[Kalium]

OK. Let's be kind and decent to people. What do you think that looks like, in terms of actual behavior? Instead of just walking past someone panhandling, what does a kind and decent reaction look like? Would you consider looking them in the eye and saying "No" to be kindness and decency? If not, what is - listening to their story? Giving money? Expressing sympathy? How much of a person's day should be devoted to kindness and decency?

Some would characterize the resources devoted to services for the most vulnerable among us as kindness and decency expressed. Which suggests that a progressive, sensitive solution started decades ago. What's the next step?

[monktastic1]

Kindness isn't in the action but the intent. I cannot give you a precise characterization of that intent, but I trust you know it when you experience it. Take a moment and reflect on a moment you experienced deep, profound kindness so that we can be on the same wavelength here.

Kind motivation can be expressed fiercely (as in "tough love"), and conversely, many seemingly-kind actions sprout from an unwholesome place. So I can't tell you what "kind behavior" looks like.

The progressive solutions you see today are the natural result of blossoming intent. _First_ we start learning to see black people, gay people, women, etc. as equal to ourselves, and then our actions, behaviors, and ultimately policies reflect that choice. We're headed in the right direction.

When a behavior is only _ostensibly_ kind -- like when I'm trying to shovel dirty people away under the guise of helping them -- at best I prolong the real problem, and at worst I get an atrocity.

So I cannot give you an actual solution to the homelessness problem, other than to say: motivation matters a lot more than we tech types often consider.

[Kalium]

> Take a moment and reflect on a moment you experienced deep, profound kindness so that we can be on theh same wavelength here.

OK. Focused. Right here with you.

> The progressive solutions you see today are the natural result of blossoming intent.

The progressive solutions I see today look like kindness and decency unmoored from any notion of efficiency. There's no concern for what actually advances the goals we purport to care about with kindness and decency. There's just actions that leave us feeling that we've seen the homeless as equal people and thought kind things about them and expressed this with large dollops of cash and social tolerance.

Given that this has been going on for decades, I harbor a seed of doubt that this blossoming intent is going to manifest as effective policy in the near future. I find myself thinking that warm fuzzies are great, but helping people is better.

> When a behavior is only _ostensibly_ kind -- like when I'm trying to shovel dirty people away under the guise of helping them -- at best I prolong the real problem, and at worst I get an atrocity.

Prolonging the problem, solving the problem, and causing atrocities are all things that can result from actions. They are things that can result from actions rooted in cruelty and from actions rooted in kindness alike. Mao starved millions of people while genuinely trying to help them.

Thank you for trying. You have helped me understand why SF's policies are so completely broken - they're created and executed by people whose only real measurement is purity of motivation and for whom actually helping people is largely irrelevant.

[monktastic1]

> Mao starved millions of people while genuinely trying to help them.

It's of course impossible to truly know another's motivations, but I don't agree that this was true of Mao.

For my part, I don't believe that the "only real measurement" is purity of motivation. But I do believe that when policies are created under the disingenuous guise of kindness (as I suspect the ones from this article are) they ultimately do more harm than good.

Anyway, thank you for at least remaining polite.

[Kalium]

I want you to take a moment and focus on a time in your life when you tried, deeply and genuinely tried something, and saw your attempt fail because your pure intent wasn't the same as a workable approach. I want us to be on the same wavelength here. It's an experience that every engineer has at least once.

One cannot reverse-engineer intentions from results. Great suffering can result from the kindest of intentions. Such outcomes do not invalidate the deep and genuine kindness felt, the intent that bloomed therein, or the suffering that resulted. One should never confuse intent for effect and one should never assume good intent automatically leads to good results. More than one person has died from a misguided blooming of genuine kindness.

I implore you to consider something objective, countable, and measurable. Like people helped for money spent, rather than genuineness of kindness or blooming of intent. Think like an engineer trying to solve a problem. Decades of pure motives, deep and genuine kindness, and overflowing decency got us here. There's little reason to think more will fix matters, and there are thousands of people who could really use some practical help (and who won't look too closely at how genuine your kindness is if it drives help).

[monktastic1]

> I implore you to consider something objective, countable, and measurable. Like people helped for money spent, rather than genuineness of kindness or blooming of intent.

I don't think we disagree there. I even attended a conference (the Effective Altruism Summit) on just this topic. I also put my money where my mouth is. The only reason I spend time on any of this is because I've spent more than a little time introspecting on my true motives.

Maybe I can be more precise in what I'm trying to communicate.

Take two people with equal capacities for analytical reasoning and ask them to solve some human problem. Suppose that in the first person, the realization of empathy has not deeply taken root.

Even if they generate superficially similar solutions, the first will likely be infused with a self-serving agenda in ways that will become visible in myriad details of its implementation. (In fact, without such an agenda, the first person wouldn't ever consider solving the problem on his own in the first place.)

I'm not talking about a sociopath here. I'm talking about a mostly decent human being, whose mind is nevertheless generally too busy to perceive the tremendous amount of need around him (or else regards it disdainfully). This describes me (though hopefully a little less in recent years) as well as the vast majority of my colleagues.

Silicon Valley already has the talent. That talent could use a little more heart.

[Kalium]

I understand why you feel this way. It seems impossible that so much talent and intelligence could fail to solve such obviously tractable problems, if but moved by basic empathy and kindness and decency to examine them seriously. Silicon Valley can do anything it sets its mind to. History makes that plain!

I don't think I agree. I think the kinds of problems Silicon Valley can effectively solve are limited in nature and scope. I think the problems surrounding homelessness in Silicon Valley and the larger Bay are fundamentally political, shaped by decades of an excess of empathy and kindness and decency and a dearth of pragmatism. I think that an understanding of this situation has driven away many with empathy for their own emotional self-preservation.

In short, I don't agree that the problem is that mostly decent human beings fail to see the tremendous amount of need around them. I think the problem is that mostly decent human beings see the need, and also that it exists within an intractable political framework. Thus, they retreat rather than break themselves on those rocks of kindness and decency gone horrifyingly wrong.

The problem is not a lack of empathy or lack of awareness. The problem is that we're in a scenario where you cannot question the cost-effectiveness of homelessness spending without someone retorting "Those people work really hard!", as if that is some kind of response to the point raised.