It's pretty unclear to me exactly what you fundamentally disagree with me about. I'm going to pick out a couple of your comments to try to clear this up. > The

It's pretty unclear to me exactly what you fundamentally disagree with me about. I'm going to pick out a couple of your comments to try to clear this up. > The implication of your use of 'irony' is that, if I had been homeless, I wouldn't avoid them or talk about avoiding them. But you treat this opinion as fact. I don't agree with your opinion and find passing off an opinion as fact is sub-optimal communication. Which seems ironic to me in a post that is seeking others to communicate more optimally. No, that is not the implication of describing the irony in your comment. The implication is there is a mismatch between how deeply you believe you relate to the struggles of homelessness, and the degree to which you willingly take on _extra_ inconvenience to avoid encountering the homeless. I provided no opinion on that mismatch, I simply pointed it out. The only thing approaching an opinion I shared was expressing incredulity at how well a housed, employed person can completely relate to the struggles of homelessness. My opinion was that they could not unless they had previously been homeless—but we cleared that up as just unfortunate phrasing. > From my perspective, you have to be pretty disconnected from reality to think it's unreasonable, bad, or negative in any way to avoid such places. So I completely disagree with the underlying opinion and premise you have. This "underlying opinion and premise" you think I have is something you are projecting onto me and my state of mind. I have in no way in any of my comments suggested it is unreasonable, bad, or negative to avoid something dangerous. You've invented that claim. > People normally have feelings that are conflictive. Life is fundamentally filled with conflicting forces, where both sides are needed and can be correct at the same time. This is perfectly normal and healthy. Exactly. The conflict between what we believe we believe and what we do is the only thing I've been trying to point out here. > You pointed it out like it's something wrong. No. You're misconstruing me observing it into me judging you for it. This is why you are reacting the way you are to my comments. I did not point out that people normally have conflicting feelings like it's something wrong. I simply pointed it out to make a note of its presence in your original comment. More accurately, I pointed out that there was a conflict between what you believe about your understanding of the homeless struggle and the way you behave when confronted with the homeless in certain situations. I made no judgment that this conflict was either "good" or "bad"—I only observed it was present. > Again, we fundamentally disagree ... accepting of inconvenience is something I do ... but avoidance of inconvenience is also something I do ... When you have a nuanced value system, nuanced actions aren't contradictory to simplistic values. This is because simplistic values simply seem immature and incompatible with how the world works. I'm pretty sure we do not fundamentally disagree. However, you keep reading a lot more into my comments than I have said and/or presented. You then keep reacting to what you are incorrectly attributing to me, instead of reacting to what I am actually saying. Simplistic values are the starting point for the feedback loop through which we develop nuance—they're the priors. Our actions and encounters in "the real world" are data points that allow us to reflect on these priors, iterating on aligning our beliefs and actions over time. I don't think it's possible to develop any nuance without this feedback loop. For example, we might start with a simplistic value of "do no harm", and as we go through life, we have experiences that provide a series of exceptions to that rule. This doesn't invalidate the value of "do no harm", but it provides opportunities to refine the value into something more nuanced that better reflects the real world. If I believe I believe in doing no harm to others, and I then find myself in a situation where I am physically assaulted and fight back—doing harm to my assailant in the process—my actions are now in conflict with my beliefs, and I engage the feedback loop to update to something like "do no harm unless you are forced to defend yourself". Not sure what you fundamentally disagree with here. > Life isn't an all or nothing. I don't think my actions were at odds with what I said or believe in any way that's unreasonable. I never suggested life was all or nothing. Nor did I suggest your actions were unreasonably at odds with what you said you believe. I only pointed out they appeared to be at odds. I made no further judgment. Here are a couple more examples of actions and beliefs being at odds—offered as things I might observe, without passing judgment: - Alice, a young lady walking alone, believes a particular neighborhood is dangerous as a result of recent sexual assaults—and then she walks into that neighborhood. - John, a white man, believes he understands the struggle of minorities as a result of centuries of systemic racism—and then he refers to some person in a moment of anger with a racial slur. - Pete, a straight man, believes he has no problem with LGBTQ+ persons, and supports their right to be who they are—and then he punches a gay man who hits on him at a bar. - Jane, a single mother, believes it would be better to live in a society that offered universal healthcare and free, high-quality childcare to all its citizens—and then votes for a political candidate who opposes such programs. Yes, life is full of instances where our actions are in conflict with what we believe we believe. And that is what I am pointing out. Based on everything you've written here, it doesn't sound like you actually disagree—it seems you're maybe just reacting negatively to it being pointed out in one of your comments, and you're inventing, projecting, and attributing judgment where there was none.