An experiment shows how to rebuild human compassion
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Isn't avoiding such unpleasant situations one of the main reasons why people try to make more money, move into nicer neighborhoods, etc.? I'm not sure there is such a big market for "entertainment" that makes you feel bad.
Personally I see such devices as manipulative and a threat to rational thinking (like all dark patterns that prey on our instincts). Thus I'd try to avoid exposure to them.
I wouldn't be surprised if such a machine would become popular, not as way to build your empathy, but as entertainment.
We are weird creatures.
I will leave it to the reader's imagination what sexual practices provide as a reward.
What reward will this machine give the user?
So I'm pretty confident about the ability of humans to build niches out of anything.
In response, the rich and exploitive can even develop special regimens to increase their rapaciousness or reduce shame.
And even for those who are chronically mentally ill and/or drug-addicted, far from all of them outright refuse treatment. For many, either no treatment is available, or the treatments that are available are either ineffective for them, or are so unpalatable for them that they would rather suffer.
So please don't try to excuse those making tens of millions of dollars a year their societal responsibility to care for their fellow man by trying to paint everyone who is destitute as somehow deserving their fate.
I think to analyze this you have to break down what we mean by 'homeless'.
There are people who are temporarily homeless, in that they don't have their name on a lease somewhere. This spans everything from living in their car to couch surfing or staying with relatives, all the way to staying in a battered woman's home or other form of homeless shelter. Homeless advocacy groups love to intentionally misrepresent things and highlight this group, which is a tiny minority of the homeless population living 'on the street', and who mostly have proper shelter, just not a permanent place to live. I'm all for helping these people in every possible way to make it easier for them and help them maintain stability while they figure out a long term living arrangement, especially if children are involved. They may have had some bad luck or more likely have a bad situation they are running away from, but fundamentally they are capable of taking care of themselves and holding a job once they get passed their current difficulties. If you look at the huge homeless encampments all across California you will find approximately 0 people fitting this description in any of them. While people who are temporarily homeless make up most of the overall 'homeless' population, they are mostly living inside some form of shelter since they are stable enough to seek and accept help. Again, these are not the people you see crapping on the sidewalk, although they do need our help and we should provide anything which would help them.
Then there are chronically homeless people, people that live in these large encampments. These are the people we are actually debating. Sleeping on buses at night, panhandling, living on the street long term, and almost universally suffering from severe mental illness or addiction.
It's convenient when someone points at the people who are chronically homeless and causing a lot of problems in cities to defend them by pretending people who are temporarily homeless due to some situation are somehow the same group as the people living in these tents by the side of the freeway, but this just isn't true.
If you look at the statistics, over 80% of people who are chronically homeless have serious long term substance abusers, and over 60% have serious long term mental health problems (close to 100% are suffering from one or the other).
https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/66286/... look around page 48
This is a stereotype, and not at all reflective of the overall cases of homelessness throughout America.
Especially since a lot of unearned income is essentially predicated on keeping downward pressure on wages (wages and profit are often in conflict).
At some point in my country I had so many experiences with homeless using the money I gave them for drugs/booze or rejecting food because it was not money, that yes, I eventually just ignore them. I cannot know their background, but should I actively try to find out? I don’t feel like that’s what I like to do with my life. Am I a bad person because of it, according to the article? If so, well, I am.
In grad school, I didn't have a whole lot of money myself, but a homeless person came up to me and asked for $20. I gave it to him, and—curious what he would do with it—proceeded to follow him at a distance. He walked into a gas station and purchased a six pack of beer.
Today I was waiting in line outside a bakery in San Francisco and there was a kid about 10 years old in front of me. A homeless guy walked up next to him, pulled his pants down and proceeded to scream "asshole" loudly. Everyone in line did their best to pretend the guy wasn't there and he eventually wandered off.
Call me callous and lacking empathy, but dealing with that particular "flavor" of homelessness is probably near the bottom of my todo list on ways that I can help improve the world. I get that there are a lot of homeless people that aren't like that (perhaps some catastrophic event happened to them), and I would like to help those people however I can, but the much more common kind of homelessness that I am exposed to on a daily basis around the Bay Area makes it very difficult for me to feel guilty about not doing more.
Probably well written books, or movies were in similar boats when they were original.
They're mechanisms through which to tell stories in more effective ways. If you're scared of what society has done to these people and unwilling to recognize it and reflect on it I don't know if I can call you a human being. I'd say you're not quite there yet, but keep striving and maybe one day you'll get there.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2015/01/28/opin...
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And a top comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14227337
https://undark.org/article/freelance-writers-nautilus-paymen...