Your dad is partly right. The main reason though is that we don’t care. Most people don’t care.
That’s the dark truth of it all.
Don’t worry about your kids or yourself. As usual most people won’t think so deeply about the matter and they will come up with some excuse to lie to themselves.
A few people will actually care enough to help. But these people are a tiny minority.
Among the people that don’t care most will be lying to themselves. Out of these people a small portion will be able to face their own intrinsic evil and literally say it like it is: I just don’t give a shit.
It does not follow that because you would ask for money that you should therefore give people money. There's an implicit assumption that most people who ask for money are in the position you imagined yourself to be in that case.
> It does not follow that because you would ask for money that you should therefore give people money.
Of course it does. If there is any logic to ethics is that you should behave towards others how you would like to be treated in their position.
> There's an implicit assumption that most people who ask for money are in the position you imagined yourself to be in that case.
Well, yes. To assume otherwise, or to fall into such deep skepticism that you think you cannot assume anything about how other people pass through the world, is to give up on empathy.
The best way to become homeless is to not ask for help when you need it. Your notion that asking for money from strangers would be a natural response suggests you are unlikely to ever become homeless.
My experience with homeless people - and I admit it's limited - is that they aren't people who didn't ask for help. They're people who have run through all of the help that was available and it either wasn't enough or didn't work.
The sad truth is that I live in the city with the most homeless people and I see the same thing everyday with not just me, but everyone who lives in the city. They walk by homeless people and not care.
Sociopaths are something worse. What I describe is normal people.
No I think this perspective is a product of your own biases. There are plenty of people out there who care and as the article notes, there's lots of charity in the world. But it doesn't solve the problem.
The issue is that people are independent agents, so the effect of whatever we do for them is going to be dwarfed by what they do for themselves. When we examine the roots of poverty and homelessness, we find that in most cases people in those situations keep on making choices that perpetuate their circumstances. This isn't meant to suggest that we should reduce charity efforts or that these people who are suffering "deserve" it, it's just an observation that there is no solution without correcting the actions being taken on the individual level.
Unfortunately trying to solve a condition as broad as homelessness is like trying to cure cancer. Why do people repeatedly take the wrong actions? There are a thousand causes. But if you want some broad groupings, you can start with unresolved trauma and a lack of information/education. So if we want to achieve fundamental improvement we need to work on those. By the time we get to the homeless I think trauma is the most common factor that prevents them from pulling themselves out. Trauma from serving in the Vietnam War for example probably created around 75,000 homeless men.
I come from poverty and escaped it, and in hindsight I'm able to see that my family and the other people around me were making bad choices repeatedly for years. That is why most of them remained in poverty and some of them died an early death. I'm also able to recognize the bad choices I make today which limit my contemporary success, and I'm not always able to change those habits due to my own issues. Everyone is a WIP. Compassion is worthwhile but alone it is insufficient. People must somehow be compelled to change.
> No I think this perspective is a product of your own biases. There are plenty of people out there who care and as the article notes, there's lots of charity in the world. But it doesn't solve the problem.
Plenty of people care most don’t care.
Your perspective is unique. I’m talking from a perspective of someone who looks at poverty like a foreign country. Most people have never experienced it.
I don't give to the homeless because I had a crap upbringing and I cling to my finances. My finances bring me a feeling of security. I don't know if that's selfishness. I wouldn't call it evil though.
What's the point of throwing around labels anyway?
I wonder, what are the limits to that lack of care, and would it persist after some reflection?
Presumably if you were walking past a dying person, you would call an ambulance to save their life. (Perhaps not, given your other answers!) Now what if you knew with high probability that they'd die without a little money for a shelter? Now what if you knew with high probability that they'll have a really rough night - get beaten up, raped, mugged etc... - without a little money for a shelter?
My personal experience is that the vast majority of humans have a strong innate sense of compassion for others. But many of them have it beaten out of them by social and financial pressures.
I have walked by homeless people in sf who I think probably don’t have much longer to live. I have done this. And I’ve watched dozens of people around me do the same thing.
I walked by several people like this for probably about a week. Then those people disappeared. I assume they died because who would spend the money to give them care?
I see. How much of that do you think comes down to being overwhelmed and disillusioned? I'm from the UK but have road-tripped around California. I've seen areas in SF and LA with intense social decay, and I imagine if I lived there for long I might give up trying to help just because it would take so much time and effort. Conversely, if I see someone in London lying on the street in a really bad way I would probably call an ambulance. But that's not happened so far.
It’s more not caring. When exposed to massive amounts of it, it becomes desensitized.
You saw it yourself when you visited these places and like the others who lived there you chose not to do anything about it.
But homeless shelters do exist in the city. So there are people who a genuinely good and who do care. But again people willing to take action on this are in a tiny minority.
> When exposed to massive amounts of it, it becomes desensitized
This is what I was going to say. But looking backwards, I think it's a consequence of large cities vs little towns. If you lived in a little village, it's harder to ignore someone in need. You're going to see them again, you know their name, and almost like your family. This is how societies operated for millennia. But in a metropolis, it's easier to stop caring, expect the government to fix it (lol), and fear your neighbor instead of thinking of your city as "yours" and investing in it.
I think desensitization is part of it. But many others like you who visited these places and saw these things for the first time also chose not to help. You likely didn’t break down and cry from all the tragedy either.
So I think it’s more than that. And clearly if the homelessness exists in the city then we know the government isn’t doing anything about it.
I think you’d be surprised how many people are like me but don’t admit it. I’m just be honest here. Maybe I’m a bit more evil then normal with the reply but I think my original comment is quite commonplace.
I won’t. The original comment I replied to was far more vicious and he edited it massively. He was directly disparaging my attitude. So it did incite a bit of hatred in me.
Yeah it was several lines long and directed to single me out as completely different and evil. It was trying to make me feel alone by saying no one is like me.
Said comment pissed me off. So I replied with a pissed off comment. Then he edited it. So yeah…
How many lives have you saved in your lifetime? With the amount of money most people make with concentrated effort you can pull at least one person out of poverty.
I would say most people haven’t done this. Because what I said is essentially true.
I'm more or less with you. I don't care about homeless people and I was truly upset when the city installed a new light rail connector in my neighborhood which 1) brought plenty new homeless to my area and 2) didn't check for paying customers (no turnstile with manned stations, but if I tried to ride for free, I could face a stiff fine and criminal mark on my record via "random" checks by security), which actively encouraged them to roam around and distribute their crime and waste products throughout town. It's a reason I'm adamantly against public transit and will always choose to use a gas powered vehicle over a train or bus.
I don't want people to starve to death or die of exposure, but it's nothing new throughout history. The infirm deteriorate and eventually die. It's part of the circle of life.
It's tempting to think that "if we all just ____" that the problem would be solved, but that's true for literally every problem mankind faces. If we all just loved our brother, there would be no assault, wars, violence! If we all just imagine a world without borders and religion and money we can all just live in perfect harmony! If we all just took only what we needed , and diligently contributed towards the community, why, we wouldn't even need money any more! Imagine how beautiful life would be if we all just ______!
Yeah there's a fundamental reason that doesn't happen. It's fundamental to human nature and cannot be solved.
There used to be a homeless woman who posted here frequently, and I distinctly remember her being the most aggressive, confrontational, cantankerous poster I'd ever seen. I would never help someone who acts that way.
You're sort of implying that anybody who doesn't do something substantive (as opposed to giving out money) for a given cause doesn't "actually care", which is fallacious. You're maybe just frustrated by the conflict between caring and doing, as anybody would be - it feels hypocritical to care and not do, but it often just comes down to basic cruel practicality and individual-scale attention economy, and trying to articulate this "excuse" out loud sounds bad. One alternative defense mechanism is to say, "Actually, I just don't care. That's the simple truth! I think most people don't care, in fact, and just can't admit it." I don't even necessarily think this is a full-blown lie, because "care" is a very subjective term. You can internally assert that the threshold for "care" is higher than what you feel, but using the simplest intuitive definition, it's impossible for most people to not "care" about human misery to some degree just because we are completely detached from it.
Yeah. I just don't want to do small acts of charity.
I think "evil" is a strong word for it, though. I see bigger evils than apathy in the news every day. And I vote for policies that are supposed to help these people. Some people are actively voting against them.
OTOH I don't call it good when people take care of their friends and family. That's self-interest, that's tit-for-tat. Everyone is kind to people who are kind to them. That does not impress me one bit.
I've been watching Soprano's for the first time and this reminds me of the storyline about Meadow's roommate in season 3 who moved to NY from the midwest and is not adjusting or coping to city life, especially when she melts down seeing the homeless woman when they're out drinking one night. I remember seeing the exact same thing play out with kids when I was in university, and I'll just propose this: People don't care because they cannot care, because if they did they would implode. There is too much out there, we're not in some primate village in the forest where you know every other monkey in the tribe. In a city with millions of sad stories, the only choice is to short circuit that part of the brain.
Agreed. I feel the show you’re referring to was an unrealistic depiction of humanity. Very few people will react like that. I’ve brought many new people to the city many times who’ve never seen homelessness and nobody broke down crying. They left SF thinking it’s more of a shit hole they don’t want to live in then they did crying from all the tragedy around them.
No, I'm not like that. I think myself and millions of others do care and act every day in some small way that adds up to the world not being a dystopian hell-hole.
> Blaming or trying to shame me for "not caring" does nothing to change any of this. There is no "dark truth" here.
Who says I’m blaming you? I’m not. Just telling it like it is. I feel no shame in the fact that I don’t care or most people don’t care.
I think it’s intrinsically evil but I don’t care or feel shame about this.
I think most people are like you. They realize the irrationality of their behavior but they still try to use evidence to build a scaffold of logic to justify it all.
I don’t need to do that. I just don’t care about people in need and I can admit it. I’m evil and most people are too.
> Not even a little. You're just virtue signaling.
Wouldn’t admitting I’m evil be the opposite of virtue signaling?
> What part of my behavior is irrational?
None because you spent a lot of effort rationalizing your behavior. I was more referring to your behavior prior to the rationalization.
I’m the one who is irrational. I live with the contradiction. I like to think of myself as a good moral human being who tips and cares about other people. Yet I don’t care about homeless people and I’m ok with this contradiction.
Maybe I’m rationalizing it away by saying I’m evil. But how does that explain me treating non homeless people nicely with great respect?
> I'm not. Assuming there is even something that could rightly be called evil, I'm not that. You should look into medications for cluster b disorders.
People like me are normal. I think you’re out of touch with how prevalent it is. To advise me to take medication shows this.
You feel a strong need to rationalize your behavior. I don’t. That’s relatively the main difference between us because externally our behavior is identical.
The problem isn’t meaning or intent its inconsistency of operator behavior.
1 + 1 + 1 has different operator behavior then 1 == 1 == 1. The operations here are not consistent and it’s not clear what happens if I overload the operators.
On the surface level python looks more beautiful. But mathematically speaking python is actually more ugly and more inconsistent with weird rules to make things look a certain way.
First, "citation needed", but also for me personally, I'm often totally undecided or otherwise un-committed to one view or another about something, because I sense my knowledge of that thing is minimal, or my only exposure to that thing is via hearsay and anecdotes etc. … so it remains in that unresolved state until I either gain more information or am forced to make a choice with incomplete info. I don't often see this approach from other people, for whatever reason.
The military-industrial complex is a consequence of privatization. Since the defense industry is 100% private, capitalistic corps with 1 customer, they have no reason to innovate or compete on prices. They can, and do, extort the government for as much money as humanly possible.
That wouldn't be possible if those entities were simply nationalized. But since the gov is a customer, and them a producer, and the gov NEEDS the thing, and only the private sector can give the thing, it's a money bath.
Of course it's really full circle, because while the industry is private it's actually funded entirely by taxpayers. Because the customer is the government. So the corps have a strong incentive to be as inefficient and greedy as possible, and you actually pay for that.
Sure. I'm just saying your answer is incorrect. Doesn't matter whether you would or wouldn't of answered. You're completely wrong and you wrote a statement that is utterly false.
We spent an unfortunatley long time blaming fat people for being fat, which lead to an underinvestment in metabolic research. We're in the early stages of breaking this puzzle and it's fascinating. (No. I maintain a healthy weight to a fault, forgetting to eat if I miss exercise and gaining little weight irrespective of diet.)
We’ve known about this problem for a while and communism was the solution to it. But there’s an even bigger problem with communism is the lack of correct incentives.
Turns out capitalism is better than communism purely because it has the right incentives.
In most countries we have hybrid models.
> We need a new economics
Right now many parts of the US are dangerously close to extremist liberalist agendas. It’s as big of an issue (if not bigger) as the neoconservative issue back when bush jr was president.
Wouldn’t be surprised if liberalism took over and communism became the overarching thought process. We already redefined pronouns.
Please keep in mind the standard of discourse expected here. The discussion should definitely not have been able to veer all the way from sugar vs. fat to "pronouns".
(Also, "liberalist" is a terrible term for the "extremist agendas" you appear to have in mind. I refuse to let them coopt the label.)
I think it fits. Basically parent is saying capitalism caused this issue with sugar and he's right. But he's going into a dangerous repetition of history where he sees to "fix" the problem with capitalism.
What he doesn't see is that the "fix" is liberal politics and communism. That's the most extreme end of the fix.
Also as much as you hate it, identity politics is not part of being liberal. I was a liberal back in the early 2000s. Things have changed, a liberal in the early 2000s is now a moderate and the moderates are the majority. But they are also the least active.
>Moving from the conflict between capitalism and democracy to complaining about neo-pronouns is quite a jump.
Democracy does not conflict with capitalism. It's capitalism vs. communism. For democracy it's democracy vs. autocracy. Communism can still be a democracy.
Also I never said anything about neopronouns. What is even a neopronoun?
>It's pretty wild to put the "extremist agendas" of what pronouns people use anywhere near the significance of our economic and governmental systems.
It's associated. I use to be a liberal, but the definition changed and now I'm more moderate. I agree with distribution of wealth but I don't agree with pronouns which are also a liberal thing. These two things nowadays go hand in hand with the term "liberal".
Communism (per Marx) describes a stateless society. A society without a state cannot be a democracy. Communism is antidemocratic per definition.
The reason why communism describes both the economic and the political system of a society is because the two are intertwined.
> Democracy does not conflict with capitalism.
Capitalism offers various means to private entities to steer democratic vote. The two are intertwined just like all other political and economic systems.
> These two things nowadays go hand in hand with the term "liberal".
Perhaps. I don't know what your bubble currently considers to be liberal politics. I still don't see why you consider pronoun usage to be such a significant issue.
I don’t want to single out this back and forth particularly, but it reminds me of so much of the political discourse on HN, just endlessly spinning wheels.
e.g. Why can’t someone hang up portraits of both John D. Rockefeller and Mao Zedong in their room, admire them both, and still get along fine in life, maybe even achieve great successes? Regardless of any specific set of words, definitions, arguments, etc…?
>Communism (per Marx) describes a stateless society. A society without a state cannot be a democracy. Communism is antidemocratic per definition.
False, democracy does not require a state.
>Capitalism offers various means to private entities to steer democratic vote. The two are intertwined just like all other political and economic systems.
No capitalism only means this: an economic system where private individuals or corporations own and control the production and distribution of goods and services.
You can have a capitalism under a dictatorship OR a democracy.
>Perhaps. I don't know what your bubble currently considers to be liberal politics. I still don't see why you consider pronoun usage to be such a significant issue.
Bro. Liberalism nowdays means politically correct pronoun usage. If you don't know this, you're living in a bubble. Just google liberal and pronoun and you get articles like this:
I think this caught the old liberals of the 2000-2010s off guard. In that time liberalism meant something else. Nowadays those people are moderate. But there's a good number of people on HN who are still in that bubble.
You wouldn’t see much difference as a user of those tools. And if you’re writing vanilla JS, you’d have less features creeping in over time. So it seems like you would benefit from this kind of change.
Who cares? If backwards compatability is maintained then this fails to have any impact on my experience as a developer. It sounds like the VM maintainers are busy making their own lives hell. Not my problem.
I do. Maybe if someone programs in one language it's okay for them to keep up with language changes, but if you have to constantly juggle multiple languages it becomes a real chore to stay up to date with every one of them.
I use the language. The existence of new language features has not forced me to adopt them. The standard library for browsers is a different story but it is always going to be.
Thankfully.. both maintain reasonable backwards compatability where security is not otherwise implicated.
Waymo barely works, with 24/7 monitoring by humans in a "fleet response" center[0], in 4 cities in the world. That's only 95% done if you're counting good enough for government work.
The monitoring might be 24/7 but its reaction time is nothing usable in a life-and-death situation. Or I just cannot imagine a human being notified "I think I'm crashing into something" and able to take over and do anything of significance within that second to avoid the crash (except hitting on the brakes which the car could do just as well). So don't read too much into the response team, it has definitely its use but won't save you from plunging into that sinkhole who just appeared.
That’s the dark truth of it all.
Don’t worry about your kids or yourself. As usual most people won’t think so deeply about the matter and they will come up with some excuse to lie to themselves.
A few people will actually care enough to help. But these people are a tiny minority.
Among the people that don’t care most will be lying to themselves. Out of these people a small portion will be able to face their own intrinsic evil and literally say it like it is: I just don’t give a shit.
I’m one of those people. Anyone else like me?
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