Homeless in The Sims 3
oirt.rutgers.edu
oirt.rutgers.edu
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.
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.
This is an old but good News.YC thread on the situation of homelessness:
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.
http://www.amazon.com/CHANGE-YOUR-STEPS-QUICK-READS/dp/00919...
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.
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.