5 ms·

I regularly volunteer in a shelter. I have had a few of the attendees go a long paranoid rants about staying off the grid, big brother and so on...It seems lik

by 5440 8y ago

I regularly volunteer in a shelter. I have had a few of the attendees go a long paranoid rants about staying off the grid, big brother and so on...It seems like a large number of people that I've met want to be on the street. Anyone have any thoughts or data to support or refute that?

SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
> But ONE System faces immense obstacles just getting people to sign up. City employees must gain subjects’ trust, learn their real name, and persuade them to join a monitoring system. Participants must sign the program’s medical-records privacy protection forms—a tough task for those suffering from mental illness. To get into permanent housing, program members need to pass a background check, which can take 45 days and requires an identification card, something that many people living on the street lack. The article addresses that. If you thought big brother was watching you, this would seem to fit nicely into that, wouldn't it?
- Bartweiss 8y ago
  > If you thought big brother was watching you, this would seem to fit nicely into that I've seen a few interesting discussions of this idea with regard to mental illness in general. If someone says they think the government can track their location at all times, is scanning their phonecalls, and shares that data with an international conspiracy... are they schizophrenic, or just talking about the NSA sharing data with Five Eyes? If you ask somebody to sign a narrow, research-only privacy waiver for a drug trial and they say you're going to share that info with a tech company that already has a secret profile of their entire life... the NHS did pass private medical records to DeepMind. If they say online ads are talking to them personally as part of a coordinated campaign to brainwash them, it turns out you can have that done to somebody for $30. It doesn't particularly seem like this is a general problem in terms of diagnosing or treating people; paranoia disorders follow pretty clear patterns of thinking, and they're usually self-validating whether or not there are actual conspiracies afoot. But the specific case of asking people to sign consents and agree to monitoring seems like a major hurdle, and I've seen some doctors point out that they can't even choose low-intimidation wordings because consent forms are usually written by legal to cover all possible cases.
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    Yeah, the disorder has gone from "big brother is watching you", which is a given, now it's "big brother is watching you specifically and they want to do you harm".
systemtest 8y ago
If you want to stay off the grid, why live in a city full of CCTV and other ways to track people? Why not live in the forest?
- philwelch 8y ago
  Because instead of being filled with bleeding-hearts who will give you food and money, the forest is filled with bears and wolves who will eat you.
  - systemtest 8y ago
    Money is just a way to track peoples spending. There are serial numbers on it. If you want to stay off the grid, live in a nice remote cabin.
    - ozzyman700 8y ago
      On what land is that even legal to do without paperwork?
      - Bartweiss 8y ago
        For a fixed cabin, effectively none, although I see two possible ways around this. The basic problem is that no matter what you find in terms of unregulated off-the-grid living, you need to own property in order to legally put up a permanent residence. Generally this involves being a titled landowner, which requires paperwork and in basically all cases payment, either to purchase land or via property taxes. (You can find local governments offering free land, but it comes with extensive rules and at most temporary property-tax exemptions. Tax-free land, meanwhile, will have to be purchased since homesteading is no longer legal. The newest direct homestead claims were made in 1986, while the indirect tactic of patented mining claims ended in 1994.) You could potentially get a landowner to guarantee you such rights for free, but that still sets a minimum standard of legally-binding paperwork signed with the owner. Option one to avoid paperwork is to live off the grid without a fixed address. Lots of 'tiny house' residents build homes that are in principle movable to avoid building code hurdles, but they generally own property; I'm not sure where it would be legal to park a mobile home or towable cabin indefinitely, but there might be places. You could live out of an RV or any other property that genuinely does relocate, but that's going to mean filing paperwork to keep a vehicle registered. Finally, you could abandon even a semi-fixed residence and just permanently camp on public lands. As far as I know this is legal if you can survive doing it, but you'll generally need to follow some inconvenient rules; through much of the Southwest you can camp freely on public land if you relocate by at least 25 miles every 14 days. Option two is to live illegally with an eye towards eventual legal ownership. Adverse possession must be "open and notorious" and generally can't be used to obtain government land, so you'd probably want to check out state laws and choose an abandoned mining claim or other unattended property. (Montana has remote land and particularly favorable rules for this sort of thing, and Alaska of course maximizes open space.) This will involve quite a lot of paperwork and lawyer's fees if the original owner contests your claim, but that's true of any legal challenge. Since title can be created without proactively filing any documents to show ownership, I think this counts as "without paperwork". To my knowledge, the 'traditional' approach where you build a fixed cabin somewhere and it's legal from day one without paperwork is completely impossible. Doing it with paperwork but no payment might be possible, but I don't know of a way.
monetus 8y ago
Just my opinion: I imagine that with neuroplasticity, there are plenty of positive connections to their current positions. Coping mechanisms can attach positivity to anything, can justify attaching negativity to anything else. It seems like if they hadn't learned how to cope they would be dead. :/
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
staticautomatic 8y ago
Those people are psychotic (to varying degrees). You should take what they say as true of how they feel, now how things are.
- komali2 8y ago
  Risky territory. They're still American citizens. By what mechanism do we determine that they're psychotic and therefore not allowed to live off the grid? Do we lock them up in a psych ward until they "admit" to their insanity, for the crime of ranting?
  - staticautomatic 8y ago
    Wanting to live off the grid is not the same thing as wanting to live in the conditions that SF homeless inhabit. And who said anything about locking them up?
- philwelch 8y ago
  Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    The paranoia being about being tracked, and then not want to give your information to a tech company who's devoted to tracking you doesn't seem totally unwarranted.
    - philwelch 8y ago
      Exactly my point :)
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
habosa 8y ago
If you meet someone who 'chooses' to be homeless, you should wonder what their other choices were. I doubt they chose homeless over, say, good job and loving family. Most of the people who 'choose' street life have truly awful alternatives. Drugs, mental illness, family abandonment, etc are often at play. Convincing themselves that they want to be homeless can also be a form of adaptation to make the condition more bearable.
analogmemory 8y ago
I have only anecdotal data to support my opinion that this is a truly dumb idea. It really tells of the lack of empathy for people on the street

by 5440 8y ago

SketchySeaBeast 8y ago

> But ONE System faces immense obstacles just getting people to sign up. City employees must gain subjects’ trust, learn their real name, and persuade them to join a monitoring system. Participants must sign the program’s medical-records privacy protection forms—a tough task for those suffering from mental illness. To get into permanent housing, program members need to pass a background check, which can take 45 days and requires an identification card, something that many people living on the street lack. The article addresses that. If you thought big brother was watching you, this would seem to fit nicely into that, wouldn't it?

Bartweiss 8y ago
> If you thought big brother was watching you, this would seem to fit nicely into that I've seen a few interesting discussions of this idea with regard to mental illness in general. If someone says they think the government can track their location at all times, is scanning their phonecalls, and shares that data with an international conspiracy... are they schizophrenic, or just talking about the NSA sharing data with Five Eyes? If you ask somebody to sign a narrow, research-only privacy waiver for a drug trial and they say you're going to share that info with a tech company that already has a secret profile of their entire life... the NHS did pass private medical records to DeepMind. If they say online ads are talking to them personally as part of a coordinated campaign to brainwash them, it turns out you can have that done to somebody for $30. It doesn't particularly seem like this is a general problem in terms of diagnosing or treating people; paranoia disorders follow pretty clear patterns of thinking, and they're usually self-validating whether or not there are actual conspiracies afoot. But the specific case of asking people to sign consents and agree to monitoring seems like a major hurdle, and I've seen some doctors point out that they can't even choose low-intimidation wordings because consent forms are usually written by legal to cover all possible cases.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  Yeah, the disorder has gone from "big brother is watching you", which is a given, now it's "big brother is watching you specifically and they want to do you harm".

systemtest 8y ago

If you want to stay off the grid, why live in a city full of CCTV and other ways to track people? Why not live in the forest?

philwelch 8y ago
Because instead of being filled with bleeding-hearts who will give you food and money, the forest is filled with bears and wolves who will eat you.
- systemtest 8y ago
  Money is just a way to track peoples spending. There are serial numbers on it. If you want to stay off the grid, live in a nice remote cabin.
  - ozzyman700 8y ago
    On what land is that even legal to do without paperwork?
    - Bartweiss 8y ago
      For a fixed cabin, effectively none, although I see two possible ways around this. The basic problem is that no matter what you find in terms of unregulated off-the-grid living, you need to own property in order to legally put up a permanent residence. Generally this involves being a titled landowner, which requires paperwork and in basically all cases payment, either to purchase land or via property taxes. (You can find local governments offering free land, but it comes with extensive rules and at most temporary property-tax exemptions. Tax-free land, meanwhile, will have to be purchased since homesteading is no longer legal. The newest direct homestead claims were made in 1986, while the indirect tactic of patented mining claims ended in 1994.) You could potentially get a landowner to guarantee you such rights for free, but that still sets a minimum standard of legally-binding paperwork signed with the owner. Option one to avoid paperwork is to live off the grid without a fixed address. Lots of 'tiny house' residents build homes that are in principle movable to avoid building code hurdles, but they generally own property; I'm not sure where it would be legal to park a mobile home or towable cabin indefinitely, but there might be places. You could live out of an RV or any other property that genuinely does relocate, but that's going to mean filing paperwork to keep a vehicle registered. Finally, you could abandon even a semi-fixed residence and just permanently camp on public lands. As far as I know this is legal if you can survive doing it, but you'll generally need to follow some inconvenient rules; through much of the Southwest you can camp freely on public land if you relocate by at least 25 miles every 14 days. Option two is to live illegally with an eye towards eventual legal ownership. Adverse possession must be "open and notorious" and generally can't be used to obtain government land, so you'd probably want to check out state laws and choose an abandoned mining claim or other unattended property. (Montana has remote land and particularly favorable rules for this sort of thing, and Alaska of course maximizes open space.) This will involve quite a lot of paperwork and lawyer's fees if the original owner contests your claim, but that's true of any legal challenge. Since title can be created without proactively filing any documents to show ownership, I think this counts as "without paperwork". To my knowledge, the 'traditional' approach where you build a fixed cabin somewhere and it's legal from day one without paperwork is completely impossible. Doing it with paperwork but no payment might be possible, but I don't know of a way.

monetus 8y ago

Just my opinion: I imagine that with neuroplasticity, there are plenty of positive connections to their current positions. Coping mechanisms can attach positivity to anything, can justify attaching negativity to anything else. It seems like if they hadn't learned how to cope they would be dead. :/

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

staticautomatic 8y ago

Those people are psychotic (to varying degrees). You should take what they say as true of how they feel, now how things are.

komali2 8y ago
Risky territory. They're still American citizens. By what mechanism do we determine that they're psychotic and therefore not allowed to live off the grid? Do we lock them up in a psych ward until they "admit" to their insanity, for the crime of ranting?
- staticautomatic 8y ago
  Wanting to live off the grid is not the same thing as wanting to live in the conditions that SF homeless inhabit. And who said anything about locking them up?
philwelch 8y ago
Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  The paranoia being about being tracked, and then not want to give your information to a tech company who's devoted to tracking you doesn't seem totally unwarranted.
  - philwelch 8y ago
    Exactly my point :)
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

habosa 8y ago

If you meet someone who 'chooses' to be homeless, you should wonder what their other choices were. I doubt they chose homeless over, say, good job and loving family. Most of the people who 'choose' street life have truly awful alternatives. Drugs, mental illness, family abandonment, etc are often at play. Convincing themselves that they want to be homeless can also be a form of adaptation to make the condition more bearable.

analogmemory 8y ago

I have only anecdotal data to support my opinion that this is a truly dumb idea. It really tells of the lack of empathy for people on the street