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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)

#81

Post by RugnirViking »

dmitrygr wrote: post #24
have_faith wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone within the system genuinely feel threatened by the idea that something like "crime" can be "solved" to the point that they're avoiding solving too much crime? Same logic for the others.

A LOT of crime can be solved. A huge percentage of perps are multi-repeat perps. Putting them away permanently would solve a lot of crime. "75% to 83% of released prisoners are arrested for a new crime" https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/2018-update-prisone...

Is it really true that in places with longer jail sentences (specifically, tile spent in prison) and/or higher prison populations as a share of general population that there is less crime?

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

#82

Post by srveale »

dmitrygr wrote: post #72
blharr wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Solved" (heavy quotes) because instiutionalizing dozens of millions of people with no improvement is a massive crime in and of itself. That's like those stories of LLMs saying "I fixed the vulnerability in your app" by deleting the project entirely

Wouldn’t you say that the lowered crime rate enjoyed by the innocent as a result is an improvement?

Why not just incarcerate everyone between the age of 15-27, if what we're worried about is crime rate.

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

#83

Post by ChadNauseam »

nostrademons wrote: post #78
MattGrommes wrote: post #38

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…

All you have to do is promote policies that make the problem more palatable but don't actually solve it. Treatments instead of cures. As long as the problem needs treatment, the organizations dedicated to treating it will still be around, but as soon as it is no longer a problem at all, those organizations will cease to exist and everyone working on it needs a new job. For homelessness, it's things like shelters, fre…

> For homelessness, it's things like shelters, free meals, needle exchanges, etc. Make the life of the homeless easier without actually getting them into permanent housing. The actual solution to eliminate homelessness is to build more housing, along with financial arrangements to incentivize ownership and make it possible.

I love the idea of building more housing, but I think a lot of homeless people have an income of literally 0, so wouldn't they be homeless regardless of how cheap housing is?

> For many construction projects (like say CAHSR), it's performing endless studies about how to build the project without actually building it. Some level of design is necessary for successful outcomes, but many agencies go around in circles with proposals and reports and environmental impact studies and voter referendums without actually having anyone actually pick up a shovel and start moving dirt.

Environmental impact studies are required by federal law for projects receiving federal funding. It's not CAHSR's fault that they have to be done. You then have to go through the process of acquiring land along the track, which you probably should do before people start moving dirt (it's going to be pretty embarrassing if your track has a hole in the middle where someone refused to sell their house).

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

#84

Post by tcmart14 »

RugnirViking wrote: post #81
dmitrygr wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A LOT of crime can be solved. A huge percentage of perps are multi-repeat perps. Putting them away permanently would solve a lot of crime. "75% to 83% of released prisoners are arrested for a new crime" https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/2018-update-prisone...

Is it really true that in places with longer jail sentences (specifically, tile spent in prison) and/or higher prison populations as a share of general population that there is less crime?

Just to throw my two cents in. We could look at Singapore which does have harsher sentencing and low crime rates. However, there is a bit of caveat. Singapore has its red light districts where law enforcement sorta turns a blind eye. Its more of a, "so long as you keep your bullshit there, be classy about it and don't let it spill out, we will just conveniently ignore it."

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

#85

Post by fwip »

skipants wrote: post #76
didgetmaster wrote: post #20

People often attribute the government's inability to solve a problem even after throwing billions of dollars at it; as a sign of incompetence. While there is plenty of incompetence within government; I think the 'Preserve the Problem' response is mostly to blame. If we 'solved' crime, homelessness, drug use, poverty, etc.; then budgets would decrease and political power would diminish. Those in charge of solving the…

Am I wrong in thinking this comment is absolutely bonkers? It's basically a conspiracy theory. When I lead teams and thought of how to motivate them to get certain things done, like code quality, I found it best to frame why certain things got done as a mixture of constraints and incentives. ie. What was preventing people from doing a thing and what motivated them to do thing. You're basically arguing that there's no…

Yeah, it's a little bonkers. I've run into it a few times IRL, and I find that it tends to come from the kind of guy mocked in this XKCD: https://xkcd.com/793/ That is, somebody who is basically unfamiliar with the subtleties of the problem, thinks of an "obvious solution" for it, and then assumes that anybody who doesn't do it isn't trying to solve it.

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

#86

Post by tikhonj »

Swizec wrote: post #73
MattGrommes wrote: post #38

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…

> how some group would go about preserving a problem like homelessness, even unintentionally Simplistic version: San Francisco spends roughly $100,000/year on each homeless person. In services, salaries for people working on it, rent for office buildings etc. I am willing to bet many of these people would not be homeless if we just gave them $100,000/year without all the middle bureaucracy layers.

The biggest obstacle to that is the electorate. People (voters!) would go wild. Anything the NGOs do, however shady, won't compare to that.

We had a successful campaign to recall a progressive prosecutor over less.

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

#87

Post by MyHonestOpinon »

Tangurena2 wrote: post #66
MattGrommes wrote: post #38

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".

"KOA stands for Kampgrounds of America, the world's largest system of privately owned and franchised campgrounds"

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

#88

Post by MyHonestOpinon »

treis wrote: post #40
MattGrommes wrote: post #38

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…

You start by fixing the problem of people sleeping on benches and in tents. Then you go to those in cars, then those crashing on a couch, then those living 8 to a house, then families with small places, and so on. What the problem is keeps expanding until the resources allocated to it are spent.

In your example, (it seem to me that) is not that the problems is expanding (getting worst) but it is reaching (helping) more people.

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

#89

Post by oatmeal1 »

grim_io wrote: post #50
didgetmaster wrote: post #20

People often attribute the government's inability to solve a problem even after throwing billions of dollars at it; as a sign of incompetence. While there is plenty of incompetence within government; I think the 'Preserve the Problem' response is mostly to blame. If we 'solved' crime, homelessness, drug use, poverty, etc.; then budgets would decrease and political power would diminish. Those in charge of solving the…

Big Pharma is trying to preserve cancer. Wake up sheeple!

Not quite, but big pharma promotes preventive screening in excess of what is justified. They don't care if false positives create stress and unnecessary, dangerous procedures that eliminate the benefit of screening. They just want to make sure before you die they get a chance to sell their most expensive drugs.

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

#90

Post by llm_nerd »

Good article. I think a lot of people in the software development field should ponder over "No. 0002. Preserving problems", because a lot of rhetoric is basically advancing this position.

Software development traditionally is expensive, slow, adapts poorly, and so on. This worked in our favour as it gave us high paying jobs where we could always blame a framework, Microsoft, whatever, and estimate a week to move a button. These people are the ones who are the loudest at filling the silence with anti-AI propaganda because they desperately want to hold onto that problem.

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