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Comment by Aeolun | Hacker News Reader

> If you want to know how people truly are, become actually poor, filthy, and seem depressed, then you will know their nature.

I guess it’s just that so many poor, dirty people act mentally unhinged and (potentially) dangerous that you start to assume that about all of them.

I find that I try to avoid them right up until they force me to interact with them and I find out they’re one of the (relatively) normal ones. Then I’m perfectly happy to buy them a sandwich (or two, if I’m going to buy you breakfast might as well have a decent one).

I’m not quite sure why it works this way.

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> I’m not quite sure why it works this way.

It works this way because people are, rationally, more interested in their own physical safety than they are in the feelings of strangers.

Anecdote: I was in San Francisco a few years back. There were homeless folks everywhere. Some were nice, even chatty. We felt at ease even when walking through areas that were full of homeless folks. But a couple of days into our trip, a homeless dude accosted a coworker on the sidewalk. He shouted violent threats, shoved my coworker, and told him not to come back. When I asked my coworker what set the guy off, he said that he had absolutely no idea.

That experience changed how I interacted with homeless folks for the remainder of the trip. I made no eye contact. I avoided areas with groups of homeless folks. I did not respond when spoken to. Is that fair to the average homeless person, who is perfectly normal, just down on their luck? To be perfectly honest, I do not care. My physical safety comes before your feelings. Full stop.

"Rationally"? You mentioned you had all sorts of nice experiences with homeless people and then one bad actor caused you to choose out of all of the attributes of this person, their lack of a home, to be the one for you to blanket-label all people like this as dangerous enough to place them outside of your treat-like-a-human-being sphere.

Nah, there is not a rational way to blanket label groups like this from a sample size of 1. That's your trauma talking.

...

All it takes is one to seriously physically hurt you. You wouldn’t leave your doors unlocked while away just because 99% of passerbys won’t check whether it is.

Yeah, it's the trauma. That's the point. The potential cost of a single violent interaction is extremely high. There is relatively no reward for being pleasant to the 99% who just happen to look an awful lot like the one who tried to stab you.

It is the same rationale behind profiling. Which is to say, it is rational, just ineffective and with a number of bad side effects.

You can't deny that in terms of Bayesian probability, the odds are higher for a homeless person to be mentally unhinged than for the average person. Simply because mental illness is often the cause for homelessness.

> Is that fair to the average homeless person, who is perfectly normal, just down on their luck?

This is not an accurate description of the average homeless person.

The point is, that doesn't matter. It only takes one unhinged person to fuck up your day.

It matters quite a bit. The view that "it only takes one unhinged person" tells you to treat homeless people the same way you treat everyone else. The view that homeless people are much more likely to assault you than normal people tells you to be more cautious around them than you are around normal people.

Please don't overlook the people who are not dirty or mentally unhinged.

The guy sat on the same bench you walk past everyday, the guy you see sat in the library everyday, etc. Not every homeless person acts like a homeless person and you see them everywhere once you start looking.

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