Not as hugely generous as this story, but during his whole college professor career since the 70s, my father always took care that none of his students spent any major holidays alone and away from home, so we always ended up having 2 or 3 of them around for Christmas, the New Year, Easter...
They were from everywhere around the country and the world, and it was so very enriching for me and my siblings. I had a huge postage stamp collection from the ever increasing well wishing mail that arrived.
It's also kind of comforting to think that anywhere in the world you are not that far from someone that remembers you fondly.
That seems to be one of the things that some great professors do. I've heard of that convention from many colleges/universities.
At any university, look for the professors who act like benevolent citizens of the best of university ideals. They don't all do it in the same way, but they're some of the best.
I like to think of the university as a microcosm, and incubator, for how you'd like larger society to be.
That’s nice, I once ended up alone around New Year, a mix of being far away from family, busy with studies and not actively asking people around to join their events due to being shy.
One of my friends that lived nearby spotted me walking alone and invited me over. Another of her friends joined in. It was just the three of us, and it was much, much better than spending it alone.
When I was an exchange student at RIT and had just arrived from France a month before, one of the admin staff invited me and a friend in the same situation for thanksgiving because she didn't want to leave us by ourselves for a major holiday.
I have fond memories of that kindness.
My dad said his grandfather always had a teenager or two at the dinner table who had no where else to go. Not just Christmas but all year. My parents did the same with a friend of mine and one of my sisters friends.
My son has ASD, and non-verbal so far. No matter how I prepare for his future, I still have my fear about his well-being. I can only pray, when I died, hopefully, he can live happily and feel loved :'(
Crazy to see this story on the front page of the BBC and now Hacker News too! Ronnie was an awesome guy, and absolutely a part of Rob and Dianne's family, not a "maid" as another comment suggested.
When you read this story - your heart warms & your eyes gets filled. It is crazy nice feeling. You feel like this world is such a better place. Yet, it hurts - to know there are so many homeless that our system needs corrections.
It also reminds me that systems can’t fix situations like this. The system of “care,” as the story alludes to the autistic person experiencing in their youth, often looks a lot more like warehousing the people on the margins of society, often in unpleasant (and almost always in institutional) conditions. Some kinds of humanity can only ever happen person-to-person, and it’s a great treasure for everyone involved to encounter such an opportunity and choose to take it up.
You see far more horrific cases in the current US system where minors are cared for by members of the general public at their homes. This self selects for both ends of the spectrum people who want to do good and very bad actors.
That’s the core issue so often ignored, we need systems to deal with people at their best and their worst.
"Incentivizing" doesn't really fix it either, as people take avantage of the incentives. You do have to make it possible for the people who do care to be able to, though.
Here in Belgium there's a village that's famous for doing this. Currently there's about 100 people there who are living with another family. https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gezinsverpleging_(Geel) If you translate you can read about it.
Since you're from the "local" area (Belgium), do you happen to know why the numbers have declined over the years? From this article [1] it seemed like it was hugely popular pre-WWII (3,750) with that article quoting 500 in the modern era.
Less acceptable currently, other alternatives? Still seems famous and popular, just not quite as much as it used to be.
My parents once took a struggling man in. I think he stayed with them for about three years, up until the moment I was conceived and my mom started planning for a future for our family and helped him get into a housing project. For all of my life before adulthood this man would show up once in a while on his racing bike for coffee, talk and proceed to stay for dinner. He was kind, funny and a tidbit strange. His life's story had more drama than a soap opera, but you wouldn't know it. After my father died I proceeded to look for him, but never found him. I still search online for him once in a while, fully knowing he probably isn't alive anymore and probably wouldn't use online anyways. There is some story in my head that he probably showed up to my dads doorstep once on his racing bike to find other people living there, but was too shy to ask for details. A trace lost.
I read stories like these and it inspires me to think a bit deeper about things. Recently I told a friend that a good compass in one’s life is to seek out what gives you a lump in your throat, the rest are just words. Merry Christmas friends.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0025sr0 has a bit more information in it, but its in a radio show with a bunch of other bits and pieces. From memory its in the last quarter of the show.
He has a really lovely welsh accent.
The other thing to do is they did this largely because its what they felt was the right thing to do.
It’s a lovely, wholesome, heartwarming story… but it also made me sad that there wasn’t something more reliable than incredibly-unlikely-serendipity to help this man (who as well as autism, had a difficult family background and may have been educationally subnormal [for want of a more 2025 phrase]) and ensure that he was at least safe and happy, and maybe even relatively productive.
A large percentage of the homeless have autism [1]. And that really sucks. If these people don't have support, their lives can turn miserable fast. And unfortunately it's just way too easy for these people to end up in abusive situations.
It's a lot of work to care for people with autism (moderate to severe). There is no standard for what they need, their capabilities can be all over the board. Some of them are capable like ronny in this story and they can hold down jobs. But others need 24/7 caregiving in order to survive. Unfortunately I don't think those with severe autism survive for long when they become homeless.
I hope this story at very least gets people to view the homeless a little differently. They aren't all there because of vices or failure. A large percentage are there because society does not care for those with mental disabilities. It was good on this story to highlight that Ron had problems with gambling. Autism does, in fact, make an individual more prone to various addictions.
My point in writing this, please have some humanity about the homeless. I get that they can be inconvenient. They are people and they aren't necessarily bad people due to their circumstances.
In the US, the homeless population exploded, in the 1980s, when they closed down all the mental institutions. Before that, there was a far less pervasive homeless population in urban areas.
Being "on the spectrum," myself (but highly functional), I can attest to how easy it is for an autistic person's life to go sideways. Many autistic folks have very specialized and advanced skills, which can sometimes be applicable to making a living (like programming, or visual design).
However, we're "different," which often leads to being shunned/traumatized by neurotypicals. I got used to folks eventually walking away from relationships, for no discernible reason. Used to really bother me, until I figured it out. Now, I just take it in stride, and appreciate whatever time I get to spend with folks. If anyone has seen The Accountant (the first one), there's a scene, near the end, where Ben Affleck's character is considering putting the moves on Anna Kendrick's character, but remembers his father, admonishing him that people will always end up being frightened of "the difference," and he sneaks out, instead. That scene almost brought me to tears, I could relate so well.
For some folks, it's much worse. They can be relentlessly bullied, abused, locked up, or shunned, which leaves psychological scars that manifest as antisocial behavior, so they are never given a chance to show what they can do.
Non-neurotypicals can receive bad treatment from neurotypicals. But, it's also a trap to start thinking that neurotypicals are 100% intolerant.
The corollary of not knowing when they're offending people, is that they also don't know when they're receiving tolerance - which is actually a lot; although it's understandable that this is not obvious.
I'm more cynical. I think most people really are intolerant. They have their culture which they perhaps unconsciously equate with being good or morally right and anyone who doesn't follow the complex unwritten rules is shunned or abused. Those rules may be mostly good but nobody questions them all, yet almost everybody either enforces them or tacitly tolerates their friends enforcing them. This is probably necessary because if everyone went around inventing their own standards for behavior, people wouldn't get along very well and the outcome of "most people get along with each other most of the time" is itself valuable - it just comes at the cost of those who can't understand it. I think most people can't comprehend the possibility that somebody who seems reasonably normal and intelligent doesn't understand the rules so they must be acting maliciously and deserve punishment.
The default instinctual reaction of nearly everyone to someone who lets the mask slip and exhibits spectrum behaviours is somewhat like they would react to seeing a large spider. The knee jerk baked in emotional response is a mix of fear, disgust, and 'other'ing. OP isn't making some claim that neurotypicals are consciously intolerant. I would, however, make the claim that regardless of what actions people consciously take, this initial reaction is hard to hide and is profoundly impactful to the people who see it a million times.
> initial reaction is hard to hide and is profoundly impactful to the people who see it a million times
I can relate this very much, and I am "just" 100% blind. I believe what we are talking about is not "neurotypicals" vs "non-neurotypicals", it is really the way society treats anyone with a pertceived disability. We are, even though society tries to keep the mask on, outcasts, and we are regularily enough treated like that we learn on a deep level that we are just not part of the rest of society. Sure, there is a "spectrum" of how good a person with a disability might cope, but at the end of the day, if I throw myself into the masses and have random interactions, I always learn the same lesson: random strangers will keep treating me in a very uncomfortable way. Sure, many people try their best. Some even come across as creepy by trying so hard. But the statistics never changes. I will never feel like a "normal" person, they will make sure I never will.
> I will never feel like a "normal" person, they will make sure I never will.
Saying "make sure" suggests intent. I would hope the discomfort causing reactions are an unintentional side effect of ignorance. Because if so then there's hope that even the masses can learn to be more considerate and inclusive.
Ultimately, nearly all of us will develop some physical or mental impairment due to accidents or aging.
In a society based around ranking others perceived worth and value, having a disability gets conflated with "being a burden". Silently overcoming a disability and adapting to an unsuitable world becomes the "hustle culture" variant of modern-day working life. Praised for being ultra self-sufficient and "paying our way".
It's harrowing how people prefer donating resources over exerting mental effort to bridge simple psychological boundaries in understanding the different needs of others, especially for disabilities (which nobody chooses to have). I often wonder if the root of this is the individual fear it could happen to us. By exercising empathy, we are reminded that ourselves and our families are vulnerable to disability at any time--from birth to life events this second (injury, illness, luck), existence is vulnerability.
Our intrinsic fears combined with societies lacking safety nets and breathing space has created a positive feedback loop for hyper-individualistic living. Our own bubbles. I try to do the opposite, but it's not easy.
> I will never feel like a "normal" person, they will make sure I never will.
I'm going to tangent a bit here but so far in my life, after observing lots of people discussing things related to this, every single person feels this way.
Every person thinks they're atypical. That they're experiencing things other people don't. That they're different in some way to "everyone else".
Exactly what this means is up to the reader, but it sure implies some interesting ideas here.
Hi there - I’m really sorry about your negative experiences. I read the replies to your comment and felt sad that I didn’t read one that recognised how much work you’re putting into what sounds like an indifferent society - and how unfair that is. I also hope I’m not crossing the line of too much/trying too hard. Frankly, it sounds like a shit place to be.
> The default instinctual reaction of nearly everyone to someone who lets the mask slip and exhibits spectrum behaviours is somewhat like they would react to seeing a large spider. The knee jerk baked in emotional response is a mix of fear, disgust, and 'other'ing. OP isn't making some claim that neurotypicals are consciously intolerant. I would, however, make the claim that regardless of what actions people consciously take, this initial reaction is hard to hide and is profoundly impactful to the people who see it a million times.
Then these neurotypicals should stop their hypocrisis of preaching tolerance and considering themselves to be tolerant.
If the reaction is actually knee jerk/automatic before the upper brain(?)/concious tolerant/empathetic side can take control, is someone a jerk for having that primal response first. I consider myself very tolerant and empathetic and I do my damndest to be that way, but my wife says sometimes it’s not the first thing that shows. I’m trying as hard as I know how. Should I be condemned?
I may try my hardest to be a great musician, but I'm not and surely won't be anytime soon. It's accepting your current shortcomings that may lead to improvement, not considering yourself good just because you try hard.
You shouldn't be condemned, but as I wrote, people should stop the hypocrisy and virtue signalling of pretending to be so insanely tolerant if they have such a primal response.
If they didn’t have a negative response, it wouldn’t be tolerance, by definition. Tolerance means engaging with something you have a negative response to.
It's not hypocrisy or virtue signaling if people are choosing to be tolerant.
If someone is standing near the train tracks and sees a train approaching a stalled car, they should be praised for choosing to run over and help even if their initial instinct is to get as far away as possible.
>In the US, the homeless population exploded, in the 1980s, when they closed down all the mental institutions
it was the 1970s, SCOTUS decision in O'Connor v. Donaldson, when the court said that the mentally ill who were not dangerous could not be held in institutions against their will. The 1960s had seen a series of scandals concerning callous treatment of inmates in institutions (for example, see Titticut Follies) and that created the climate for deinstitutionalization.
> people will always end up being frightened of "the difference"
I've also come to accept this about myself, but I had to stumble through a dark tunnel of feeling inadequate and feeling like an inhuman monster.
The typical list of traits that should not be used as a basis for discrimination is on a spectrum of how instinctual or fear-based it is, which I don't think have seen mentioned in training materials on unconscious bias.
People like this really are at the mercy of fate, and the people they come into contact with throughout their lives. Its so unfair. But thankfully this story had a good outcome.
Happy Christmas to you and everyone else here as well :)
> In the US, the homeless population exploded, in the 1980s, when they closed down all the mental institutions.
... and for good reason, because it turns out that people with no support network (which most mentally ill people and a lot of prisoners are) are perfect victims for all kinds of abuse - both from other inmates and from "wardens". They didn't end up in an asylum randomly, they ended up in there because their family didn't want or could not provide care for them.
And it's not just mental "health" institutions or prisons... all forms of "care" breed abuse. The Catholic Church for example is still reeling from constant discoveries of abused children in orphanages. Elder care institutions, particularly severely understaffed, routinely have to deal with inmates being injured by anything from a lack of care (e.g. bed sores) over physical abuse to sexual abuse [1].
And to make it worse... private/family care without independent oversight is just as bad. A lot of homeschooled children are heavily abused, caregiver burnout and its fallout is also a nasty issue, and particularly in men with dementia, they can also be the abusers.
In the end, the root problem is that we as a society haven't yet figured out how to properly deal with the balance between care work, employment work and rest, and we also haven't figured out how to properly reward and audit care work.
No, the reason was to save tax money by making mental healthcare a personal responsibility instead of a social one. There were many justifications (abuse, new drugs, etc), but the reason was cost.
Abuse was/is a reason to improve controls over abuse and increase funding to improve conditions. It is not a good reason to abandon inpatient care wholesale. Imagine if we had made the same decision about hospitals or schools, both of which engaged in routine abuse in the early 20th century.
Yeah, it was supposed to be replaced with a kinder/gentler system, but that never came. They shut down the support system completely with a "we'll figure out how to fix this later" and that never came.
I think the solution is pretty obvious, TBH. Pay people to take care of their family with disabilities. It's often a full time job to take care of someone with a severe disability. Some states do make allowances to pay out to family caregivers, but it's a convoluted system where you have to be employed by a private care agency which is ultimately reimbursed for the care. There's a pointless private business in the way just adding on admin fees.
But there desperately needs to be something in place for people without that support. Parents die/leave/are incarcerated and we really don't have any sort of system setup to handle that.
> I think the solution is pretty obvious, TBH. Pay people to take care of their family with disabilities.
Maybe, but we do also need a way to deal with people whose problems can’t be managed in a family setting.
If a person is prone to violent meltdowns with little provocation, or can’t help but steal from their family to feed an addiction, family caregivers aren’t going to be enough.
> when they closed down all the mental institutions.
Why on earth did we do this?
I look back at period pieces - films showcasing the 40s, 50s, etc., and it seems like mental institutions would be a wonderful way to house these folks and keep them fed and warm.
I know there were abuses, but we have cameras now. And that's surely better than leaving them on the streets to freeze to death.
I can't imagine it would cost that much, and it would clean up the streets of drugs and homelessness. And reduce the tax on emergency services responding to calls.
I feel so bad for what we as a society do to these people. When my city closed down the local homeless shelter in midtown, the people on Reddit - supposedly leftists - cheered. I was so sad. These are the same people that call me fascist all the time for being a fiscal moderate and saying we shouldn't build subway to the suburbs. Being humanitarian would cost 1/10,000th of that.
>I look back at period pieces - films showcasing the 40s, 50s, etc., and it seems like mental institutions would be a wonderful way to house these folks and keep them fed and warm
I'm reading this comment as if you had written:
"The TV show Hogan's Heroes makes being a prisoner of war sound like a jolly good time."
Much has been written about this, but from what little I know, they were abusive, and didn't do the job well. And were abused to keep sane people in.
I've heard that the advent of better drugs was also a factor. Prior to those drugs, there was no alternative other than commitment to mental facilities. The drugs gave the promise of a more manageable life - either by the patient or by their family.
What did we replace them with? Prisons.
About 20 years ago I saw a documentary about the use of prisons as a means to get mental health care. It explored the history that led to mental institutions getting shut down, and how prisons are treating the mentally ill. As crazy as it sounds, the prisons are doing a better job - even the inmates agree. Quite a few inmates said that the biggest problem they had was that they would be released from prison and not get access to the care they were receiving (including medications).
It wasn't trying to paint a rosy picture - they actually said this is, in one sense, an abuse of the prison system and that there needs to be a better way to treat them - but the consensus was "Definitely should not revert to the prior mental institutions!"
If you take the average person who doesn’t have a mental illness and has no relationship with anyone who does, the system we have is pretty well optimized for their needs.
We balance many difficult and inherently conflicting goals, such as:
1) minimizing treatment, which is expensive and does have bad side effects
2) sufficiently good access to treatment where it’s economical for prevention
3) fear of being wrongly hospitalized (error, political motivation, etc.)
4) sufficient ability to lock other people up for frightening or violent behavior in public
It’s a tough problem, but I think the tradeoffs are managed near optimally, granting that the rights and interests of the mentally ill don’t matter at all to most public officials or voters.
Except that those same people then complain about how many homeless people there are.
Reagan's destruction of the mental health system was really awful. The system needed improvement and more accountability, but we need it.
I had an adult step-brother too ill with schizophrenia to be cared for at home (he began making violent threats and stealing things, up to and including my mom's car), but under the current threshold for being compelled to take his medication. My mom (his step-mom; an attorney) spent years trying to find ways to get him help, but he bounced in and out of being homeless and ended up being murdered at about age 60 in a halfway house. Just a stupid, tragic waste of a life and all of the resources mis-allocated.
Sadly, it's just another example of how the US is penny-wise and pound-foolish when it comes to social services.
I also personally know the waste, stupidity, and cruelty of these situations. But I’ve come to the conclusion that the voters know what they want, and preventing these terrible outcomes is not worth the cost to them.
Thankfully LLMs have ingested enough of human writing that one afflicted in such a way can describe the exact set of circumstances and ask the LLM how they made the other people feel, and figure out why they got expelled from the group this time. It never stops happening for us. I'm 42 now and it's happened twice this past year. But at least now I can figure out what it is I did wrong and how to prevent that from happening again.
Such a large fraction of human communication is non-verbal (and, unless you're actively studying this sort of thing as a neurodivergent person trying to fit in) unconscious that it's hard for me to imagine this working very well on average. The LLM simply couldn't possibly get enough relevant input. And even emotional reactions purely to words are informed by context that the LLM didn't experience and the user won't know was important, so the LLM can only wildly speculate.
I'd like to encourage you to resist the "what I did wrong" framing, because it's definitely not a given that you did anything wrong in any given circumstance. Sometimes neurotypical people are just completely unreasonable, and sometimes they will try to manipulate you (and each other).
The strange part to me is that neurodivergence is commonly explained in terms of inability to see things from another point of view (see the classical "what will X person say is in the box?" test). But supposedly neurotypical people demonstrate what seems to me like a stunning lack of empathy (or more generally, ability to comprehend other worldviews) all the time. Especially when politics is involved.
I think the problem is that non-divergent people really cannot comprehend an inability to perceive non-verbal communication. Nonverbal communication is like breathing, or eating - it's something that just works for them; they don't have to think about it. It's scary and weird to them when they meet people that can't do it.
Then there are those of us for whom social situations are a 3-billion-line case/esac statement.
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people just see what, to them, is obnoxious or boorish behavior. So, divergent people must first understand that they are divergent and what that means, and then they must try to put themselves in the shoes of the people they interact with. Is it fair? Life isn't fair - but you either want to fit in and interact reasonably, or you don't.
Somehow, I managed to get married. My wife helped me understand what I was missing - it was like gaining eyesight after never having it or even understanding eyesight was a thing people had.
Yes, many people lack empathy. That is no excuse for you (or me!) to learn and use empathy.
> But supposedly neurotypical people demonstrate what seems to me like a stunning lack of empathy (or more generally, ability to comprehend other worldviews) all the time.
IME religion facilities this phenomenon. In-group members (esp men) get forgiveness and freedom from consequences (perhaps conditioned on saying magic words). Whilst out-groups get "forgiveness" with extra consequences.
Do you mean Christianity? Islam is full of consequences for members - it has a system of laws and punishments. It has forgiveness too but some crimes are unforgiveable even by God. Meanwhile, out-groups are more like enemies that sometimes should be killed if they don't cooperate.
Having some laws for bad behavior doesn’t mean Islam doesn’t let men shirk responsibility. Women are expected to cover themselves because of men being expected to have so little self control.
> But supposedly neurotypical people demonstrate what seems to me like a stunning lack of empathy (or more generally, ability to comprehend other worldviews) all the time. Especially when politics is involved.
Politics is about power fights: whose argument will convince the mass that in this case violence (laws -> state authority) is appropriate or not appropriate.
So even if the other person is able to comprehend other worldviews (which I would claim is actually often, though not always, the case), there exist very strong incentives to ignore these other world views in your actions when politics is involved.
Freakishly weirdly precise memory that doesn't work in other ways can be used to relayed relevant details to ChatGPT. I'll describe the weird face she made when I said that thing or the exact position of her body and the exact level of pressure with which she touched me on the arm and exactly where on my arm, for example.
As far as the framing, it's helped me realize that actually, hey, sometimes it is their fault and they are being unreasonable and I actually didn't do anything wrong, they just don't like me. I mean yeah, that's also a thing.
Asking ChatGPT for that sort of advice seems like a horrific idea. Trying to learn interactions by written means can only lead to some very alien ideas.
Plus your questions will contain your mistakes, and what you take from any answers would reinforce your misunderstandings rather than correct them.
It's hard to suggest better learning means via the HN medium.
I learnt a lot when I carefully gave attention to a friend I deeply trusted, training my intuition based on their interactions, plus they trusted me enough to sometimes attempt to explain their intuitive reactions.
Where are these alien ideas are going to come from? Did aliens come to Earth and their complete works got smuggled into the training data for ChatGPT, and not the collected works of humanity? Every poem that's been digitized, every human psychology textbook, every self-help book?
My sympathies. And it’s sad to see you call it “what it is you did wrong”. Thus, also my apologies, for whenever I am on the wrong side of such interactions.
Not going to share a personal example, but eg plug "I bought my mom a vacuum cleaner for her birthday. Why did she get mad at me? she keeps complaining about the old one!" into ChatGPT vs find me any human willing to sit down and have that as an actual discussion with me as a human of any age. I'm just supposed to get it? I'm a fucking monster and unworthy of being loved because I need that explained to me? "You should just know!"
I have no idea why someone would get mad about getting a vacuum cleaner as a gift. It's boring, sure, but if you keep complaining about your old one, it seems pretty thoughtful.
Everyone’s situation is different. But typically the reason this offends is because for a stay at home mom a vacuum is a work tool. If the current vacuum is broken then you should just get a new one. It shouldn’t take the place of a Christmas present, which is the opportunity to get her something related to her personal interests rather than her job.
Interesting point of view. But it's common for a man to get a work tool as present (e.g. a drill or a set of wrenches), with the obvious implication that the man will usually be the one who will have to use that tool to fix things around the house - and I have never seen anyone find that offensive. So what makes the vacuum cleaner different?
Powerwash simulator is occasionally fun. There's shiny rewards, I don't have to deal with potential bad weather, and there's no random patches that take 20 times to get rid of. If I don't feel like powerwashing simulator, it will wait for me, forever, with no ill consequences or social judgement.
If I never wash my actual driveway, the same is not true. Therefore I will need to wash it at times when it's unpleasant or I don't want to, and it will take longer than powerwashing a driveway in Powerwash simulator.
In this scenario (again, everyone’s situation is different) DIY is more often a hobby for the husband. Repairs are infrequent enough that you could just hire someone as needed, but the husband chooses to do it.
Perhaps more importantly, it’s not his full time job.
The implication is that it implies vacuuming is that persons responsibility to the point of giving them "their" tools instead of it being a shared purchase for the house.
Not everyone will care, but this is a stereotypical type of present likely to trigger anger and resentment in the recipient for a reason.
Without context, the reaction is bizarre. There must be some back story that you omitted; maybe something about the mother previously asking other people in the family to vacuum, and being ignored?
My wife and I, by the way, are giving each other a joint New Year gift of a fancy robot vacuum cleaner: it's the best sort of gift, useful, elegant, and something that one would be reluctant to spend the money on otherwise.
Your mother is a unique person. Only she can explain her actions, if she wants to. Chatgpt or any other person won't be able to. Your mother may be neurodivergent in ways that make it impossible for someone else else to answer for her, or ways that make it hard to answer for herself.
You are worthy of being loved even if people close to you aren't able to express it to you.
> I grew up at a time when a home appliance was an acceptable gift for the woman in charge.
This is also how I grew up (my parents were a little bit more on the conservative side). This together with the fact that I am not deeply knowledgable in the US-American common practices also made it hard for me to understand why the mother was angry about this gift, in particular considering that she did complain about the old one.
I bought a expensive fancy pan for my wife's birthday a few years ago. We both cook, clean and do groceries and chores equally so it never occurred to me that it was inappropriate. We both like cooking. I'm more of a stewpot guy while she's better in general at "pan stuff" and had been complaining about the old pan. She chided me a bit for spending so much on a pan and there was that.
But when I mentioned it over coffee at work most of my female colleagues were aghast. I defended myself saying something like "It's the 21st century, we are way past the point that I can't gift a pan to my wife" and they said "Well that might be at YOUR home!", and I learned a thing.
What would it even hallucinate? You wouldn't be asking it to cite a court case from 2004 that doesn't exist and it wouldn't invent people you didn't tell it about in the first place.
I've been reading about how chatbots have been reinforcing paranoid delusions. If the person asking, was really trying to justify their own approach, and blame others (or that's what the chatbot perceives), the chatbot may go along, instead of saying "What the hell were you thinking?".
I mean, the LLM's words are just generated words, not gospel from the heavens. If you're self-aware enough to be able to extract value from the words, and not go off the deep end with it, which it seem like you are, run it through as many SOTA online models and however many offline models you can fit on your hard drive, and compare all of their advice if you're really that worried about it, but make up a soap opera scenario, like some thing that ends with "and then I slept with her sister" and see just how many of them say "good job getting it in!" and not "you're an asshole", if you need to prove to yourself that, as with everything, you shouldn't believe everything you read on the news.
Interestingly ChatGPT won't let me share a chat link for the same input text due to not passing a moderation filter, but you can plug that same gauche prompt into chat.com for yourself.
Couldn't find the share button in Gemini.
Oh my first reply didn't address your question. Yes, if you're a malignant narcissist that seeks reassurance that it's okay you're a piece of shit, then it can be used that way too. I don't read you as one, however.
In the US, homeless individuals foremost suffer from financial hardship not mental illness. Consider 39% of homeless individuals are in families [0: Page 17] while 40% have a serious mental illness or drug problem.[1] Many develop these problems while homeless.
Homelessness in the US has also increased by 47% since 2018. [0: Page 2] I doubt homelessness or drug abuse has increased accordingly.
People make the mistake to think otherwise because its not the homelessness you often see.
If have lived anywhere with a significant drug-addict (opioid or fentanyl) population through this time period, you’ve seen the increase; if you haven’t, you may be lucky for it.
The article you linked shows 12-13% autism-positive rate over N~100 cases, in the UK - and it doesn't distinguish, in the free abstract at least, between minor/moderate/severe, or comorbidities among that population.
I agree that we should be kind to individuals and that understanding an individual's problems can help with that. That said, this paper does not appear to provide convincing evidence that autism is a major contributor to homelessness.
There’s always someone with the buzzkill. Do you think is really that hard, for those who care, yo find all these sad facts? FFS man, let us celebrate the good a little bit. In this world is really not that hard to find the bad!
Attributing 'smugness' is a way to duck the merits of the issue. People with mental disabilities also need a stable roof over their head, security, privacy, heat, a bathroom, a bed.
I expect they need it more (very broadly speaking; people have very different disabilities do different degrees), because it's harder to adapt and survive without it, and therefore more traumatizing and destabilizing.
There is plenty of evidence, and it's common sense, that having a stable shelter and all the things I listed above would greatly help anyone. Humans in every culture have sought shelter for all of history - it's absolutely fundamental to humanity (and other animals!). Depriving people of it results in unending trauma - not a state to begin getting your life together, harm from others and the environment, an inability to accumulate assets, and spending all your time trying to survive.
> Attributing 'smugness' is a way to duck the merits of the issue. People with mental disabilities also need a stable roof over their head, security, privacy, heat, a bathroom, a bed
But it's only one piece of a very complex problem, it's akin to the magical thinking that is incredibly provision everywhere these days. "Just stop using seed oils and America will be healthy again!"
People who have personally dealt with this know the hard truth that simply providing food and shelter isn't enough to stop a significant portion of people ending up in the streets.
Right, who is disagreeing? Name someone. You've created a strawperson.
The knee-jerk anti-liberal responses (maybe that's not your motive, but it is for many) do enormous damage, by preventing good solutions from being implemented. The same thing happens with climate change, now vaccines, and other things. People are so focused on politics that they sacrifice lives and welfare of lots of people. There are good ideas from conservatives too - cutting off half the ideas is stupidity.
> People who have personally dealt with this know the hard truth that simply providing food and shelter isn't enough to stop a significant portion of people ending up in the streets.
In fact, the evidence and advocacy comes from people who have personally dealth with it, and providing housing does result in housing for a significant portion of people.
People need more than housing and that's where it becomes especially complex.
You better check your privilege re: your oppressive claims about humans needing to live somewhere to avoid trauma. Do you think the Roma have a lot of trauma just because they are nomads?
Nomadic people have homes and possessions; they bring the homes with them. They don't live out in the open with nothing like unhoused people are compelled to do.
There are digital nomads too - they usually have money and live in rented places, but they have shelter.
that's what I was thinking. have tried to help people before, but when they have some mental disabilities is difficult for them to keep their instincts in check, then we have to care of small children in the same space, thus best I can do is help while keeping the distance :(
Glad this story got on HN, it moved the heart and I hope it spreads in the little openings of our lives. Nothings perfect, but day by day, more kindness and care, we can share https://youtu.be/wlpcFnOPH2k?si=C1Wa1cviJMa1zlYm
Agreed. We could all do better. I know it would be very difficult for me to do what these people did. Some of us are perhaps barely neurotypicals and barely holding it together. I worry that having to care for an autistic individual may push me over. I am not using that as an excuse, but genuinely curious if there are others in this position. They want to help, but worry that they are not sane and stable enough to handle the task.
Yes, it's not just homeless people with this bootstrapping problem. When I first arrived to the US in the nineties as a student I needed a social security number, for this I needed a P.O. Box (they did not accept the dorm house as address). For the P.O. Box I needed a social security number. Most international students ended up breaking the deadlock by making up a social security number.
I had a similar issue living abroad. My wife had a work visa (which was the reason we we moving) and I was allowed to go being a spouse, but once there getting a permit to work for myself was impossible without a job, and a job was impossible without a work permit.
There were ways around it, but it took finding a job at a really big company to make it work - they had dealt with it and had HR people that specialized in it. Once "on paper", I was pretty free to move around. I would not be surprised if their method was just putting in all zeros in the system or something until the permit number came back.
Yes. I’d like to think having a mobile phone would be enough but there’s still how work can write you a check and how you can deposit it. Not sure if any bank will go without a fixed address.
Well the only problem here is that general delivery is still not eligible for any of the main things people need an address for, like ID, tax docs, etc. Even if you want to pay for a PO box (which also doesn't satisfy those requirements), you need an address to register for one.
I really wish there would be more work to try to at least add some kind of alternative path here, given America's growing homeless population. Leaving things to the goodwill of family or friends seems to me like a dereliction of duty by the state.
When we were making a long move and temporarily without a stable address I looked into getting a PO Box and it seemed impossible without a real address.
I ended up finding some kinda sketchy-feeling services aimed at people RV living, and not much else. I wasn’t able to find an official solution to the problem of “I need to receive mail but have no address” (there may be one, but in solid 60-90 minutes of searching I didn’t find it, but did find a lot of people complaining about the problem)
I'm not sure if you need an address to sign up for a private mailbox at places like UPS Stores.
But a lot of people might receive mail at a friends' address with permission. But, you still need to have a friend or family with a stable address who is willing to help.
In the past this was pretty lax (I've had a long-term box at a Mail Boxes Etc. that then became a private mail boxes place that then became a UPS Store) and they didn't really care when I first opened it. Now there's a push for KYC also; we got a sheet the other day asking to verify our physical street address, something I never personally got in the years I've been there. Apparently new regulations or something, they said.
Ronnie led a rich life. I feel ashamed that my selfish life feels pale in comparison. It's amazing these people did not worry about the extra expense and inconvenience of taking care of another person, with children of their own to take care of.
Different people are different I guess. Extra expense and inconvenience also wouldn't bother me. Instead I'd be worried that one day this guy is going to kill everyone while we're sleeping. How well do you really know someone? How well do you really know someone that just showed up at your door days before?
Lets say M is "being murdered" and A is "stranger in the house", "not A" is "person known to the victim in the house".
The numbers you're quoting say that P(not A | M) is large, implying that P(A | M) is small.
However, to make a decision on whether to let someone in, I care about P(M | A).
You need to exercise that critical thinking more. You just heard someone say "the murders are known to the victim" and you instantly dropped your common sense.
I don't think statistics are relevant at all. Suppose the stranger is wielding a kopesh, an ancient Egyptian sword. What we want to know is not "how many murderers use kopeshes?" (none of them), but "is this guy a murderer?", and that seems in line with what you're saying about statistics. However, the question "how many wielders of kopeshes are murderers?" is also irrelevant, and the answer is still none of them. Similarly, "how many strangers in your house have been murderers?" is irrelevant, even if the answer is "all of them so far". Perhaps you only ever let one stranger into your house, and once inside she killed somebody with an arquebus, and you said "never again" - but that would be paranoia. Perhaps you look at country-wide statistics for the average stranger (these aren't kept), but you are not personally country-wide, and the specific stranger is not an average. What's more, if you befriend the stranger, what statistic do you want to use then? The thing to do is reason, not count. I think the 76%, 56% statistic (although irrelevant to a decision) is attempting to say a lot of murderers are motivated by interpersonal relationships, you know, and get you to think about what a given person might be up to, or might want, and the extent to which you can even tell, and the value of risking the unknown.
Nothing that you said prevents one from discussing models and making estimates.
All you're saying is you don't like my model (presumably because you'd like more inputs to the estimation?). Ok. You might not like my model, but at my comment on conditional probabilities was correct. The person that I was responding to wasn't that.
The random family member, hoping they're in your will, and you having drank all their wine, has more reason to kill you, if we're going there, than some random stranger, not less. In the ridiculously off chance that's even remotely a real possibility.
Isn’t that kind of a lesson learned though? Hitchhiking is illegal for a reason. We don’t let children run as freely outdoors . A lot of states are rewriting or adding exemptions to statutory limits on pressing charges and suing for certain crimes because they happened during a period of time where people assumed you could trust people more. Being cautious and distrustful of strangers with mental issues is a very productive way of thinking. I get people think it’s a fren because fren shaped but give em a couple bucks , and contact a professional to get them help. It sucks there are so many mentally ill people on the streets. That doesn’t make them any less dangerous and the honest truth is there’s a weird line between personal freedom and mental illness that means it’s their right to be a crazy homeless persons. You can clean em up set them up in apartment but you can’t force them to use their benefit payments to pay the rent, keep their apartment clean, or take their medicine. Help them if you can , but please please also don’t forget that people are dangerous. Use some common sense, the last thing anyone needs is more people in the news getting hurt by people with mental illness . It’s just makes it that much harder to get compassionate care for the rest.
Wait, hitchhiking is illegal (in the US presumably)? (Supplemental question: how do you make hitching illegal?)
In the UK I've met many interesting people both while hitchhiking myself, and while picking up hitchers. It is a practice that seems to have almost entirely disappeared here, not because it's illegal, but I guess because most people now have cars and some "stranger danger" worries.
As for "how": legislature passes a law against it like any other traffic law. Similar to jaywalking or prostitution (soliciting sex on the side of the road).
It's certainly a perspective of many, but many others think it's wrong, that children should run freely (there's a whole movement around that), etc.
> please please also don’t forget that people are dangerous
IME from a life spent in cities has taught me that people - strangers, unhoused people, etc. - are great. Most will be happy to to help, have a pleasant conversation, etc. (Read Jane Jacobs who, iirc, examines it in detail.) Humans are social creatures - we don't live alone, we're made to socialize and live in groups.
You need to be a social creature too and read people a little. Obviously some people aren't in a mood to interact; don't be rude or an idiot (they'll probably ignore you). And there's risk to everything - you can die in an accident but still travel by car; you can catch diseases but you still leave your home.
Really, the exception I think I see at a higher rate is apparently wealthy people. Maybe they aren't accustomed to the need to help each other, but there seems to be a culture of anger toward those who might need some help today. Why don't they just support themselves like I do?
I know there's been kind of a counter movement about allowing kids to run free ... that doesn't mean it's a good idea. My wife and I survived, but our childhood involved a lot of freedom in the outdoors, and physical abuse. She was hospitalized a few times while intermittently homeless growing up. I was never quite that poor and could run faster, so maybe it's a social class thing? Affluent children can run free in their safe neighborhoods? I wouldn't reccomend it for everyone though, because there are predators everywhere.
My life has experience has taught me by and large people are pretty cool too. It's also taught me that the cool ones and the dangerous ones look exactly the same. Bad guys don't have horns, wear masks carrying large dollar sign bags or look like sihloutted trench coats lurking in a alley. So you gotta ask yourself if it's worth the risk.
I volunteer with emergency services and hope to open a clinic with my wife next year focusing on helping foster children with mental illness who tend to age out the system and fall through the cracks. The subject of mentally ill homeless people hits very close to home and I'm 100% on board with getting the homeless whatever care they need. That does not make the concept of untrained randos inviting mentally ill homeless people into their homes any less of a ridicously bad idea.
I'm not downplaying what you and your wife went through, which is outrageous. And generally speaking, it's 100x harder as kids.
> I volunteer with emergency services and hope to open a clinic with my wife next year focusing on helping foster children with mental illness who tend to age out the system and fall through the cracks.
That's fantastic, whatever our debate about the details. Thank you.
> you gotta ask yourself if it's worth the risk.
There's always risk in life, as I said above. The level of risk is the key - the likelihood and the amount of harm - and that's debatable.
For kids, by far the most child abuse (as I'm sure you know) is by family and people the family knows. Staying home may be less safe. I just don't see the risks as worse than car accidents and other dangers.
Also, I don't know that I agree "there are predators everywhere", except as a sort of logical truth - predators aren't limited by geography. There are rabid dogs everywhere too. I doubt predators - which, come to think of it, is undefined and sounds like a bogeyman sort of term - are limited by wealth.
But of course, everyone needs to think and act intelligently. You don't let your kid go down the street where the prostitutes or drug dealers hang out.
> the cool ones and the dangerous ones look exactly the same
That's not my experience, but of course nobody can know for sure - that goes for family and coworkers too. Coincidentally, I ended up in coversations today with three apparently unhoused people today. The idea that these people are dangerous somehow is just not plausible. After the third conversation, I made an inside joke I have with the person next to me 'homeless people are so dangerous!'. We both rolled our eyes.
Sure, but in France we have about 100/150 feminicides per year. You're much more likely to be killed by your (seemingly "sane") partner in a bout of fury over a breakup than by some random autistic guy
One thing that spending time talking to people online has taught me is how often what people say is just mindlessly repeating something they heard somewhere.
It's also fantastic how I find your response more persuasive than mine, while using fewer words. Well done.
That wasn't the point of the answer. The point is "How well do you really know someone?". You really don't. Many people live with partners who end up killing them, although they thought they trusted them.
Besides, "Bayes law" is not on your side on this one, it's well-known that "regular people" are over-represented in homicide, and "autistic people" or even "schizophrenic people" are under-represented and are mostly harmless
> it's well-known that "regular people" are over-represented in homicide, and "autistic people" or even "schizophrenic people" are under-represented and are mostly harmless
Since no one else is going to be cynical I will do it. This is a heartwarming story. However, it seems like that by taking this man in they got a live in maid along with an additional source of income. The fact that he is autistic and along with his disposition also probably made him feel “safe” to the husband around the women and girls in the house.
In England the advice is that the best thing you can do for homeless people is refer them to the correct social services, which has the resources and skills to deal with people who are often mentally damaged or unwell in some way.
The case of Aaron Barley triggered this after a lovely and caring family took in a homeless boy into their own home leading to a terrible situation in which he murdered two of the family.
There's no way I'd let random people into my home - you absolutely do not know what might happen, what their history is, their mental state, their criminal background. Be kind in other ways.
> Rob studied the man's face and vaguely remembered him as Ronnie Lockwood, someone he would occasionally see at Sunday School as a boy and who he was told to be kind to as he was a "bit different".
> Ronnie was then almost 30 and had been without a home from the age of 15, living in and around Cardiff and moving from job to job - Rob would sometimes see him at a youth club he ran.
> The pair planned to let him stay until the day after Christmas, but when the day came, they couldn't bring themselves to cast Ronnie out and sought advice from the authorities.
You aren't entirely wrong, but this wasn't a random person and they did contact a homeless centre for advice.
Given that Ronnie had apparently already gone through some sort of system to end up at a "school for subnormal boys", it seems pretty clear that Ronnie lived a much better life through this family's actions and generosity.
The institutional advice would struggle to directly recommend any other action as it can only be seen to create an unconstrained liability - if not legal, then social. That does not mean they wouldn't be amenable to a system of placing people who were vetted and managed if they were sufficiently convinced it would resolve the issue (at institutional scale).
Its worth noting that the homeless person in this situation was in fact known to those who provided the home - and not as casually as the first para suggests.
I think the more earnest approach would be to understand the risk first. Blanket avoiding something because the chance for a bad outcome is not 0 is fairly lame.
And Michele and Rob Reiner were murdered by their own son and my uncle while going shopping.
You don't have to do anything, but this kind of comment puts a huge stigma on homeless people and others.
Since it is Christmas and we are talking about welcoming strangers in your house, I think we need to remember the story of the author of the most popular Christmas Carrol ("Carrol of the bells") - Ukrainian composer Mykola Leontovych.
His family was hosting a stranger in their house for the night in 1921. Stranger said he has nowhere to go, so they allowed him to stay in the room with Leontovych himself.
The stranger ended up being a Russia undercover checkist who killed Leontovych and robbed his family. [0]
What is your intent in sharing this? Why do we need to remember this story? Do you - and others who are talking about how strangers might murder you and your family - really think that people don't consider that risk or something?
Not as hugely generous as this story, but during his whole college professor career since the 70s, my father always took care that none of his students spent any major holidays alone and away from home, so we always ended up having 2 or 3 of them around for Christmas, the New Year, Easter... They were from everywhere around the country and the world, and it was so very enriching for me and my siblings. I had a huge postage stamp collection from the ever increasing well wishing mail that arrived. It's also kind of comforting to think that anywhere in the world you are not that far from someone that remembers you fondly.
That seems to be one of the things that some great professors do. I've heard of that convention from many colleges/universities.
At any university, look for the professors who act like benevolent citizens of the best of university ideals. They don't all do it in the same way, but they're some of the best.
I like to think of the university as a microcosm, and incubator, for how you'd like larger society to be.
That’s nice, I once ended up alone around New Year, a mix of being far away from family, busy with studies and not actively asking people around to join their events due to being shy.
One of my friends that lived nearby spotted me walking alone and invited me over. Another of her friends joined in. It was just the three of us, and it was much, much better than spending it alone.
When I was an exchange student at RIT and had just arrived from France a month before, one of the admin staff invited me and a friend in the same situation for thanksgiving because she didn't want to leave us by ourselves for a major holiday. I have fond memories of that kindness.
Huh, I wish to some time be in the position to do this.
My dad said his grandfather always had a teenager or two at the dinner table who had no where else to go. Not just Christmas but all year. My parents did the same with a friend of mine and one of my sisters friends.
It's great to hear there are amazing people like your father. We need more of these people in this world.
My son has ASD, and non-verbal so far. No matter how I prepare for his future, I still have my fear about his well-being. I can only pray, when I died, hopefully, he can live happily and feel loved :'(
Crazy to see this story on the front page of the BBC and now Hacker News too! Ronnie was an awesome guy, and absolutely a part of Rob and Dianne's family, not a "maid" as another comment suggested.
More like a brother/uncle helping out around the home than any kind of maid.
When you read this story - your heart warms & your eyes gets filled. It is crazy nice feeling. You feel like this world is such a better place. Yet, it hurts - to know there are so many homeless that our system needs corrections.
It also reminds me that systems can’t fix situations like this. The system of “care,” as the story alludes to the autistic person experiencing in their youth, often looks a lot more like warehousing the people on the margins of society, often in unpleasant (and almost always in institutional) conditions. Some kinds of humanity can only ever happen person-to-person, and it’s a great treasure for everyone involved to encounter such an opportunity and choose to take it up.
That’s an easy cop-out and disagree as an European with stronger social nets. But yes this is still a heart warming story.
This story takes places in Europe, so it sounds like those social safety nets aren’t really doing shit here, as OP implied.
I think that the _current_ systems are incapable of care, but that doesn’t mean systems can’t be in general.
I often think that they’re held back in large part by people who say “we can’t” rather than building a solution
It’s extremely easy to say that things could and should be better, but it’s about as useful as saying that things “can’t” be done.
The problem isn’t that nobody wants things to get better, it’s that we disagree on how to get there. This has literally always been the case.
Of course things could be better. Life could be perfect. Lacking this solution you’re hand-waving, it’s useless drivel.
You see far more horrific cases in the current US system where minors are cared for by members of the general public at their homes. This self selects for both ends of the spectrum people who want to do good and very bad actors.
That’s the core issue so often ignored, we need systems to deal with people at their best and their worst.
"Incentivizing" doesn't really fix it either, as people take avantage of the incentives. You do have to make it possible for the people who do care to be able to, though.
Yep, we are part of the system.
Here in Belgium there's a village that's famous for doing this. Currently there's about 100 people there who are living with another family. https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gezinsverpleging_(Geel) If you translate you can read about it.
Since you're from the "local" area (Belgium), do you happen to know why the numbers have declined over the years? From this article [1] it seemed like it was hugely popular pre-WWII (3,750) with that article quoting 500 in the modern era.
Less acceptable currently, other alternatives? Still seems famous and popular, just not quite as much as it used to be.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geel#A_model_of_psychiatric_ca...
Thank you for sharing this.
This is pretty cool!
My parents once took a struggling man in. I think he stayed with them for about three years, up until the moment I was conceived and my mom started planning for a future for our family and helped him get into a housing project. For all of my life before adulthood this man would show up once in a while on his racing bike for coffee, talk and proceed to stay for dinner. He was kind, funny and a tidbit strange. His life's story had more drama than a soap opera, but you wouldn't know it. After my father died I proceeded to look for him, but never found him. I still search online for him once in a while, fully knowing he probably isn't alive anymore and probably wouldn't use online anyways. There is some story in my head that he probably showed up to my dads doorstep once on his racing bike to find other people living there, but was too shy to ask for details. A trace lost.
You could always ask the police to see if they anything about. Or Hire a detective if you want closure.
I read stories like these and it inspires me to think a bit deeper about things. Recently I told a friend that a good compass in one’s life is to seek out what gives you a lump in your throat, the rest are just words. Merry Christmas friends.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0025sr0 has a bit more information in it, but its in a radio show with a bunch of other bits and pieces. From memory its in the last quarter of the show.
He has a really lovely welsh accent.
The other thing to do is they did this largely because its what they felt was the right thing to do.
It’s a lovely, wholesome, heartwarming story… but it also made me sad that there wasn’t something more reliable than incredibly-unlikely-serendipity to help this man (who as well as autism, had a difficult family background and may have been educationally subnormal [for want of a more 2025 phrase]) and ensure that he was at least safe and happy, and maybe even relatively productive.
Beautiful story but with a sad undertone.
A large percentage of the homeless have autism [1]. And that really sucks. If these people don't have support, their lives can turn miserable fast. And unfortunately it's just way too easy for these people to end up in abusive situations.
It's a lot of work to care for people with autism (moderate to severe). There is no standard for what they need, their capabilities can be all over the board. Some of them are capable like ronny in this story and they can hold down jobs. But others need 24/7 caregiving in order to survive. Unfortunately I don't think those with severe autism survive for long when they become homeless.
I hope this story at very least gets people to view the homeless a little differently. They aren't all there because of vices or failure. A large percentage are there because society does not care for those with mental disabilities. It was good on this story to highlight that Ron had problems with gambling. Autism does, in fact, make an individual more prone to various addictions.
My point in writing this, please have some humanity about the homeless. I get that they can be inconvenient. They are people and they aren't necessarily bad people due to their circumstances.
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29633853/
Happy Christmas, folks!
> please have some humanity about the homeless
In the US, the homeless population exploded, in the 1980s, when they closed down all the mental institutions. Before that, there was a far less pervasive homeless population in urban areas.
Being "on the spectrum," myself (but highly functional), I can attest to how easy it is for an autistic person's life to go sideways. Many autistic folks have very specialized and advanced skills, which can sometimes be applicable to making a living (like programming, or visual design).
However, we're "different," which often leads to being shunned/traumatized by neurotypicals. I got used to folks eventually walking away from relationships, for no discernible reason. Used to really bother me, until I figured it out. Now, I just take it in stride, and appreciate whatever time I get to spend with folks. If anyone has seen The Accountant (the first one), there's a scene, near the end, where Ben Affleck's character is considering putting the moves on Anna Kendrick's character, but remembers his father, admonishing him that people will always end up being frightened of "the difference," and he sneaks out, instead. That scene almost brought me to tears, I could relate so well.
For some folks, it's much worse. They can be relentlessly bullied, abused, locked up, or shunned, which leaves psychological scars that manifest as antisocial behavior, so they are never given a chance to show what they can do.
Non-neurotypicals can receive bad treatment from neurotypicals. But, it's also a trap to start thinking that neurotypicals are 100% intolerant. The corollary of not knowing when they're offending people, is that they also don't know when they're receiving tolerance - which is actually a lot; although it's understandable that this is not obvious.
> The corollary of not knowing when [neurotypicals are] offending people, is that they also don't know when they're receiving tolerance
This assertion seemed to go unrecognized in the other replies; I really think it earns a moment of reflection.
> But, it's also a trap to start thinking that neurotypicals are 100% intolerant.
I didn’t get that at all from what they said tbh
Yeah not trying to imply the GP did. Just offering another perspective.
I'm more cynical. I think most people really are intolerant. They have their culture which they perhaps unconsciously equate with being good or morally right and anyone who doesn't follow the complex unwritten rules is shunned or abused. Those rules may be mostly good but nobody questions them all, yet almost everybody either enforces them or tacitly tolerates their friends enforcing them. This is probably necessary because if everyone went around inventing their own standards for behavior, people wouldn't get along very well and the outcome of "most people get along with each other most of the time" is itself valuable - it just comes at the cost of those who can't understand it. I think most people can't comprehend the possibility that somebody who seems reasonably normal and intelligent doesn't understand the rules so they must be acting maliciously and deserve punishment.
The default instinctual reaction of nearly everyone to someone who lets the mask slip and exhibits spectrum behaviours is somewhat like they would react to seeing a large spider. The knee jerk baked in emotional response is a mix of fear, disgust, and 'other'ing. OP isn't making some claim that neurotypicals are consciously intolerant. I would, however, make the claim that regardless of what actions people consciously take, this initial reaction is hard to hide and is profoundly impactful to the people who see it a million times.
> initial reaction is hard to hide and is profoundly impactful to the people who see it a million times
I can relate this very much, and I am "just" 100% blind. I believe what we are talking about is not "neurotypicals" vs "non-neurotypicals", it is really the way society treats anyone with a pertceived disability. We are, even though society tries to keep the mask on, outcasts, and we are regularily enough treated like that we learn on a deep level that we are just not part of the rest of society. Sure, there is a "spectrum" of how good a person with a disability might cope, but at the end of the day, if I throw myself into the masses and have random interactions, I always learn the same lesson: random strangers will keep treating me in a very uncomfortable way. Sure, many people try their best. Some even come across as creepy by trying so hard. But the statistics never changes. I will never feel like a "normal" person, they will make sure I never will.
> I will never feel like a "normal" person, they will make sure I never will.
Saying "make sure" suggests intent. I would hope the discomfort causing reactions are an unintentional side effect of ignorance. Because if so then there's hope that even the masses can learn to be more considerate and inclusive.
Ultimately, nearly all of us will develop some physical or mental impairment due to accidents or aging.
In a society based around ranking others perceived worth and value, having a disability gets conflated with "being a burden". Silently overcoming a disability and adapting to an unsuitable world becomes the "hustle culture" variant of modern-day working life. Praised for being ultra self-sufficient and "paying our way".
It's harrowing how people prefer donating resources over exerting mental effort to bridge simple psychological boundaries in understanding the different needs of others, especially for disabilities (which nobody chooses to have). I often wonder if the root of this is the individual fear it could happen to us. By exercising empathy, we are reminded that ourselves and our families are vulnerable to disability at any time--from birth to life events this second (injury, illness, luck), existence is vulnerability.
Our intrinsic fears combined with societies lacking safety nets and breathing space has created a positive feedback loop for hyper-individualistic living. Our own bubbles. I try to do the opposite, but it's not easy.
> I will never feel like a "normal" person, they will make sure I never will.
I'm going to tangent a bit here but so far in my life, after observing lots of people discussing things related to this, every single person feels this way.
Every person thinks they're atypical. That they're experiencing things other people don't. That they're different in some way to "everyone else".
Exactly what this means is up to the reader, but it sure implies some interesting ideas here.
Hi there - I’m really sorry about your negative experiences. I read the replies to your comment and felt sad that I didn’t read one that recognised how much work you’re putting into what sounds like an indifferent society - and how unfair that is. I also hope I’m not crossing the line of too much/trying too hard. Frankly, it sounds like a shit place to be.
> The default instinctual reaction of nearly everyone to someone who lets the mask slip and exhibits spectrum behaviours is somewhat like they would react to seeing a large spider. The knee jerk baked in emotional response is a mix of fear, disgust, and 'other'ing. OP isn't making some claim that neurotypicals are consciously intolerant. I would, however, make the claim that regardless of what actions people consciously take, this initial reaction is hard to hide and is profoundly impactful to the people who see it a million times.
Then these neurotypicals should stop their hypocrisis of preaching tolerance and considering themselves to be tolerant.
If the reaction is actually knee jerk/automatic before the upper brain(?)/concious tolerant/empathetic side can take control, is someone a jerk for having that primal response first. I consider myself very tolerant and empathetic and I do my damndest to be that way, but my wife says sometimes it’s not the first thing that shows. I’m trying as hard as I know how. Should I be condemned?
I may try my hardest to be a great musician, but I'm not and surely won't be anytime soon. It's accepting your current shortcomings that may lead to improvement, not considering yourself good just because you try hard.
It's difficult and it's fine to struggle with it.
> Should I be condemned?
You shouldn't be condemned, but as I wrote, people should stop the hypocrisy and virtue signalling of pretending to be so insanely tolerant if they have such a primal response.
If they didn’t have a negative response, it wouldn’t be tolerance, by definition. Tolerance means engaging with something you have a negative response to.
It's not hypocrisy or virtue signaling if people are choosing to be tolerant.
If someone is standing near the train tracks and sees a train approaching a stalled car, they should be praised for choosing to run over and help even if their initial instinct is to get as far away as possible.
It's not virtue signaling to try to be better. Stop making this weird.
>In the US, the homeless population exploded, in the 1980s, when they closed down all the mental institutions
it was the 1970s, SCOTUS decision in O'Connor v. Donaldson, when the court said that the mentally ill who were not dangerous could not be held in institutions against their will. The 1960s had seen a series of scandals concerning callous treatment of inmates in institutions (for example, see Titticut Follies) and that created the climate for deinstitutionalization.
> people will always end up being frightened of "the difference"
I've also come to accept this about myself, but I had to stumble through a dark tunnel of feeling inadequate and feeling like an inhuman monster.
The typical list of traits that should not be used as a basis for discrimination is on a spectrum of how instinctual or fear-based it is, which I don't think have seen mentioned in training materials on unconscious bias.
Around the same time, much of the US also stopped building housing at the rate needed.
I'm pretty sure there would be far less homeless if there were a lot more homes around.
don't worry, brother, come to Reddit where all we autists live in harmony
People like this really are at the mercy of fate, and the people they come into contact with throughout their lives. Its so unfair. But thankfully this story had a good outcome.
Happy Christmas to you and everyone else here as well :)
> In the US, the homeless population exploded, in the 1980s, when they closed down all the mental institutions.
... and for good reason, because it turns out that people with no support network (which most mentally ill people and a lot of prisoners are) are perfect victims for all kinds of abuse - both from other inmates and from "wardens". They didn't end up in an asylum randomly, they ended up in there because their family didn't want or could not provide care for them.
And it's not just mental "health" institutions or prisons... all forms of "care" breed abuse. The Catholic Church for example is still reeling from constant discoveries of abused children in orphanages. Elder care institutions, particularly severely understaffed, routinely have to deal with inmates being injured by anything from a lack of care (e.g. bed sores) over physical abuse to sexual abuse [1].
And to make it worse... private/family care without independent oversight is just as bad. A lot of homeschooled children are heavily abused, caregiver burnout and its fallout is also a nasty issue, and particularly in men with dementia, they can also be the abusers.
In the end, the root problem is that we as a society haven't yet figured out how to properly deal with the balance between care work, employment work and rest, and we also haven't figured out how to properly reward and audit care work.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jun/06/shock...
No, the reason was to save tax money by making mental healthcare a personal responsibility instead of a social one. There were many justifications (abuse, new drugs, etc), but the reason was cost.
Abuse was/is a reason to improve controls over abuse and increase funding to improve conditions. It is not a good reason to abandon inpatient care wholesale. Imagine if we had made the same decision about hospitals or schools, both of which engaged in routine abuse in the early 20th century.
> reason was cost
Yeah, it was supposed to be replaced with a kinder/gentler system, but that never came. They shut down the support system completely with a "we'll figure out how to fix this later" and that never came.
I think the solution is pretty obvious, TBH. Pay people to take care of their family with disabilities. It's often a full time job to take care of someone with a severe disability. Some states do make allowances to pay out to family caregivers, but it's a convoluted system where you have to be employed by a private care agency which is ultimately reimbursed for the care. There's a pointless private business in the way just adding on admin fees.
But there desperately needs to be something in place for people without that support. Parents die/leave/are incarcerated and we really don't have any sort of system setup to handle that.
> I think the solution is pretty obvious, TBH. Pay people to take care of their family with disabilities.
Maybe, but we do also need a way to deal with people whose problems can’t be managed in a family setting.
If a person is prone to violent meltdowns with little provocation, or can’t help but steal from their family to feed an addiction, family caregivers aren’t going to be enough.
>No, the reason was to save tax money
no, it wasn't, it was SCOTUS decision O'Connor v. Donaldson
The reason may have been good. The response really wasn't.
Wow.
No.
> when they closed down all the mental institutions.
Why on earth did we do this?
I look back at period pieces - films showcasing the 40s, 50s, etc., and it seems like mental institutions would be a wonderful way to house these folks and keep them fed and warm.
I know there were abuses, but we have cameras now. And that's surely better than leaving them on the streets to freeze to death.
I can't imagine it would cost that much, and it would clean up the streets of drugs and homelessness. And reduce the tax on emergency services responding to calls.
I feel so bad for what we as a society do to these people. When my city closed down the local homeless shelter in midtown, the people on Reddit - supposedly leftists - cheered. I was so sad. These are the same people that call me fascist all the time for being a fiscal moderate and saying we shouldn't build subway to the suburbs. Being humanitarian would cost 1/10,000th of that.
>I look back at period pieces - films showcasing the 40s, 50s, etc., and it seems like mental institutions would be a wonderful way to house these folks and keep them fed and warm
I'm reading this comment as if you had written:
"The TV show Hogan's Heroes makes being a prisoner of war sound like a jolly good time."
> Why on earth did we do this?
Much has been written about this, but from what little I know, they were abusive, and didn't do the job well. And were abused to keep sane people in.
I've heard that the advent of better drugs was also a factor. Prior to those drugs, there was no alternative other than commitment to mental facilities. The drugs gave the promise of a more manageable life - either by the patient or by their family.
What did we replace them with? Prisons.
About 20 years ago I saw a documentary about the use of prisons as a means to get mental health care. It explored the history that led to mental institutions getting shut down, and how prisons are treating the mentally ill. As crazy as it sounds, the prisons are doing a better job - even the inmates agree. Quite a few inmates said that the biggest problem they had was that they would be released from prison and not get access to the care they were receiving (including medications).
It wasn't trying to paint a rosy picture - they actually said this is, in one sense, an abuse of the prison system and that there needs to be a better way to treat them - but the consensus was "Definitely should not revert to the prior mental institutions!"
If you take the average person who doesn’t have a mental illness and has no relationship with anyone who does, the system we have is pretty well optimized for their needs.
We balance many difficult and inherently conflicting goals, such as:
1) minimizing treatment, which is expensive and does have bad side effects
2) sufficiently good access to treatment where it’s economical for prevention
3) fear of being wrongly hospitalized (error, political motivation, etc.)
4) sufficient ability to lock other people up for frightening or violent behavior in public
It’s a tough problem, but I think the tradeoffs are managed near optimally, granting that the rights and interests of the mentally ill don’t matter at all to most public officials or voters.
Except that those same people then complain about how many homeless people there are.
Reagan's destruction of the mental health system was really awful. The system needed improvement and more accountability, but we need it.
I had an adult step-brother too ill with schizophrenia to be cared for at home (he began making violent threats and stealing things, up to and including my mom's car), but under the current threshold for being compelled to take his medication. My mom (his step-mom; an attorney) spent years trying to find ways to get him help, but he bounced in and out of being homeless and ended up being murdered at about age 60 in a halfway house. Just a stupid, tragic waste of a life and all of the resources mis-allocated.
Sadly, it's just another example of how the US is penny-wise and pound-foolish when it comes to social services.
I also personally know the waste, stupidity, and cruelty of these situations. But I’ve come to the conclusion that the voters know what they want, and preventing these terrible outcomes is not worth the cost to them.
>> when they closed down all the mental institutions.
>Why on earth did we do this?
Supreme Court decision, O'Connor v. Donaldson.
Thankfully LLMs have ingested enough of human writing that one afflicted in such a way can describe the exact set of circumstances and ask the LLM how they made the other people feel, and figure out why they got expelled from the group this time. It never stops happening for us. I'm 42 now and it's happened twice this past year. But at least now I can figure out what it is I did wrong and how to prevent that from happening again.
Such a large fraction of human communication is non-verbal (and, unless you're actively studying this sort of thing as a neurodivergent person trying to fit in) unconscious that it's hard for me to imagine this working very well on average. The LLM simply couldn't possibly get enough relevant input. And even emotional reactions purely to words are informed by context that the LLM didn't experience and the user won't know was important, so the LLM can only wildly speculate.
I'd like to encourage you to resist the "what I did wrong" framing, because it's definitely not a given that you did anything wrong in any given circumstance. Sometimes neurotypical people are just completely unreasonable, and sometimes they will try to manipulate you (and each other).
The strange part to me is that neurodivergence is commonly explained in terms of inability to see things from another point of view (see the classical "what will X person say is in the box?" test). But supposedly neurotypical people demonstrate what seems to me like a stunning lack of empathy (or more generally, ability to comprehend other worldviews) all the time. Especially when politics is involved.
I think the problem is that non-divergent people really cannot comprehend an inability to perceive non-verbal communication. Nonverbal communication is like breathing, or eating - it's something that just works for them; they don't have to think about it. It's scary and weird to them when they meet people that can't do it.
Then there are those of us for whom social situations are a 3-billion-line case/esac statement.
people just see what, to them, is obnoxious or boorish behavior. So, divergent people must first understand that they are divergent and what that means, and then they must try to put themselves in the shoes of the people they interact with. Is it fair? Life isn't fair - but you either want to fit in and interact reasonably, or you don't.Somehow, I managed to get married. My wife helped me understand what I was missing - it was like gaining eyesight after never having it or even understanding eyesight was a thing people had.
Yes, many people lack empathy. That is no excuse for you (or me!) to learn and use empathy.
> But supposedly neurotypical people demonstrate what seems to me like a stunning lack of empathy (or more generally, ability to comprehend other worldviews) all the time.
IME religion facilities this phenomenon. In-group members (esp men) get forgiveness and freedom from consequences (perhaps conditioned on saying magic words). Whilst out-groups get "forgiveness" with extra consequences.
Do you mean Christianity? Islam is full of consequences for members - it has a system of laws and punishments. It has forgiveness too but some crimes are unforgiveable even by God. Meanwhile, out-groups are more like enemies that sometimes should be killed if they don't cooperate.
Having some laws for bad behavior doesn’t mean Islam doesn’t let men shirk responsibility. Women are expected to cover themselves because of men being expected to have so little self control.
> But supposedly neurotypical people demonstrate what seems to me like a stunning lack of empathy (or more generally, ability to comprehend other worldviews) all the time. Especially when politics is involved.
Politics is about power fights: whose argument will convince the mass that in this case violence (laws -> state authority) is appropriate or not appropriate.
So even if the other person is able to comprehend other worldviews (which I would claim is actually often, though not always, the case), there exist very strong incentives to ignore these other world views in your actions when politics is involved.
Freakishly weirdly precise memory that doesn't work in other ways can be used to relayed relevant details to ChatGPT. I'll describe the weird face she made when I said that thing or the exact position of her body and the exact level of pressure with which she touched me on the arm and exactly where on my arm, for example.
As far as the framing, it's helped me realize that actually, hey, sometimes it is their fault and they are being unreasonable and I actually didn't do anything wrong, they just don't like me. I mean yeah, that's also a thing.
Asking ChatGPT for that sort of advice seems like a horrific idea. Trying to learn interactions by written means can only lead to some very alien ideas.
Plus your questions will contain your mistakes, and what you take from any answers would reinforce your misunderstandings rather than correct them.
It's hard to suggest better learning means via the HN medium.
I learnt a lot when I carefully gave attention to a friend I deeply trusted, training my intuition based on their interactions, plus they trusted me enough to sometimes attempt to explain their intuitive reactions.
Where are these alien ideas are going to come from? Did aliens come to Earth and their complete works got smuggled into the training data for ChatGPT, and not the collected works of humanity? Every poem that's been digitized, every human psychology textbook, every self-help book?
My sympathies. And it’s sad to see you call it “what it is you did wrong”. Thus, also my apologies, for whenever I am on the wrong side of such interactions.
I'm trying to understand this better, possible to share any examples?
Not going to share a personal example, but eg plug "I bought my mom a vacuum cleaner for her birthday. Why did she get mad at me? she keeps complaining about the old one!" into ChatGPT vs find me any human willing to sit down and have that as an actual discussion with me as a human of any age. I'm just supposed to get it? I'm a fucking monster and unworthy of being loved because I need that explained to me? "You should just know!"
Fuck people.
I have no idea why someone would get mad about getting a vacuum cleaner as a gift. It's boring, sure, but if you keep complaining about your old one, it seems pretty thoughtful.
Everyone’s situation is different. But typically the reason this offends is because for a stay at home mom a vacuum is a work tool. If the current vacuum is broken then you should just get a new one. It shouldn’t take the place of a Christmas present, which is the opportunity to get her something related to her personal interests rather than her job.
Interesting point of view. But it's common for a man to get a work tool as present (e.g. a drill or a set of wrenches), with the obvious implication that the man will usually be the one who will have to use that tool to fix things around the house - and I have never seen anyone find that offensive. So what makes the vacuum cleaner different?
For anyone that like to do DIY, that's not a work tool, that's a play tool that is coincidentally a work tool to do work.
Same thing back at you. The vacuum is a play tool to anyone who finds cleaning to be “fun”.
There’s whole genres of cleanup games on steam which are extremely popular, profitable, and well reviewed.
One of my favorite vectrex games is a Pac-Man clone where you play as a vacuum.
Powerwash simulator is occasionally fun. There's shiny rewards, I don't have to deal with potential bad weather, and there's no random patches that take 20 times to get rid of. If I don't feel like powerwashing simulator, it will wait for me, forever, with no ill consequences or social judgement.
If I never wash my actual driveway, the same is not true. Therefore I will need to wash it at times when it's unpleasant or I don't want to, and it will take longer than powerwashing a driveway in Powerwash simulator.
In this scenario (again, everyone’s situation is different) DIY is more often a hobby for the husband. Repairs are infrequent enough that you could just hire someone as needed, but the husband chooses to do it.
Perhaps more importantly, it’s not his full time job.
The implication is that it implies vacuuming is that persons responsibility to the point of giving them "their" tools instead of it being a shared purchase for the house.
Not everyone will care, but this is a stereotypical type of present likely to trigger anger and resentment in the recipient for a reason.
Reminds me of this old commercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkkW6dwG2KY
Without context, the reaction is bizarre. There must be some back story that you omitted; maybe something about the mother previously asking other people in the family to vacuum, and being ignored?
My wife and I, by the way, are giving each other a joint New Year gift of a fancy robot vacuum cleaner: it's the best sort of gift, useful, elegant, and something that one would be reluctant to spend the money on otherwise.
A joint gift is very different, and a joint gift of a household appliance that reduces the work doubly so.
The reaction is a result of the gift implying that the work is the responsibility of the individual recipient.
It's not a universal reaction, but common enough that it is a frequent trope in movies and TV.
Your mother is a unique person. Only she can explain her actions, if she wants to. Chatgpt or any other person won't be able to. Your mother may be neurodivergent in ways that make it impossible for someone else else to answer for her, or ways that make it hard to answer for herself.
You are worthy of being loved even if people close to you aren't able to express it to you.
To be honest, that can happen to any kid depending on the background
I grew up at a time when a home appliance was an acceptable gift for the woman in charge.
I heard women complaining progressively more through time, and now it is not an acceptable gift.
> I grew up at a time when a home appliance was an acceptable gift for the woman in charge.
This is also how I grew up (my parents were a little bit more on the conservative side). This together with the fact that I am not deeply knowledgable in the US-American common practices also made it hard for me to understand why the mother was angry about this gift, in particular considering that she did complain about the old one.
I bought a expensive fancy pan for my wife's birthday a few years ago. We both cook, clean and do groceries and chores equally so it never occurred to me that it was inappropriate. We both like cooking. I'm more of a stewpot guy while she's better in general at "pan stuff" and had been complaining about the old pan. She chided me a bit for spending so much on a pan and there was that.
But when I mentioned it over coffee at work most of my female colleagues were aghast. I defended myself saying something like "It's the 21st century, we are way past the point that I can't gift a pan to my wife" and they said "Well that might be at YOUR home!", and I learned a thing.
I would like a vacuum as gift. The one I currently have isn't very good. Not sure what her problem was.
That’s an interesting idea. My main concern would be hallucinations. They could be damaging.
What would it even hallucinate? You wouldn't be asking it to cite a court case from 2004 that doesn't exist and it wouldn't invent people you didn't tell it about in the first place.
I've been reading about how chatbots have been reinforcing paranoid delusions. If the person asking, was really trying to justify their own approach, and blame others (or that's what the chatbot perceives), the chatbot may go along, instead of saying "What the hell were you thinking?".
I mean, the LLM's words are just generated words, not gospel from the heavens. If you're self-aware enough to be able to extract value from the words, and not go off the deep end with it, which it seem like you are, run it through as many SOTA online models and however many offline models you can fit on your hard drive, and compare all of their advice if you're really that worried about it, but make up a soap opera scenario, like some thing that ends with "and then I slept with her sister" and see just how many of them say "good job getting it in!" and not "you're an asshole", if you need to prove to yourself that, as with everything, you shouldn't believe everything you read on the news.
Grok: https://grok.com/share/c2hhcmQtNQ_26f4c367-77ed-4b6e-be55-83...
Claude: https://claude.ai/share/dca96b18-d583-4e14-b805-725d2e060761
Interestingly ChatGPT won't let me share a chat link for the same input text due to not passing a moderation filter, but you can plug that same gauche prompt into chat.com for yourself. Couldn't find the share button in Gemini.
Oh my first reply didn't address your question. Yes, if you're a malignant narcissist that seeks reassurance that it's okay you're a piece of shit, then it can be used that way too. I don't read you as one, however.
what did you do wrong?
In the US, homeless individuals foremost suffer from financial hardship not mental illness. Consider 39% of homeless individuals are in families [0: Page 17] while 40% have a serious mental illness or drug problem.[1] Many develop these problems while homeless.
Homelessness in the US has also increased by 47% since 2018. [0: Page 2] I doubt homelessness or drug abuse has increased accordingly.
People make the mistake to think otherwise because its not the homelessness you often see.
[0]: https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/2024-...
[1]: https://www.kff.org/medicaid/five-key-facts-about-people-exp...
Take a look at Figure 7 on this page, which indicates that (annual) overdose deaths have more than doubled since 2018: https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overd...
If have lived anywhere with a significant drug-addict (opioid or fentanyl) population through this time period, you’ve seen the increase; if you haven’t, you may be lucky for it.
> People make the mistake to think otherwise because its not the homelessness you often see.
Indeed. Those homeless people without mental illness likely have more interest in not being seen, and more ability to avoid it.
> Homelessness in the US has also increased by 47% since 2018. [0: Page 2] I doubt homelessness or drug abuse has increased accordingly.
Not sure what the typo is in here. Surely homelessness has indeed increased in accordance with homelessness.
> People make the mistake to think otherwise because its not the homelessness you often see.
I don't think this is a mistake so much as people do not care about the homelessness they don't see.
Ironically when you use the specific words for the homelessness they do care about (unsheltered or unhoused) you're accused of being woke or whatever.
Do you want to fix the typo?
The article you linked shows 12-13% autism-positive rate over N~100 cases, in the UK - and it doesn't distinguish, in the free abstract at least, between minor/moderate/severe, or comorbidities among that population.
I agree that we should be kind to individuals and that understanding an individual's problems can help with that. That said, this paper does not appear to provide convincing evidence that autism is a major contributor to homelessness.
I was pretty careful not to say that autism causes homelessness. Rather, that a significant portion of the homeless have autism.
The abstract says the same thing.
There’s always someone with the buzzkill. Do you think is really that hard, for those who care, yo find all these sad facts? FFS man, let us celebrate the good a little bit. In this world is really not that hard to find the bad!
I wonder if AI can help them ?
>I wonder if AI can help them ?
No.
No, it can't.
I mostly agree but I think it may be able to help with social skills training in the future.
It can and it does.
>A large percentage are there because society does not care for those with mental disabilities.
This is why it's so frustrating to hear people smugly say we just need to build more houses to solve the homeless crisis.
Attributing 'smugness' is a way to duck the merits of the issue. People with mental disabilities also need a stable roof over their head, security, privacy, heat, a bathroom, a bed.
I expect they need it more (very broadly speaking; people have very different disabilities do different degrees), because it's harder to adapt and survive without it, and therefore more traumatizing and destabilizing.
There is plenty of evidence, and it's common sense, that having a stable shelter and all the things I listed above would greatly help anyone. Humans in every culture have sought shelter for all of history - it's absolutely fundamental to humanity (and other animals!). Depriving people of it results in unending trauma - not a state to begin getting your life together, harm from others and the environment, an inability to accumulate assets, and spending all your time trying to survive.
> Attributing 'smugness' is a way to duck the merits of the issue. People with mental disabilities also need a stable roof over their head, security, privacy, heat, a bathroom, a bed
But it's only one piece of a very complex problem, it's akin to the magical thinking that is incredibly provision everywhere these days. "Just stop using seed oils and America will be healthy again!"
People who have personally dealt with this know the hard truth that simply providing food and shelter isn't enough to stop a significant portion of people ending up in the streets.
> it's only one piece of a very complex problem
Right, who is disagreeing? Name someone. You've created a strawperson.
The knee-jerk anti-liberal responses (maybe that's not your motive, but it is for many) do enormous damage, by preventing good solutions from being implemented. The same thing happens with climate change, now vaccines, and other things. People are so focused on politics that they sacrifice lives and welfare of lots of people. There are good ideas from conservatives too - cutting off half the ideas is stupidity.
> People who have personally dealt with this know the hard truth that simply providing food and shelter isn't enough to stop a significant portion of people ending up in the streets.
In fact, the evidence and advocacy comes from people who have personally dealth with it, and providing housing does result in housing for a significant portion of people.
People need more than housing and that's where it becomes especially complex.
You better check your privilege re: your oppressive claims about humans needing to live somewhere to avoid trauma. Do you think the Roma have a lot of trauma just because they are nomads?
Nomadic people have homes and possessions; they bring the homes with them. They don't live out in the open with nothing like unhoused people are compelled to do.
There are digital nomads too - they usually have money and live in rented places, but they have shelter.
I did this for 3 years for two homeless women. Had to kick them out because I did not want meth in my home.
that's what I was thinking. have tried to help people before, but when they have some mental disabilities is difficult for them to keep their instincts in check, then we have to care of small children in the same space, thus best I can do is help while keeping the distance :(
I'm not crying! You're crying!
Don't worry I'm crying enough for both of us.
Is someone cutting onions in here?
Oh I‘m definitely crying. What a touching story.
It's kind of emotional and happy story at the same time.
Indeed
This isn't Reddit, man.
Glad this story got on HN, it moved the heart and I hope it spreads in the little openings of our lives. Nothings perfect, but day by day, more kindness and care, we can share https://youtu.be/wlpcFnOPH2k?si=C1Wa1cviJMa1zlYm
Unbelievable story in the best of ways. Three amazing people lucky to have each other in their lives.
Exactly. It's so heartwarming to hear this when you are constantly bombarded by negative messages. Really made my day.
beautiful... kindness can go a long way :) we could all do better (and I point mostly at myself now)
Agreed. We could all do better. I know it would be very difficult for me to do what these people did. Some of us are perhaps barely neurotypicals and barely holding it together. I worry that having to care for an autistic individual may push me over. I am not using that as an excuse, but genuinely curious if there are others in this position. They want to help, but worry that they are not sane and stable enough to handle the task.
Yes, it's very touching story. Incredible people.
> If you wanna make the world a better place
> Take a look at yourself and then make a change
<3 MJ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PivWY9wn5ps
Merry Christmas!
Would not have expected to ever find those lines quoted on HN. Thank you. And Merry Christmas!
Well that's something I really liked reading from the BBC.
This give hope that humanity is still alive & not everyone is selfish like us.
A properly touching Christmas story. It’s made my day.
Being on the spectrum myself, I can’t be thankful enough for the people I’ve met and supported me too.
This was a lovely and touching story to read, I wish the best to the Rob and Dianne of the world!
The kindness of strangers never ceases to amaze me. People are good.
> The homeless centre told them Ronnie needed an address to get a job, Rob said, but "to get an address, you need a job".
> "That's the Catch 22 that loads of homeless people are in."
Breaking this systemic barrier would make life easier on a lot of people.
Yes, it's not just homeless people with this bootstrapping problem. When I first arrived to the US in the nineties as a student I needed a social security number, for this I needed a P.O. Box (they did not accept the dorm house as address). For the P.O. Box I needed a social security number. Most international students ended up breaking the deadlock by making up a social security number.
I had a similar issue living abroad. My wife had a work visa (which was the reason we we moving) and I was allowed to go being a spouse, but once there getting a permit to work for myself was impossible without a job, and a job was impossible without a work permit.
There were ways around it, but it took finding a job at a really big company to make it work - they had dealt with it and had HR people that specialized in it. Once "on paper", I was pretty free to move around. I would not be surprised if their method was just putting in all zeros in the system or something until the permit number came back.
Similarly, you need ID to get an ID. You also need proof of address to get an ID. And you need an ID to get an address or a job.
If you look for an evil of the world, it is often written down in the rules and laws.
You'd be hard pressed to find someone more callous than an old bureaucrat.
Yes. I’d like to think having a mobile phone would be enough but there’s still how work can write you a check and how you can deposit it. Not sure if any bank will go without a fixed address.
A reasonable solution is to get a free "address" from the post office with optionally phone notifications for mail
Well the only problem here is that general delivery is still not eligible for any of the main things people need an address for, like ID, tax docs, etc. Even if you want to pay for a PO box (which also doesn't satisfy those requirements), you need an address to register for one.
I really wish there would be more work to try to at least add some kind of alternative path here, given America's growing homeless population. Leaving things to the goodwill of family or friends seems to me like a dereliction of duty by the state.
The post office would identify you on access and hold mail for an appropriate amount of time.
Like for some deliveries you need to sign a receipt that will be legally binding, the post office would take the role of handling those.
When we were making a long move and temporarily without a stable address I looked into getting a PO Box and it seemed impossible without a real address.
I ended up finding some kinda sketchy-feeling services aimed at people RV living, and not much else. I wasn’t able to find an official solution to the problem of “I need to receive mail but have no address” (there may be one, but in solid 60-90 minutes of searching I didn’t find it, but did find a lot of people complaining about the problem)
I'm not sure if you need an address to sign up for a private mailbox at places like UPS Stores.
But a lot of people might receive mail at a friends' address with permission. But, you still need to have a friend or family with a stable address who is willing to help.
In the past this was pretty lax (I've had a long-term box at a Mail Boxes Etc. that then became a private mail boxes place that then became a UPS Store) and they didn't really care when I first opened it. Now there's a push for KYC also; we got a sheet the other day asking to verify our physical street address, something I never personally got in the years I've been there. Apparently new regulations or something, they said.
I wonder why they require it?
Systemically & historically, the US favors landowning white men and discriminates against others wherever possible.
The homeless centre should be able to be used as a home address for a job.
Remarkable story. I'd not have had the kindness for this. I'm grateful people like them exist.
Ronnie led a rich life. I feel ashamed that my selfish life feels pale in comparison. It's amazing these people did not worry about the extra expense and inconvenience of taking care of another person, with children of their own to take care of.
> I feel ashamed that my selfish life feels pale in comparison.
You’re still alive, thus you still have the chance to live a more selfless life you feel proud of.
> It's amazing these people did not worry about the extra expense and inconvenience of taking care of another person
Seems to me they did worry, but decided to do it anyway.
> with children of their own to take care of.
The children came later, and Ronnie helped to take care of them.
Different people are different I guess. Extra expense and inconvenience also wouldn't bother me. Instead I'd be worried that one day this guy is going to kill everyone while we're sleeping. How well do you really know someone? How well do you really know someone that just showed up at your door days before?
“Overall, 76% of female murders and 56% of male murders were perpetrated by someone known to the victim.”
https://bjs.ojp.gov/female-murder-victims-and-victim-offende...
> “Overall, 76% of female murders and 56% of male murders were perpetrated by someone known to the victim.”
> https://bjs.ojp.gov/female-murder-victims-and-victim-offende...
Lets say M is "being murdered" and A is "stranger in the house", "not A" is "person known to the victim in the house".
The numbers you're quoting say that P(not A | M) is large, implying that P(A | M) is small.
However, to make a decision on whether to let someone in, I care about P(M | A).
You need to exercise that critical thinking more. You just heard someone say "the murders are known to the victim" and you instantly dropped your common sense.
I don't think statistics are relevant at all. Suppose the stranger is wielding a kopesh, an ancient Egyptian sword. What we want to know is not "how many murderers use kopeshes?" (none of them), but "is this guy a murderer?", and that seems in line with what you're saying about statistics. However, the question "how many wielders of kopeshes are murderers?" is also irrelevant, and the answer is still none of them. Similarly, "how many strangers in your house have been murderers?" is irrelevant, even if the answer is "all of them so far". Perhaps you only ever let one stranger into your house, and once inside she killed somebody with an arquebus, and you said "never again" - but that would be paranoia. Perhaps you look at country-wide statistics for the average stranger (these aren't kept), but you are not personally country-wide, and the specific stranger is not an average. What's more, if you befriend the stranger, what statistic do you want to use then? The thing to do is reason, not count. I think the 76%, 56% statistic (although irrelevant to a decision) is attempting to say a lot of murderers are motivated by interpersonal relationships, you know, and get you to think about what a given person might be up to, or might want, and the extent to which you can even tell, and the value of risking the unknown.
Nothing that you said prevents one from discussing models and making estimates.
All you're saying is you don't like my model (presumably because you'd like more inputs to the estimation?). Ok. You might not like my model, but at my comment on conditional probabilities was correct. The person that I was responding to wasn't that.
Damn. Amazing response.
> Similarly, "how many strangers in your house have been murderers?" is irrelevant, even if the answer is "all of them so far".
That doesn't sound very sane.
Complete word salad.
Someone living in your home is known to you
I dont think that's a useful way of thinking.. A well known family member could also randomly kill you. Either one is extremely unlikely.
We don't give everyone guns, which helps a lot.
The random family member, hoping they're in your will, and you having drank all their wine, has more reason to kill you, if we're going there, than some random stranger, not less. In the ridiculously off chance that's even remotely a real possibility.
Isn’t that kind of a lesson learned though? Hitchhiking is illegal for a reason. We don’t let children run as freely outdoors . A lot of states are rewriting or adding exemptions to statutory limits on pressing charges and suing for certain crimes because they happened during a period of time where people assumed you could trust people more. Being cautious and distrustful of strangers with mental issues is a very productive way of thinking. I get people think it’s a fren because fren shaped but give em a couple bucks , and contact a professional to get them help. It sucks there are so many mentally ill people on the streets. That doesn’t make them any less dangerous and the honest truth is there’s a weird line between personal freedom and mental illness that means it’s their right to be a crazy homeless persons. You can clean em up set them up in apartment but you can’t force them to use their benefit payments to pay the rent, keep their apartment clean, or take their medicine. Help them if you can , but please please also don’t forget that people are dangerous. Use some common sense, the last thing anyone needs is more people in the news getting hurt by people with mental illness . It’s just makes it that much harder to get compassionate care for the rest.
Wait, hitchhiking is illegal (in the US presumably)? (Supplemental question: how do you make hitching illegal?)
In the UK I've met many interesting people both while hitchhiking myself, and while picking up hitchers. It is a practice that seems to have almost entirely disappeared here, not because it's illegal, but I guess because most people now have cars and some "stranger danger" worries.
You should watch Rambo: First Blood. Great movie.
The (US-American) title of the movie is only "First Blood". :-)
Only from the sequel on ("Rambo: First Blood Part II") "Rambo" is part of the film title, see https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rambo_(franchise)...
It’s sadly the only good Rambo IP.
https://hitchwiki.org/en/United_States_of_America
As for "how": legislature passes a law against it like any other traffic law. Similar to jaywalking or prostitution (soliciting sex on the side of the road).
https://hitchwiki.org/en/United_States_of_America
As for "how": legislature passes a law against it like any other traffic law. Similar to jaywalking
> a lesson learned
It's certainly a perspective of many, but many others think it's wrong, that children should run freely (there's a whole movement around that), etc.
> please please also don’t forget that people are dangerous
IME from a life spent in cities has taught me that people - strangers, unhoused people, etc. - are great. Most will be happy to to help, have a pleasant conversation, etc. (Read Jane Jacobs who, iirc, examines it in detail.) Humans are social creatures - we don't live alone, we're made to socialize and live in groups.
You need to be a social creature too and read people a little. Obviously some people aren't in a mood to interact; don't be rude or an idiot (they'll probably ignore you). And there's risk to everything - you can die in an accident but still travel by car; you can catch diseases but you still leave your home.
Really, the exception I think I see at a higher rate is apparently wealthy people. Maybe they aren't accustomed to the need to help each other, but there seems to be a culture of anger toward those who might need some help today. Why don't they just support themselves like I do?
I know there's been kind of a counter movement about allowing kids to run free ... that doesn't mean it's a good idea. My wife and I survived, but our childhood involved a lot of freedom in the outdoors, and physical abuse. She was hospitalized a few times while intermittently homeless growing up. I was never quite that poor and could run faster, so maybe it's a social class thing? Affluent children can run free in their safe neighborhoods? I wouldn't reccomend it for everyone though, because there are predators everywhere.
My life has experience has taught me by and large people are pretty cool too. It's also taught me that the cool ones and the dangerous ones look exactly the same. Bad guys don't have horns, wear masks carrying large dollar sign bags or look like sihloutted trench coats lurking in a alley. So you gotta ask yourself if it's worth the risk.
I volunteer with emergency services and hope to open a clinic with my wife next year focusing on helping foster children with mental illness who tend to age out the system and fall through the cracks. The subject of mentally ill homeless people hits very close to home and I'm 100% on board with getting the homeless whatever care they need. That does not make the concept of untrained randos inviting mentally ill homeless people into their homes any less of a ridicously bad idea.
I'm not downplaying what you and your wife went through, which is outrageous. And generally speaking, it's 100x harder as kids.
> I volunteer with emergency services and hope to open a clinic with my wife next year focusing on helping foster children with mental illness who tend to age out the system and fall through the cracks.
That's fantastic, whatever our debate about the details. Thank you.
> you gotta ask yourself if it's worth the risk.
There's always risk in life, as I said above. The level of risk is the key - the likelihood and the amount of harm - and that's debatable.
For kids, by far the most child abuse (as I'm sure you know) is by family and people the family knows. Staying home may be less safe. I just don't see the risks as worse than car accidents and other dangers.
Also, I don't know that I agree "there are predators everywhere", except as a sort of logical truth - predators aren't limited by geography. There are rabid dogs everywhere too. I doubt predators - which, come to think of it, is undefined and sounds like a bogeyman sort of term - are limited by wealth.
But of course, everyone needs to think and act intelligently. You don't let your kid go down the street where the prostitutes or drug dealers hang out.
> the cool ones and the dangerous ones look exactly the same
That's not my experience, but of course nobody can know for sure - that goes for family and coworkers too. Coincidentally, I ended up in coversations today with three apparently unhoused people today. The idea that these people are dangerous somehow is just not plausible. After the third conversation, I made an inside joke I have with the person next to me 'homeless people are so dangerous!'. We both rolled our eyes.
Is hitchhiking illegal in the US?
According to the Wikipedia there are laws in some localities, but I don't think they are widespread.
Yes.
Sure, but in France we have about 100/150 feminicides per year. You're much more likely to be killed by your (seemingly "sane") partner in a bout of fury over a breakup than by some random autistic guy
Bayes' law, many more people have romantic partners than former homeless living with them.
Thank you!! I just commented the same thing, but people will eat any meme you throw at them, it's quite shocking.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46384274
One thing that spending time talking to people online has taught me is how often what people say is just mindlessly repeating something they heard somewhere.
It's also fantastic how I find your response more persuasive than mine, while using fewer words. Well done.
That wasn't the point of the answer. The point is "How well do you really know someone?". You really don't. Many people live with partners who end up killing them, although they thought they trusted them.
Besides, "Bayes law" is not on your side on this one, it's well-known that "regular people" are over-represented in homicide, and "autistic people" or even "schizophrenic people" are under-represented and are mostly harmless
All of that may very well be but correct reasoning is a prerequisite to talking about any of these points.
> it's well-known that "regular people" are over-represented in homicide, and "autistic people" or even "schizophrenic people" are under-represented and are mostly harmless
It is?
It is, indeed. It's a wrongly-held belief that there is more violent behaviors and crimes from schizophrenic people, etc, but the reverse is true
Do you have any literature to support this?
You confused P(A|B) with P(B|A), stop doubling down.
That is lovely. Reminds me of Bruce taking in Neil for a shorter spell in the 7up documentaries.
Damn that's some great Christmas story. Thanks for sharing
I’m not crying, you’re crying.
What a lovely Christmas story!
Heart warming story. Thanks for sharing.
Reminds of this documentary of the Spring family: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azxCUOE6srI (20m)
Some seemingly ordinary people have superhuman ability.
A cautionary tale.
> one young UK couple's act of kindness 50 years ago changed their lives forever.
I like to think that their caring life did not really change, they were like that to begin with, they just missed a Ronni from it. : )
Since no one else is going to be cynical I will do it. This is a heartwarming story. However, it seems like that by taking this man in they got a live in maid along with an additional source of income. The fact that he is autistic and along with his disposition also probably made him feel “safe” to the husband around the women and girls in the house.
I mean, thats one way to look at it.
But reading between the lines, having someone with a gambling habit isn't the best live in "maid" especially if they work full time as a bin man.
I would just suggest that looking to believe the worst in people will not make you stronger or more effective than others, it'll just make you lonely.
Yeah I try to see the best in people. But the internet is anonymous and my first thoughts revolved around why they would do this for so long.
In England the advice is that the best thing you can do for homeless people is refer them to the correct social services, which has the resources and skills to deal with people who are often mentally damaged or unwell in some way.
The case of Aaron Barley triggered this after a lovely and caring family took in a homeless boy into their own home leading to a terrible situation in which he murdered two of the family.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4elLA4FpnHQ
There's no way I'd let random people into my home - you absolutely do not know what might happen, what their history is, their mental state, their criminal background. Be kind in other ways.
From the article
> Rob studied the man's face and vaguely remembered him as Ronnie Lockwood, someone he would occasionally see at Sunday School as a boy and who he was told to be kind to as he was a "bit different".
> Ronnie was then almost 30 and had been without a home from the age of 15, living in and around Cardiff and moving from job to job - Rob would sometimes see him at a youth club he ran.
> The pair planned to let him stay until the day after Christmas, but when the day came, they couldn't bring themselves to cast Ronnie out and sought advice from the authorities.
You aren't entirely wrong, but this wasn't a random person and they did contact a homeless centre for advice.
Given that Ronnie had apparently already gone through some sort of system to end up at a "school for subnormal boys", it seems pretty clear that Ronnie lived a much better life through this family's actions and generosity.
The institutional advice would struggle to directly recommend any other action as it can only be seen to create an unconstrained liability - if not legal, then social. That does not mean they wouldn't be amenable to a system of placing people who were vetted and managed if they were sufficiently convinced it would resolve the issue (at institutional scale).
Its worth noting that the homeless person in this situation was in fact known to those who provided the home - and not as casually as the first para suggests.
I think the more earnest approach would be to understand the risk first. Blanket avoiding something because the chance for a bad outcome is not 0 is fairly lame.
And Michele and Rob Reiner were murdered by their own son and my uncle while going shopping. You don't have to do anything, but this kind of comment puts a huge stigma on homeless people and others.
This sounds like your uncle is part in the Reiner murders.
Don't have an uncle just in case!
the best thing that you can do for yourself maybe, but not for them...
Who says that's the advice "in England"? I'm in England and it isn't my advice.
Since it is Christmas and we are talking about welcoming strangers in your house, I think we need to remember the story of the author of the most popular Christmas Carrol ("Carrol of the bells") - Ukrainian composer Mykola Leontovych.
His family was hosting a stranger in their house for the night in 1921. Stranger said he has nowhere to go, so they allowed him to stay in the room with Leontovych himself.
The stranger ended up being a Russia undercover checkist who killed Leontovych and robbed his family. [0]
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mykola_Leontovych#Death
What is your intent in sharing this? Why do we need to remember this story? Do you - and others who are talking about how strangers might murder you and your family - really think that people don't consider that risk or something?