There's no substitute for living and working with the homeless in solidarity. If you want to learn real lessons about how they live their lives or about how they got into their situation, get off your chair and go work at a soup kitchen for a day. Trust me, they are just as eager to hear from you and also in need of a good friend.
Slightly related to HN: I liked the book "How to change your life in 7 steps" by John Bird. He is the founder of "The Big Issue", a newspaper the homeless sell in Britain. It is rather short, but talks about the issues of working with homeless people.
One snippet I found interesting is that many would invent fake drama stories about why they ended up being homeless ("my wife and children died"), to cover up their own failure.
There is a substitute, and that substitute is information. If you're claiming that you got new information from your "solidarity," you should be able to use that information to convince other people you're right. If the information you got convinces nobody but you, it's not data -- it's a bias.
This isn't about information. It's about experience. Just like you don't learn hacking by reading a book, you don't learn about homelessness until you put yourself in their shoes. Literally. The sad part is that the marginalized always become a statistic and that's in part why the problem persists.
This isn't about information. It's about experience.
You're taking the side of the guy who knows the CIA is controlling his thoughts, rather than the one who knows what schizophrenia is.
you don't learn about homelessness until you put yourself in their shoes. Literally.
You probably mean "Figuratively." "Literally" does not mean "Emphatically," it means "Literally."
You persist in claiming that you had a transformative experience, which changed your views without giving you any facts you can use to inform others. The usual term for having a belief that doesn't correspond with the facts is "bias." If my experience with homeless people convinced me that they need to be locked up, but the data implied that they were down on their luck and just needed shelter and a caring hand, you wouldn't be telling me that my personal experience trumps the data, just because I strongly believe in it.
Actually I do mean literally. Seriously, go immerse yourself in the culture that surrounds homelessness and actually try to be homeless for a day, or better, a week. Then write about what you learned.
What you'll find is that there is no "data." Yes some homeless people are criminals. Some have mental diseases. Some just couldn't pay their bills.
You can't quantify the problem because these people have no homes,jobs,medical records, or social security numbers. They have nothing. So again, it's not about having a "bias." It's about how you deal with the situation locally and you have to evaluate every homeless situation case by case.
"Literally," means "Not figuratively." So, if you say "I was in his shoes -- literally," you mean "I was not necessarily experiencing things from his perspective, but I was wearing his shoes."
You can't quantify the problem because these people have no homes,jobs,medical records, or social security numbers. They have nothing. So again, it's not about having a "bias.
"You can't have good information, so it's best to just try to make yourself feel good about your opinions, and then treat them as facts. Like, when I used to not own a scale, I decided I'd be happiest thinking I'd lost twenty pounds."
you have to evaluate every homeless situation case by case.
You have not talked about single cases. You have generalized, generalized, generalized. There are two basic ways to generalize: the way I do it (by looking at aggregate numbers that tell you something), or the way you do it (by thinking in terms of stories). Your way is dumb and counterproductive.
I don't feel sympathy for this self-inflicted situation at all. I found the Sims 3 to be way too easy.
They could have easily found a job in the newspaper (can basically just sign up for one), showered daily at the local gym (free), and made friends (requires a small effort) to help with food for a few weeks until they could afford a house.
This reminds me of the Nickel and Dimed vs. Scratch Beginnings debacle.
From the original blog: "[The gaming student] removed all of their remaining money, and then attempted to help them survive without taking any job promotions or easy cash routes." The rules this guy was playing by are not applicable and have absolutely no resemblance to real life.
Indeed. You can play The Sims 3 without ever visiting your Sim's home. There's plenty of free food, and it's not especially difficult to be invited to spend the night at another Sim's home.
And the game has plenty of "entrepreneurial" career paths that don't require a steady job. It would be interesting to see just how many constraints it takes to make the game unwinnable. For this to be a more valid experiment, we'd want people to agree in advance on the constraints -- and for the person controlling the Sim in question not to want them to fail.
I think this is more about creating a narrative than a realistic description of the homeless lifestyle. That being said, I don't see how you can both criticize the game for being too easy and criticize the author for not taking every easy opportunity offered by the game.
I have homeless 'neighbors', and in my very limited experience, they are mostly alcoholics. Some of them may have been pushed into the situation by circumstance, but they don't seem to be too anxious to change. I've spoken with one of them about changes he could make to improve his situation, and even tried to give encouragement and help, but he never seems to take action. It is all very sad.
