens, and alcoholics do end up dying alone and cold on the streets... This seems to be the only rational thing to do.

Re: At St. Paul 'wet house,' liquor can be their life - and death

#54

Post by sciurus »

sophacles wrote: post #49
reeses wrote: post #8

Why precisely is this Hacker News material?

I see it like this: I could read this article, about an interesting and unusual approach to a common problem. It seems to cost less than the previous solutions, and help those affected. Or i could read: \* 5 Amazing Vim tips (all of which are covered in your average vim tutorial) \* Why I like $LISP_VARIANT (and you should too!) \* Usability rant suffering from tragic flaw #1 (giving up power for instant understandin…

http://www.metafilter.com already exists; I'm not sure why Hacker News should try to become it.

Re: At St. Paul 'wet house,' liquor can be their life - and death

#55

Post by stjohn »

vannevar wrote: post #52
vannevar wrote: post #50

I find the rationalization that this is a cheaper alternative to be morally abhorrent. Why not make it even cheaper and euthanize them at the door?

Wow, someone downvoted that. Could you elaborate on why you think reducing social cost is a valid argument for promoting suicide? Note that I'm not saying there aren't valid arguments supporting the St Paul's approach, I'm only suggesting that "because it's cheaper" is an incredibly callous and cynical one.

I didn't downvote you, but to answer your question, first, no one is promoting suicide. This system allows people to lead a life you don't consider worthwhile, but they are still living, and the life they are living seems to be objectively better than the one they would be living otherwise. In addition, it's cheaper. So win-win.

If it wasn't cheaper, their would still be an argument to be made in favor of wethouses because it seems to be far more humane than allowing people to rot away on the streets. But then the debate would be whether or not society should have to bear the cost of their poor decisions. In fact, they will have a cost to society no matter what. It just so happens that the best thing for them is also the cheapest thing for society, so there is no possible objection. So the argument goes.

No one is saying, "Do it because it's cheaper." They're saying, "Don't not do it because it's more expensive, because it isn't -- it's cheaper."

Re: At St. Paul 'wet house,' liquor can be their life - and death

#56

Post by geeksam »

reeses wrote: post #8

Why precisely is this Hacker News material?

How is it not HN material? This reminds me of the 2006 Malcolm Gladwell piece about "Million Dollar Murray" that showed up here last summer ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1582582 ). Both stories pose a problem that has a well-known set of "accepted" solutions, and describe a novel and counterintuitive solution for an edge case. Which sounds like one definition of a hack to me.

Granted, the approach described here is more morally ambiguous than Gladwell's piece, because it has the added dimension of allowing people to continue to harm themselves. But I think there are interesting arguments to be made in both cases, and I'm glad to have had this piece brought to my attention.

Re: At St. Paul 'wet house,' liquor can be their life - and death

#57

Post by ars »

patrickgzill wrote: post #47

I wonder how much of the $18K per resident cost is defrayed by taxes on the liquor they are drinking (though Listerine as mentioned in the article as something some drink, would only have sales tax on it). Note that one of the men has a 20-mile bike route for collecting cans - be interesting to know, despite his alcoholism, what kind of physical shape he is in. Surely he burns off some of the bad effects of drinking…

Alcohol is already quite good for the heart and circulatory system.

It the liver that is the problem, and exercise won't help there.

Re: At St. Paul 'wet house,' liquor can be their life - and death

#58

Post by Groxx »

iamelgringo wrote: post #39
Groxx wrote: post #7

Interesting. I can see how it would be appealing to long-time alcoholics (the "endless optimism" would get pretty sickening). Not entirely sure what my stance is on it, though - it's essentially long-term non-profit euthanasia. It's what they want, but it's also what they want because they're addicted and it's re-wired their brain so drastically they'll do just about anything to keep feeding it. On the flip side, reh…

long-term non-profit euthanasia Not really. Euthanising long-term alcoholics would mean taking a syringe full of paralytics, potassium, versed and morphine and pushing as a lethal injection. Hospice is realizing they are dying from their disease and providing for them while the disease runs its course.

If someone is dying from a disease you have cures for (it's simple, but hard: stop drinking), but they're not taking them, so you instead support that disease, how far from euthanasia is that really? It's absolutely hospice care in the approach, but they are literally helping them die more quickly. More happily, but more quickly. And euthanasia has nothing to do with absolute speed, only relative; a less-painful death at the expense of a shorter life. It's a trade-off everyone makes, but at what point does it switch from normal life / hospice care to occurring "too early"?

Re: At St. Paul 'wet house,' liquor can be their life - and death

#59

Post by reeses »

davidw wrote: post #28
verysimple wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I try to be a nice guy, I like to assume the best of most people. Of course the voters are good hackers.

Good hackers like to look at data , and there's none that indicates whether these people upvoting the random off-topic stuff are actually good hackers or something else.

That was precisely my point. If this article had the sort of analysis and data that would be included in the sort of paper published in a social science journal, then it would be appropriate. I think the fact that almost all of the high-ranking posts are anecdotes that do not contribute data, or analogies to similar social problems (needle exchange, etc.) indicate that this post is more of a chit-chat post than anything with rigor.

I consider this article to be noise. Sure, it's interesting to read, but it's contributing to the creation of the sort of volume that will require either a) spending too much time skimming HN to find interesting content, or b) categorization à la Reddit/Slashdot/etc.

Chicken Scheme, the startup incubation in Chile, DSPL: Dataset Publishing Language, and "At St. Paul 'wet house,' liquor can be their life - and death."

Which of these doesn't belong?

p.s., sorry you got hit with the "I disagree with you, so I'm downvoting you" reaction on this one.

Re: At St. Paul 'wet house,' liquor can be their life - and death

#60

Post by reeses »

btmorex wrote: post #16
reeses wrote: post #8

Why precisely is this Hacker News material?

You're one of those people who spends all their time deleting articles on wikipedia, aren't you?

Nope. I'm a descriptivist. However, I do see that you are one of those who prefers an ad hominem attack to one based on the issues, or on facts. Unfortunately, that's all I can respond to with your post, as you haven't addressed any issues.
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