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Is this not the problem that "credit scoring" systems are designed to solve? You've identified a major issue, certain segments of the homeless population are mu

Is this not the problem that "credit scoring" systems are designed to solve? You've identified a major issue, certain segments of the homeless population are much riskier for "civilians" than others. The problem is the guy who couldn't make rent last week is lumped together with the schizophrenic meth addict with a long history of violence. The solution, at least for the "harmless homeless" is to credibly broadcast to civilians and authorities their benign circumstances and histories. With widespread facial recognition and augmented reality, this might not be as hard to do as it seems. The homeless can be assigned a social credit score based on their criminal record, user rating by shelters and other provider institutions, employment history, and how long they've been homeless. Authorities, and potentially even civilians, can instantly identify and flag homeless people that are likely to be problematic. Without a doubt, this regime would certainly make life better for the harmless and down-on-their-luck homeless types. Yet my guess is most would oppose such a system. The point is tradeoffs exist in the social design space. Most of the down-on-the-luck homeless are unfairly stigmatized because society at large lumps them in with the violent, destructive and anti-social. We can make more efforts to draw a visible class distinction between those respective groups, yet it's often homeless advocates that oppose doing so.

pryce 7y ago
Yes, the groups and volunteers that work with homeless people, attempt to provide care, understanding, and social services, and if possible a path out of being a rough-sleeper are generally opposed to attempting to "solve" this complex set of issues with facial recognition and augmented reality, and this ought to cause us to hesitate before we make terrifyingly glib declarations like "without a doubt, this regime would certainly make life better for the [homeless & homeless types]".
- dcolkitt 7y ago
  > if possible a path out of being a rough-sleeper are generally opposed to attempting to "solve" this complex set of issues with facial recognition and augmented reality These two avenues are completely orthogonal to each other. There's no reason that you can't create a path out of homelessness, but still make the time somebody spends homeless more pleasant. Effort in one doesn't negate the other. And yes, without a doubt adding visible class distinctions between the down-on-their-luck homeless and the violent, destructive homeless would almost assuredly make life better for members of the former. You may still oppose the idea on other grounds, but there's absolutely no reason to doubt why raising a sub-group's social class status wouldn't improve their life.
benignslime 7y ago
Man if you're an engineer someone should take your creds.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
lostgame 7y ago
Your opening statement alone required the downvote I needed to give you. You have no idea what people have been through. The circumstances that may end them up with a poor credit score have little to do with how responsible or diligent that person is. Have some understanding. Not shocked your post has garnered more downvotes than mine.
- dcolkitt 7y ago
  > The circumstances that may end them up with a poor credit score have little to do with how responsible or diligent that person is. And yet, very few people support the abolition of financial credit scores. Or support expunging people's criminal records after they're done serving time. Or oppose the existence of sex offender registries. Or believe that restaurants should not be able to turn away someone on the basis of "no shoes, no shirt, no service". All of those things are ways that social institutions flatten people out into making quick, and often rough, decisions about people. All are subject to the very same criticism you raise. Their are all sorts of exigent circumstances that might make someone wind up with bad credit, or a criminal history, or on a sex offender registry, or without clean clothes for the day. Yet we as society accept a wide variety of surface level decisions about the human beings around it. We accept that the inevitability of false positives, because the overall gains of being able to easily segment people into social classes makes society as a whole more pleasant for everyone. At the end of the day, it's simply a matter of utilitarian calculus. If anything, a social credit score for the homeless is less unjust than any the above. Because there's no element of coercion to it. Ir wouldn't be used for any official institutional purposes, it's simply a way for users to quickly gather more information about the homeless people they're interacting with. I'm genuinely curious would you bite that bullet. Should we ban credit scores, and permanent criminal records, and sex offender registries, and dress/hygeine codes on the same basis that you oppose social credit scores for the homeless.
- Chris2048 7y ago
  > The circumstances that may end them up with a poor credit score have little to do with how responsible or diligent that person is How, exactly?
lifeisstillgood 7y ago
The problem here is you just re-invented the term "deserving poor". And the "undeserving homeless", the violent drug addict with mental health problems - well (s)he deserved our help about ten or fifteen years previously, when under funded health services let him slip through the net, or neighbours and uncles and aunts did not want to believe her dad was actually doing that to her and .... A lot of people have shitty lives and deserve our help - not just when the symptoms are impossible to ignore. I kind of see what you are reaching for - that there must be some solution. Yeah there is - but it's about a decade or two before people hit the streets, so we need to fix all the problems in our society that let children doing well in Kindergarten, fall that far. And we also need help for those that have fallen right now - and the article had some pretty good ideas about that I thought.
- dcolkitt 7y ago
  > The problem here is you just re-invented the term "deserving poor". You're citing this as if the concept of "deserving poor" isn't something that's already enshrined in public policy. For the vast majority of American voters segmenting the deserving from the undeserving poor is a feature not a bug. That's the reason we don't have unconditional UBI, and instead have a welfare system that's based on life circumstances. When we're more generous with children, the infirm, and the elderly than able-bodied adults who eschew work (or even worse commit crime), that is the concept of the deserving poor. And frankly I agree with that class distinction. > the violent drug addict with mental health problems - well (s)he deserved our help about ten or fifteen years previously And yet the very same criticism can be said about permanent criminal records or sex offender registries. Yet the vast majority of people in our society accept that committing a violent crime is "crossing the rubicon". Once you've done so, you'll always be a second-class citizen at best. This isn't something controversial, policies based on this belief are nearly universally supported by voters. Regardless of prior personal circumstances, American society always lays the blame primarily at the perpetrator himself.
  - trevyn 7y ago
    And it’s starting to become clear that this approach is not working.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
deleted 7y ago
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girvo 7y ago
That schizophrenic meth addict deserves help as much as anyone else does. Drug addicts don't become drug addicts just because we can: and mental health disorders are pretty much always comorbid with addiction.
- dcolkitt 7y ago
  And I'm not saying that they're not. But the reality is that that help isn't coming from the average person on the street. The institutions capable of actually providing help, already have access to this data. What's relevant is the proposed tech empowers the average person the street to quickly access and synthesize already public information. It's essentially no different than a real-time background check. And I would almost certainly think that you'd agree that in a situation where your personal safety is potentially at risk, that you'd prefer to have this information available to you. If you were hiring a baby-sitter for your kid, would you not conduct a background check. If the background check revealed that said babysitter was a schizophrenic meth addict, would you still hire that person? Of course not. That person needs help, but you as a private individual going about your life is not the entity capable of providing it.
  - girvo 7y ago
    You're arguing something that I never said, though. I agree with you: private individuals should not be expected to fix systemic issues on their own. But the government and the institutions and so on that we create sure should.
    - Chris2048 7y ago
      You said: > That schizophrenic meth addict deserves help as much as anyone else does. Does that not imply op suggested otherwise?
- wang_li 7y ago
  They deserve sympathy, but not necessarily the same care. For maximum societal benefit it may be that it's better to spend more on kids in school than schizophrenic meth addicts. We live in a world of scarcity, we can't do everything.

pryce 7y ago

Yes, the groups and volunteers that work with homeless people, attempt to provide care, understanding, and social services, and if possible a path out of being a rough-sleeper are generally opposed to attempting to "solve" this complex set of issues with facial recognition and augmented reality, and this ought to cause us to hesitate before we make terrifyingly glib declarations like "without a doubt, this regime would certainly make life better for the [homeless & homeless types]".

dcolkitt 7y ago
> if possible a path out of being a rough-sleeper are generally opposed to attempting to "solve" this complex set of issues with facial recognition and augmented reality These two avenues are completely orthogonal to each other. There's no reason that you can't create a path out of homelessness, but still make the time somebody spends homeless more pleasant. Effort in one doesn't negate the other. And yes, without a doubt adding visible class distinctions between the down-on-their-luck homeless and the violent, destructive homeless would almost assuredly make life better for members of the former. You may still oppose the idea on other grounds, but there's absolutely no reason to doubt why raising a sub-group's social class status wouldn't improve their life.

benignslime 7y ago

Man if you're an engineer someone should take your creds.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

lostgame 7y ago

Your opening statement alone required the downvote I needed to give you. You have no idea what people have been through. The circumstances that may end them up with a poor credit score have little to do with how responsible or diligent that person is. Have some understanding. Not shocked your post has garnered more downvotes than mine.

dcolkitt 7y ago
> The circumstances that may end them up with a poor credit score have little to do with how responsible or diligent that person is. And yet, very few people support the abolition of financial credit scores. Or support expunging people's criminal records after they're done serving time. Or oppose the existence of sex offender registries. Or believe that restaurants should not be able to turn away someone on the basis of "no shoes, no shirt, no service". All of those things are ways that social institutions flatten people out into making quick, and often rough, decisions about people. All are subject to the very same criticism you raise. Their are all sorts of exigent circumstances that might make someone wind up with bad credit, or a criminal history, or on a sex offender registry, or without clean clothes for the day. Yet we as society accept a wide variety of surface level decisions about the human beings around it. We accept that the inevitability of false positives, because the overall gains of being able to easily segment people into social classes makes society as a whole more pleasant for everyone. At the end of the day, it's simply a matter of utilitarian calculus. If anything, a social credit score for the homeless is less unjust than any the above. Because there's no element of coercion to it. Ir wouldn't be used for any official institutional purposes, it's simply a way for users to quickly gather more information about the homeless people they're interacting with. I'm genuinely curious would you bite that bullet. Should we ban credit scores, and permanent criminal records, and sex offender registries, and dress/hygeine codes on the same basis that you oppose social credit scores for the homeless.
Chris2048 7y ago
> The circumstances that may end them up with a poor credit score have little to do with how responsible or diligent that person is How, exactly?

lifeisstillgood 7y ago

The problem here is you just re-invented the term "deserving poor". And the "undeserving homeless", the violent drug addict with mental health problems - well (s)he deserved our help about ten or fifteen years previously, when under funded health services let him slip through the net, or neighbours and uncles and aunts did not want to believe her dad was actually doing that to her and .... A lot of people have shitty lives and deserve our help - not just when the symptoms are impossible to ignore. I kind of see what you are reaching for - that there must be some solution. Yeah there is - but it's about a decade or two before people hit the streets, so we need to fix all the problems in our society that let children doing well in Kindergarten, fall that far. And we also need help for those that have fallen right now - and the article had some pretty good ideas about that I thought.

dcolkitt 7y ago
> The problem here is you just re-invented the term "deserving poor". You're citing this as if the concept of "deserving poor" isn't something that's already enshrined in public policy. For the vast majority of American voters segmenting the deserving from the undeserving poor is a feature not a bug. That's the reason we don't have unconditional UBI, and instead have a welfare system that's based on life circumstances. When we're more generous with children, the infirm, and the elderly than able-bodied adults who eschew work (or even worse commit crime), that is the concept of the deserving poor. And frankly I agree with that class distinction. > the violent drug addict with mental health problems - well (s)he deserved our help about ten or fifteen years previously And yet the very same criticism can be said about permanent criminal records or sex offender registries. Yet the vast majority of people in our society accept that committing a violent crime is "crossing the rubicon". Once you've done so, you'll always be a second-class citizen at best. This isn't something controversial, policies based on this belief are nearly universally supported by voters. Regardless of prior personal circumstances, American society always lays the blame primarily at the perpetrator himself.
- trevyn 7y ago
  And it’s starting to become clear that this approach is not working.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

girvo 7y ago

That schizophrenic meth addict deserves help as much as anyone else does. Drug addicts don't become drug addicts just because we can: and mental health disorders are pretty much always comorbid with addiction.

dcolkitt 7y ago
And I'm not saying that they're not. But the reality is that that help isn't coming from the average person on the street. The institutions capable of actually providing help, already have access to this data. What's relevant is the proposed tech empowers the average person the street to quickly access and synthesize already public information. It's essentially no different than a real-time background check. And I would almost certainly think that you'd agree that in a situation where your personal safety is potentially at risk, that you'd prefer to have this information available to you. If you were hiring a baby-sitter for your kid, would you not conduct a background check. If the background check revealed that said babysitter was a schizophrenic meth addict, would you still hire that person? Of course not. That person needs help, but you as a private individual going about your life is not the entity capable of providing it.
- girvo 7y ago
  You're arguing something that I never said, though. I agree with you: private individuals should not be expected to fix systemic issues on their own. But the government and the institutions and so on that we create sure should.
  - Chris2048 7y ago
    You said: > That schizophrenic meth addict deserves help as much as anyone else does. Does that not imply op suggested otherwise?
wang_li 7y ago
They deserve sympathy, but not necessarily the same care. For maximum societal benefit it may be that it's better to spend more on kids in school than schizophrenic meth addicts. We live in a world of scarcity, we can't do everything.