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To be sure I understand you clearly, are you making the claim that making sure people don't forget or lose track of court dates will help literally nobody avoid

by Kalium 7y ago

To be sure I understand you clearly, are you making the claim that making sure people don't forget or lose track of court dates will help literally nobody avoid going to jail?

lumens 7y ago
People for whom forgetfulness is the reason they'd miss a court date are likely solve their problem with a normal calendar reminder. Literally nobody is probably close to accurate.
- Kalium 7y ago
  One of the things I've learned is that a non-trivial number of people never acquired what some might consider basic life skills. Like keeping track of upcoming future events or adhering to a schedule. For all the important systemic problems that parent rights points to as very important, most of them have also proven to be rather intractable. Helping a few people whose major problem is that they never learned how to schedule strikes me as much more tractable. Sometimes helping people means having to choose between a minor-but-addressable aspect of a large problem and a major-but-intractable one. Just because someone thinks they've found somewhere small where they can make a difference doesn't mean they have earned scorn for not being intimidated by poverty and hopelessness. Small changes can add up. They certainly do a lot more than giving in to despair.
smacktoward 7y ago
Nobody starting a venture-backed company is doing so on the premise that their product will be only useful in a few edge cases.
nabnob 7y ago
I'm not denying that it might help people, it just seems like a half-assed bandaid solution given the breadth of the problem.
- Kalium 7y ago
  If you have an idea for an app that will directly tackle poverty and hopelessness, I think there are a lot of people willing to listen. This isn't an attempt to bandaid over the whole problem. It's an attempt to address a minor contributing factor that is much more tractable than hopelessness.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
jakelazaroff 7y ago
Of course not. The claim is that even though it might help people, it does nothing to fix the systemic issue, which is that we jail way too many people. The U.S. has less than 5% of the world's people, but almost 25% of the world's prison population [1]. The question is what happens when we try to radically reduce the number of people we send to prison. Is there still space for Promise to make the new justice system more efficient? Do they pivot? Do they scale down? Do they disband entirely? Or do they end up opposing efforts that would solve the root problem? I'm sure they have noble intentions. But a lot of these problems are not things that you can make money by fixing. They require laws and policy changes. Not band-aids on top of an inherently broken system from companies that are unaccountable to the citizens they're ostensibly helping. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/04/30/does-the-united-states-really-have-five-percent-of-worlds-population-and-one-quarter-of-the-worlds-prisoners/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/04/...
- Kalium 7y ago
  I don't need exposition, though I'm sure some other reader will appreciate the links and numbers. I've always found that the big problem with insisting on go-big-or-go-home approaches to problems is that the odds are very good that you wind up landing on go home. It might just be me - and I'm typing this while blearly-eyed tired - but it seems like insisting that systemic change is the only acceptable approach is a good way to make shockingly little progress. You wind up losing those all-or-nothing bets too often. If the company helps some people and fails as a company, I'm going to call that a victory for humanity. I understand that some might choose to avoid a potential way to improve some lives out of a fear that it could backfire in some possible futures. I don't know what to say except that I disagree with that weighting of probabilities.

by Kalium 7y ago

To be sure I understand you clearly, are you making the claim that making sure people don't forget or lose track of court dates will help literally nobody avoid going to jail?

lumens 7y ago

People for whom forgetfulness is the reason they'd miss a court date are likely solve their problem with a normal calendar reminder. Literally nobody is probably close to accurate.

Kalium 7y ago
One of the things I've learned is that a non-trivial number of people never acquired what some might consider basic life skills. Like keeping track of upcoming future events or adhering to a schedule. For all the important systemic problems that parent rights points to as very important, most of them have also proven to be rather intractable. Helping a few people whose major problem is that they never learned how to schedule strikes me as much more tractable. Sometimes helping people means having to choose between a minor-but-addressable aspect of a large problem and a major-but-intractable one. Just because someone thinks they've found somewhere small where they can make a difference doesn't mean they have earned scorn for not being intimidated by poverty and hopelessness. Small changes can add up. They certainly do a lot more than giving in to despair.

smacktoward 7y ago

Nobody starting a venture-backed company is doing so on the premise that their product will be only useful in a few edge cases.

nabnob 7y ago

I'm not denying that it might help people, it just seems like a half-assed bandaid solution given the breadth of the problem.

Kalium 7y ago
If you have an idea for an app that will directly tackle poverty and hopelessness, I think there are a lot of people willing to listen. This isn't an attempt to bandaid over the whole problem. It's an attempt to address a minor contributing factor that is much more tractable than hopelessness.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

jakelazaroff 7y ago

Of course not. The claim is that even though it might help people, it does nothing to fix the systemic issue, which is that we jail way too many people. The U.S. has less than 5% of the world's people, but almost 25% of the world's prison population [1]. The question is what happens when we try to radically reduce the number of people we send to prison. Is there still space for Promise to make the new justice system more efficient? Do they pivot? Do they scale down? Do they disband entirely? Or do they end up opposing efforts that would solve the root problem? I'm sure they have noble intentions. But a lot of these problems are not things that you can make money by fixing. They require laws and policy changes. Not band-aids on top of an inherently broken system from companies that are unaccountable to the citizens they're ostensibly helping. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/04/30/does-the-united-states-really-have-five-percent-of-worlds-population-and-one-quarter-of-the-worlds-prisoners/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/04/...

Kalium 7y ago
I don't need exposition, though I'm sure some other reader will appreciate the links and numbers. I've always found that the big problem with insisting on go-big-or-go-home approaches to problems is that the odds are very good that you wind up landing on go home. It might just be me - and I'm typing this while blearly-eyed tired - but it seems like insisting that systemic change is the only acceptable approach is a good way to make shockingly little progress. You wind up losing those all-or-nothing bets too often. If the company helps some people and fails as a company, I'm going to call that a victory for humanity. I understand that some might choose to avoid a potential way to improve some lives out of a fear that it could backfire in some possible futures. I don't know what to say except that I disagree with that weighting of probabilities.