Give people money to go and eat a meal with strangers. A sit-down meal at a restaurant where you can talk.
I think this would benefit society immensely:
- New random connection, outside your bubble
- Someone who you can talk to, who might have a different point of view
- Making it real that there are other people than the ones you know
Correct. You did not factor in alcoholics who do not show up for AA meetings. Not all alcoholics are the same.
A solution isn't bad because it's incomplete.
Certainly discussing my anxiety with other people that had the same issue gave me a great perspective.
I am an alcoholic that didn’t go to meetings. Now I do.
So yes I do know both sides.
Kindly find someone else to shit and punch down on, thanks.
I'm glad it worked for you but no where did I shit on AA or going to AA. You and everyone else really got this all wrong.
edit might as well postt he rest of this: I merely pointed out that there are those who DONT GO. My friends sister is dead at 45 from drinking. Went to AA once said it was a joke and never went back, tried therapy didn't keep up. Family friends step daughter died at 37 from organ failure from heavy constant drinking. She never had any desire to seek help as if on a suicide mission. Lord knows those families tried to get them help. (Never mind the locals at the bar I knew who drank themselves to death in their 50's/60's with their pension money.
So excuse me if I pointed out that no, AA isn't or doesn't work for everyone. Many simply don't go for whatever reason.
And I am intimately familiar with mental illness and addiction both personally and surrounded by it via family and friends. So don't think I misunderstand the op, you or your path's to recovery.
Subsidies don't seem so bad. (If done right, they'll have to figure that out.) Even if they don't solve the whole problem immediately.
The brain changes over time, so subsidies or other solutions could still have an impact.
In the past, pre-internet most of these people couldn't live like this, they'd be forced out of their homes from boredom, but with the internet that's just no longer true.
The only way to fix it is to fix peoples self esteem, but these are likely the last people in the world who'd willingly go to something like therapy, I can't imagine subsidies are really going to help.
It seems like more of a matching problem than anything else.
What they need is more money in the bank and perhaps access to counseling services. (That's the best I can come up with, at any rate.)
I was in high school with a basically non-existent budget when I first found this site, I'd trust someone here who says "Yeah, I'm not financially stable" - seems like the average income here is no longer relevant at that point.
There are for sure poor people in the world, but most of them are not reading HN.
When you are in high school or college you are financially secure (baring bad luck - an accident could cause significant brain damage at any time...) since we trust you will finish your education and get a job. We also trust that in high school your family is feeding you, and in college you can get plenty of student loans (too many really, but that is a different subject). You don't have a lot of money to work with, but is not financially insecure, just a known low point in life.
I am trying to get the VMs feature of aidev.codes out (also a bit of a reskin) since hundreds of people signed up for the website builder and tried it but only three people were willing to pay a dollar or more and about one other submitted a bug report. Credit purchases currently disabled because it was mainly used by one guy to test credit cards. Also everyone seemed to want to build complex applications with backend code. So I ran out of money and couldn't really market it and decided to just focus on the ability to generate and host back end code on GPT-4 powered VMs. This is basically working in the dev version, but still some bugs and other things to do, and haven't been able to focus on it the last month (although making progress bit by bit) because I have been busy doing low paying contracts from Upwork and reddit to pay rent (I did not have time for an extended search to pick up a high paying contract and got these within days which I consider an achievement).
So I built a program that automatically writes queries on the fly for an MS ADX database, and optionally will generate arbitrary graphs, based on a user question. And now another system that integrates Slack and document question answering with semantic search (using llamaindex/gpt-index). Both for $1000 or less and within one or two weeks.
I believe that a competitive rate for these tasks would be more like ten times that much, in some markets. But for Upwork and reddit, it's closer to what I billed if you want to be able to pick something up fast. Also I would rather make these my own businesses if I was not desperate for the cash to pay rent/bills.
All it takes to continue being poor is to start being poor and need to pick up work fast. Or just not have a friend to seed your startup. Or maybe my whole problem in life is just making ugly websites by hand instead of using a template.
I actually think I am probably doing it wrong because I see people with less technical skill and integrity focusing on raising money instead of solving problems and having all of their needs easily met.
At the moment I am just sort of praying that the guy from Reddit doesn't turn out to be a crook or something and actually pays me the rest of what he owes. Which I don't really think he is but he really should acknowledge messages faster on Slack.
But it was your decision to not go for as much money as you could.
They didn’t pay you to do so though.
I haven’t found many places like this later in my life, which is too bad. I’m currently on the island of Réunion, which I understand used to have very similar setups, but not many are left. For all I know the one in Oxford doesn’t exist anymore; I last went there almost 2 decades ago.
Amtrak dining cars! You get seated with random people for your dinner reservation. I found it delightful.
I happened to eat at a place like that in Boston last night, except for the part about it being inexpensive. It was TimeOut over near Fenway Park (a baseball stadium). All the tables were just long slabs of wood in the center of an old warehouse while food and drink vendors were all around the outside. Get your food/drink and grab a spot on the long tables.
If some of them do so more because the free coffee is that valuable to them, what's the downside with letting them have the free coffee you wanted to give away anyhow? Imho that would be a good opportunity to get them more support, not a problem with that approach.
They showed up for a sub $1/a cup coffee. I doubt there is much malicious intent.
The "trick" to it, in regards to dating opportunities, is the place has to be quietly accepted as a "safe" hookup spot, as well as have a good setup for people to move around and talk to each other. What I mean by setup, is the design of the place. Like having lots of benches or chairs in a row or parallel to each other, not facing (can make people uncomfortable when approached by strangers) or far across from each other (which can cause yelling as hard for people to hear each other), where people can easily sit next to each other. It also must be accepted or encouraged by the staff, managers, or owners that people there, even though strangers, can approach and talk to each other. Bad behavior is not accepted, but polite talking is.
It's tricky, because women will avoid or condemn a place that gets a bad reputation (which is easy to create on social media), be it deserved or not. The place has to be considered safe, cheap, respectful, welcoming, and fun. The combination of such appears hard to get right, so can be hard to find. Places that are good for such socializing, can also be surprising and unexpected ones. And when people do find them, they tend to be quiet about them, to avoid it getting a bad reputation (which can ruin it).
Many places that seem like they could or should work for socializing or hookups, often are actually bad. Be it the design (separate tables that are far apart) or the environment that's created (talking to strangers discouraged). For instance, if those managing it or owners are overly protective or strict, then people may come just and only for say the coffee. No talking to others, drink up, then leave or be nearly completely absorbed into a computer or smartphone. The environment, which encourages and allows polite socializing, has to be created and maintained.
Minor expansion: The bot handles the calendar coordination, too. Meets are 30 minutes and finish with a screenshot posted to the channel and end of the year there's a collage that's created. I'm fond of the stats.
I didn't realize everyone had opted out until I got matched with the same person several times in a row. Turns out we were the only two people still left in it.
Which is funny because the company did those Myers-Briggs tests and I scored as one of the most introverted people in the company.
Edit: And no, I don't put much stock in that sort of personality test, but the company did it and it was interesting to see the results, especially compared against "This is where most of your coworkers landed and here's you"
I used to go to such 4 random people paired up for a meal, then a different 4 next month. (back before work form home my office had a system to match people like that - even though it was a work sponsored program we almost never talked about work even when there was senior management at the table). Even though I'm the silent type there was always a conversation that I ended up joining in. Sure it was work for me to join the conversation, but it was still worth it.
Often getting men and women alone together, but in a public setting (so the women feel safe), and putting a time limit on it can work better. Give them an hour, and see if there are any sparks. If not, let them go there separate ways, to find others they can talk to. In that way, there is no obvious peer pressure being exerted on who they "should" choose, it's a matter of chemistry between them.
You also appear to condemn romance, which would make matchmaking or seeing if there is any authentic attraction pointless. The group or leader can decide who should date whom based on their own preferences (which can differ from the woman involved), status, looks, fashion, performances, and or dominance (person taking control of the group). Thus back to peer pressure, bullying, and hypergamy.
The problem with "hooking people up" in that way, is the person chosen (approved of) by the group, may not be who the woman really wants or is naturally attracted to. Often, this "forced" kind of coupling goes nowhere (as lacking romance), or leads to just short time dating (as not really each others type). Many women can go along with what they think the group or leader of it wants, and do what is "expected", but can be quietly dissatisfied or prefer something else.
If it's going to be a random group of people, it might as well be a party, club, or other get together. Which would leave the socially awkward (men or women) at the same disadvantage they always have. At least in a big party, they can kind of "hide in plain sight", encounter new people that approach them, or jump to a new random person when they don't like the conversation or vibe.
Allowing just 2 people to meet in public, where both can leave the setting at any time, often results in couplings based on authentic attraction. Of course, nothing is perfect or guaranteed, and such couplings can fail too. However, it's based on what those 2 adult people wanted and decided to do, versus any group pressure or interference.
I agree that sometimes you will get a bad mix, but that won't happen every time.
The idea is every month you have a different group of 4 you meet with for an hour. Small enough that the "wall flowers" cannot hide, often enough that they get pressure to contribute to the conversation. Often enough that the socially awkward will get some practice, but not so often that they get overwhelmed and quit. Low pressure to find someone to marry (include some married people in the groups), but still meeting enough people that there is a chance to find someone in a couple years.
Nothing is perfect, but given South Korea's goals I think it can help. (south Korea has other problems not touched on of course)
But in practice, this could lead to quite a few people getting screwed over in some way shape or form by people with terrible agendas. :(
As a woman, unless I'm meeting other women I'd never feel safe about this. Even so, it would be weird.
Could never be down for this, and I'm only half a recluse.
To have any hope of getting people out of their bedroom you're going to have to remove all data connections. The endorphin release from a browser/app is enough to keep people satisfied being alone, you're going to have to remove that and get them to seek it elsewhere.
Side thought tho, if the allowance was included, in addition to the free meal with a stranger, it could potentially increase birth rates, which would then benefit their economy.
Edit: Just saw it'd be for ages 9-24... thought it was for adults. Hopefully teen pregnancies would be avoided
Given the subject line of this discussion includes the word "South Korea", I suggest you ask Mr Google about mukbang.