Comment by savanaly | Hacker News Reader

Comment by savanaly | Hacker News Reader

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One thing to consider (and I swear I'm not (a) claiming this is necessarily in reality the case or (b) implying that if it were we shouldn't have a "Ryan's Place") is that there is homelessness due to different causes, some of them more amenable to help than others. If someone's homeless because they were dependent on a partner who was abusive and so they left that environment and are basically a functioning member of society who nonetheless isn't on their feet, it's a whole nother story (though arguably not more tragic) than someone who's a drug addict and therefore isn't on their feet.

For one of these two, a roof over their head and hot meals a couple times a day for a period of months is going to be extremely beneficial including in the long run, since they'll reliably be able to support themself thanks to the homeless shelter's infrastructure. For the other hypothetical case, it's still the right and humane thing to do for them, but the "bang for your buck" is lower to put it in crass terms.

If it just works out that women outnumber men in the former group, and the gender discrimination does a huge amount of work in selecting for the most efficient candidates to keep in the shelter, I'm in favor of the discrimination.

That's a great point. The wikipedia article and my best Google fu seems to say that while drug addiction and lack of education is common to both genders, domestic violence and poverty from supporting children are more common causes of homelessness for women and homeless men are more likely to be mentally ill. I see that providing temporary shelter for DV victims is an easier problem than mental illness. Poverty otoh..

Why do you assume that homeless women are homeless because of abuse and not drug addiction, while homeless men are homeless because of drugs or PTSD? These assumptions seem incredibly sexist, especially in light of the fact that the current opioid crisis is affecting women disproportionately.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2016/08/31/opiods-...

That's not really how I interpreted their message. It's more likely that a woman is homeless due to an abusive relationship than it is a man being homeless due to an abusive relationship. That isn't saying women are less likely to be homeless due to drugs. Independent statements.

They certainly aren't independent statements.

Share of homelessness due to an abusive relationship + share of homelessness due to drugs + share of homelessness for all other reasons = 1.

If one of those variables goes higher, one or both of the others must go lower. On the assumption that one of those reasons gets more common "all else equal"... both of the others will go lower.

The OP didn't say that women were homeless due to abuse and not drugs and that men were homeless due to drugs/PTSD.

In fact if you read what they wrote, they didn't specify sex at all. A man can be homeless due to an abusive relationship, they never said they couldn't. Hence independent statements. nsnick was the one assuming something.

You are correct in the zero sum outcome for the //ENTIRE// homeless population; however you are not correct in the sense of a hypothetical subject being homeless.

A singular case subject/family could be homeless for MULTIPLE reasons or None (other than other of course) outlined above.

> You are correct in the zero sum outcome for the //ENTIRE// homeless population; however you are not correct in the sense of a hypothetical subject being homeless.

This is wrong. What's correct as a description of the entire female homeless population is equally correct as a probability assignment for one element of it.

Your second sentence is unrelated to your first, and also applies equally well to the entire population as to an individual sample from it. It is arguing that the sum I describe is in fact more than 1. That is defensible, but it won't make the statements independent; they aren't.

> Share of homelessness due to an abusive relationship + share of homelessness due to drugs + share of homelessness for all other reasons = 1.

No, because someone can be homeless for multiple reasons.

I already acknowledged this in a cousin comment. As long as they can also be homeless for a single reason, the statements are not independent. A population of women who are homeless due to domestic abuse, but not for any other reason, simultaneously drives the share of women-homeless-due-to-domestic-abuse up and the share of women-homeless-for-reasons-other-than-domestic-abuse down.

He explicitly doesn't assume that:

> I swear I'm not (a) claiming this is necessarily in reality the case

What's the point of the comment then?

and yet he goes on to say exactly that.

Hey, I'm not claiming this is actually reality, but did you know that women aren't as good at their jobs as men, and that's why they get paid less?^^

Yeah, I didn't think that putting a little disclaimer at the top was really good enough.

^^ Making a point about doublespeak. I think this statement is total BS.

You're working yourself up the wrong tree... take it easy, it's not that anyone that doesn't exactly follow your very same mental model is a monster. Please

Sounds like a lot of of stereotyping with a cop-out "hey, this is the reason! (but I really don't know)" disclaimer. Got any hard data to back this up?

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