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Sure, but it's so insufficient that to even bring it up is a red flag. It's like if we were all getting together to try and solve climate change and someone sai

Sure, but it's so insufficient that to even bring it up is a red flag. It's like if we were all getting together to try and solve climate change and someone said "I'm super religious, I spent the last week in nature speaking with God, and it's clear to me that while there are other things we can and should do, this will never work without everyone individually praying every day." We would collectively be like "huh, convenient that the thing you're already super invested in seems to be critical to our efforts here, despite being completely unbacked by evidence...." It's simply not the case that people will start making better decisions to the point that homelessness diminishes to background noise. It's a non-solution. We have to question the perspective of a leader who keeps pushing clear non-solutions. The end of the road of the personal responsibility argument is "'good' people shouldn't waste their resources on irresponsible people". But homelessness isn't the result of an outbreak of personal irresponsibility (is anything?), so typically when leaders start talking about it, something else is up.

DiggyJohnson 5y ago
> Sure, but it's so insufficient that to even bring it up is a red flag. This is the crux of it. Your position disagrees with mine, that's fine, but please don't assume that bringing up an issue based on personal experience with the problem is a "red flag." That's disingenuous and unproductive. You then go on to strawman a bizarre tale of a religious person being overly evangelical about a deeply individual experience. Homelessness is a problem of society, and people. Yes we cannot address the individual at every point in a conversation, but that shouldn't mean we can't talk about the problems affecting individuals.
- camgunz 5y ago
  Personal experiences are valid and important, but they're almost never representative. That's why we run studies and experiments: our anecdotal experiences don't give us enough data and often lead to generalization fallacies. They also typically come along with confirmation bias, a pitfall which the Mayor here likely fell into. For the rest of your post, I'm not saying we can't talk about problems affecting individuals? I think a lot of good can be done on the individual level: drug treatment, counseling, medical care, etc. Not sure where you're coming up with any of this.

DiggyJohnson 5y ago

> Sure, but it's so insufficient that to even bring it up is a red flag. This is the crux of it. Your position disagrees with mine, that's fine, but please don't assume that bringing up an issue based on personal experience with the problem is a "red flag." That's disingenuous and unproductive. You then go on to strawman a bizarre tale of a religious person being overly evangelical about a deeply individual experience. Homelessness is a problem of society, and people. Yes we cannot address the individual at every point in a conversation, but that shouldn't mean we can't talk about the problems affecting individuals.

camgunz 5y ago
Personal experiences are valid and important, but they're almost never representative. That's why we run studies and experiments: our anecdotal experiences don't give us enough data and often lead to generalization fallacies. They also typically come along with confirmation bias, a pitfall which the Mayor here likely fell into. For the rest of your post, I'm not saying we can't talk about problems affecting individuals? I think a lot of good can be done on the individual level: drug treatment, counseling, medical care, etc. Not sure where you're coming up with any of this.