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Happy Christmas, folks! > please have some humanity about the homeless In the US, the homeless population exploded, in the 1980s, when they closed down all th

Happy Christmas, folks! > please have some humanity about the homeless In the US, the homeless population exploded, in the 1980s, when they closed down all the mental institutions. Before that, there was a far less pervasive homeless population in urban areas. Being "on the spectrum," myself (but highly functional), I can attest to how easy it is for an autistic person's life to go sideways. Many autistic folks have very specialized and advanced skills, which can sometimes be applicable to making a living (like programming, or visual design). However, we're "different," which often leads to being shunned/traumatized by neurotypicals. I got used to folks eventually walking away from relationships, for no discernible reason. Used to really bother me, until I figured it out. Now, I just take it in stride, and appreciate whatever time I get to spend with folks. If anyone has seen The Accountant (the first one), there's a scene, near the end, where Ben Affleck's character is considering putting the moves on Anna Kendrick's character, but remembers his father, admonishing him that people will always end up being frightened of "the difference," and he sneaks out, instead. That scene almost brought me to tears, I could relate so well. For some folks, it's much worse. They can be relentlessly bullied, abused, locked up, or shunned, which leaves psychological scars that manifest as antisocial behavior, so they are never given a chance to show what they can do.

globalnode 10mo ago
People like this really are at the mercy of fate, and the people they come into contact with throughout their lives. Its so unfair. But thankfully this story had a good outcome. Happy Christmas to you and everyone else here as well :)
fragmede 10mo ago
Thankfully LLMs have ingested enough of human writing that one afflicted in such a way can describe the exact set of circumstances and ask the LLM how they made the other people feel, and figure out why they got expelled from the group this time. It never stops happening for us. I'm 42 now and it's happened twice this past year. But at least now I can figure out what it is I did wrong and how to prevent that from happening again.
- namanyayg 10mo ago
  I'm trying to understand this better, possible to share any examples?
  - fragmede 10mo ago
    Not going to share a personal example, but eg plug "I bought my mom a vacuum cleaner for her birthday. Why did she get mad at me? she keeps complaining about the old one!" into ChatGPT vs find me any human willing to sit down and have that as an actual discussion with me as a human of any age. I'm just supposed to get it? I'm a fucking monster and unworthy of being loved because I need that explained to me? "You should just know!" Fuck people.
    - catlikesshrimp 10mo ago
      To be honest, that can happen to any kid depending on the background I grew up at a time when a home appliance was an acceptable gift for the woman in charge. I heard women complaining progressively more through time, and now it is not an acceptable gift.
      - aleph_minus_one 10mo ago
        > I grew up at a time when a home appliance was an acceptable gift for the woman in charge. This is also how I grew up (my parents were a little bit more on the conservative side). This together with the fact that I am not deeply knowledgable in the US-American common practices also made it hard for me to understand why the mother was angry about this gift, in particular considering that she did complain about the old one.
        fcatalan 10mo ago
        I bought a expensive fancy pan for my wife's birthday a few years ago. We both cook, clean and do groceries and chores equally so it never occurred to me that it was inappropriate. We both like cooking. I'm more of a stewpot guy while she's better in general at "pan stuff" and had been complaining about the old pan. She chided me a bit for spending so much on a pan and there was that. But when I mentioned it over coffee at work most of my female colleagues were aghast. I defended myself saying something like "It's the 21st century, we are way past the point that I can't gift a pan to my wife" and they said "Well that might be at YOUR home!", and I learned a thing.
ajb 10mo ago
Non-neurotypicals can receive bad treatment from neurotypicals. But, it's also a trap to start thinking that neurotypicals are 100% intolerant. The corollary of not knowing when they're offending people, is that they also don't know when they're receiving tolerance - which is actually a lot; although it's understandable that this is not obvious.
- Forgeties79 10mo ago
  > But, it's also a trap to start thinking that neurotypicals are 100% intolerant. I didn’t get that at all from what they said tbh
  - ajb 10mo ago
    Yeah not trying to imply the GP did. Just offering another perspective.
- idiotsecant 10mo ago
  The default instinctual reaction of nearly everyone to someone who lets the mask slip and exhibits spectrum behaviours is somewhat like they would react to seeing a large spider. The knee jerk baked in emotional response is a mix of fear, disgust, and 'other'ing. OP isn't making some claim that neurotypicals are consciously intolerant. I would, however, make the claim that regardless of what actions people consciously take, this initial reaction is hard to hide and is profoundly impactful to the people who see it a million times.
  - aleph_minus_one 10mo ago
    > The default instinctual reaction of nearly everyone to someone who lets the mask slip and exhibits spectrum behaviours is somewhat like they would react to seeing a large spider. The knee jerk baked in emotional response is a mix of fear, disgust, and 'other'ing. OP isn't making some claim that neurotypicals are consciously intolerant. I would, however, make the claim that regardless of what actions people consciously take, this initial reaction is hard to hide and is profoundly impactful to the people who see it a million times. Then these neurotypicals should stop their hypocrisis of preaching tolerance and considering themselves to be tolerant.
mschuster91 10mo ago
> In the US, the homeless population exploded, in the 1980s, when they closed down all the mental institutions. ... and for good reason, because it turns out that people with no support network (which most mentally ill people and a lot of prisoners are) are perfect victims for all kinds of abuse - both from other inmates and from "wardens". They didn't end up in an asylum randomly, they ended up in there because their family didn't want or could not provide care for them. And it's not just mental "health" institutions or prisons... all forms of "care" breed abuse. The Catholic Church for example is still reeling from constant discoveries of abused children in orphanages. Elder care institutions, particularly severely understaffed, routinely have to deal with inmates being injured by anything from a lack of care (e.g. bed sores) over physical abuse to sexual abuse [1]. And to make it worse... private/family care without independent oversight is just as bad. A lot of homeschooled children are heavily abused, caregiver burnout and its fallout is also a nasty issue, and particularly in men with dementia, they can also be the abusers. In the end, the root problem is that we as a society haven't yet figured out how to properly deal with the balance between care work, employment work and rest, and we also haven't figured out how to properly reward and audit care work. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jun/06/shocking-rate-of-sexual-abuse-against-aged-care-residents-barely-changed-since-royal-commission https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jun/06/shock...
- hamdingers 10mo ago
  No, the reason was to save tax money by making mental healthcare a personal responsibility instead of a social one. There were many justifications (abuse, new drugs, etc), but the reason was cost. Abuse was/is a reason to improve controls over abuse and increase funding to improve conditions. It is not a good reason to abandon inpatient care wholesale. Imagine if we had made the same decision about hospitals or schools, both of which engaged in routine abuse in the early 20th century.
  - cogman10 10mo ago
    > reason was cost Yeah, it was supposed to be replaced with a kinder/gentler system, but that never came. They shut down the support system completely with a "we'll figure out how to fix this later" and that never came. I think the solution is pretty obvious, TBH. Pay people to take care of their family with disabilities. It's often a full time job to take care of someone with a severe disability. Some states do make allowances to pay out to family caregivers, but it's a convoluted system where you have to be employed by a private care agency which is ultimately reimbursed for the care. There's a pointless private business in the way just adding on admin fees. But there desperately needs to be something in place for people without that support. Parents die/leave/are incarcerated and we really don't have any sort of system setup to handle that.
ento 10mo ago
> people will always end up being frightened of "the difference" I've also come to accept this about myself, but I had to stumble through a dark tunnel of feeling inadequate and feeling like an inhuman monster. The typical list of traits that should not be used as a basis for discrimination is on a spectrum of how instinctual or fear-based it is, which I don't think have seen mentioned in training materials on unconscious bias.
echelon 10mo ago
> when they closed down all the mental institutions. Why on earth did we do this? I look back at period pieces - films showcasing the 40s, 50s, etc., and it seems like mental institutions would be a wonderful way to house these folks and keep them fed and warm. I know there were abuses, but we have cameras now. And that's surely better than leaving them on the streets to freeze to death. I can't imagine it would cost that much, and it would clean up the streets of drugs and homelessness. And reduce the tax on emergency services responding to calls. I feel so bad for what we as a society do to these people. When my city closed down the local homeless shelter in midtown, the people on Reddit - supposedly leftists - cheered. I was so sad. These are the same people that call me fascist all the time for being a fiscal moderate and saying we shouldn't build subway to the suburbs. Being humanitarian would cost 1/10,000th of that.
- throwaway078315 10mo ago
  If you take the average person who doesn’t have a mental illness and has no relationship with anyone who does, the system we have is pretty well optimized for their needs. We balance many difficult and inherently conflicting goals, such as: 1) minimizing treatment, which is expensive and does have bad side effects 2) sufficiently good access to treatment where it’s economical for prevention 3) fear of being wrongly hospitalized (error, political motivation, etc.) 4) sufficient ability to lock other people up for frightening or violent behavior in public It’s a tough problem, but I think the tradeoffs are managed near optimally, granting that the rights and interests of the mentally ill don’t matter at all to most public officials or voters.
  - dgacmu 10mo ago
    Except that those same people then complain about how many homeless people there are. Reagan's destruction of the mental health system was really awful. The system needed improvement and more accountability, but we need it. I had an adult step-brother too ill with schizophrenia to be cared for at home (he began making violent threats and stealing things, up to and including my mom's car), but under the current threshold for being compelled to take his medication. My mom (his step-mom; an attorney) spent years trying to find ways to get him help, but he bounced in and out of being homeless and ended up being murdered at about age 60 in a halfway house. Just a stupid, tragic waste of a life and all of the resources mis-allocated. Sadly, it's just another example of how the US is penny-wise and pound-foolish when it comes to social services.
BurningFrog 10mo ago
Around the same time, much of the US also stopped building housing at the rate needed. I'm pretty sure there would be far less homeless if there were a lot more homes around.
itsthecourier 10mo ago
don't worry, brother, come to Reddit where all we autists live in harmony
- KPGv2 10mo ago
  Redditors are anything but harmonious with each other
fsckboy 10mo ago
>In the US, the homeless population exploded, in the 1980s, when they closed down all the mental institutions it was the 1970s, SCOTUS decision in O'Connor v. Donaldson, when the court said that the mentally ill who were not dangerous could not be held in institutions against their will. The 1960s had seen a series of scandals concerning callous treatment of inmates in institutions (for example, see Titticut Follies) and that created the climate for deinstitutionalization.

globalnode 10mo ago

People like this really are at the mercy of fate, and the people they come into contact with throughout their lives. Its so unfair. But thankfully this story had a good outcome. Happy Christmas to you and everyone else here as well :)

fragmede 10mo ago

Thankfully LLMs have ingested enough of human writing that one afflicted in such a way can describe the exact set of circumstances and ask the LLM how they made the other people feel, and figure out why they got expelled from the group this time. It never stops happening for us. I'm 42 now and it's happened twice this past year. But at least now I can figure out what it is I did wrong and how to prevent that from happening again.

namanyayg 10mo ago
I'm trying to understand this better, possible to share any examples?
- fragmede 10mo ago
  Not going to share a personal example, but eg plug "I bought my mom a vacuum cleaner for her birthday. Why did she get mad at me? she keeps complaining about the old one!" into ChatGPT vs find me any human willing to sit down and have that as an actual discussion with me as a human of any age. I'm just supposed to get it? I'm a fucking monster and unworthy of being loved because I need that explained to me? "You should just know!" Fuck people.
  - catlikesshrimp 10mo ago
    To be honest, that can happen to any kid depending on the background I grew up at a time when a home appliance was an acceptable gift for the woman in charge. I heard women complaining progressively more through time, and now it is not an acceptable gift.
    - aleph_minus_one 10mo ago
      > I grew up at a time when a home appliance was an acceptable gift for the woman in charge. This is also how I grew up (my parents were a little bit more on the conservative side). This together with the fact that I am not deeply knowledgable in the US-American common practices also made it hard for me to understand why the mother was angry about this gift, in particular considering that she did complain about the old one.
      - fcatalan 10mo ago
        I bought a expensive fancy pan for my wife's birthday a few years ago. We both cook, clean and do groceries and chores equally so it never occurred to me that it was inappropriate. We both like cooking. I'm more of a stewpot guy while she's better in general at "pan stuff" and had been complaining about the old pan. She chided me a bit for spending so much on a pan and there was that. But when I mentioned it over coffee at work most of my female colleagues were aghast. I defended myself saying something like "It's the 21st century, we are way past the point that I can't gift a pan to my wife" and they said "Well that might be at YOUR home!", and I learned a thing.

ajb 10mo ago

Non-neurotypicals can receive bad treatment from neurotypicals. But, it's also a trap to start thinking that neurotypicals are 100% intolerant. The corollary of not knowing when they're offending people, is that they also don't know when they're receiving tolerance - which is actually a lot; although it's understandable that this is not obvious.

Forgeties79 10mo ago
> But, it's also a trap to start thinking that neurotypicals are 100% intolerant. I didn’t get that at all from what they said tbh
- ajb 10mo ago
  Yeah not trying to imply the GP did. Just offering another perspective.
idiotsecant 10mo ago
The default instinctual reaction of nearly everyone to someone who lets the mask slip and exhibits spectrum behaviours is somewhat like they would react to seeing a large spider. The knee jerk baked in emotional response is a mix of fear, disgust, and 'other'ing. OP isn't making some claim that neurotypicals are consciously intolerant. I would, however, make the claim that regardless of what actions people consciously take, this initial reaction is hard to hide and is profoundly impactful to the people who see it a million times.
- aleph_minus_one 10mo ago
  > The default instinctual reaction of nearly everyone to someone who lets the mask slip and exhibits spectrum behaviours is somewhat like they would react to seeing a large spider. The knee jerk baked in emotional response is a mix of fear, disgust, and 'other'ing. OP isn't making some claim that neurotypicals are consciously intolerant. I would, however, make the claim that regardless of what actions people consciously take, this initial reaction is hard to hide and is profoundly impactful to the people who see it a million times. Then these neurotypicals should stop their hypocrisis of preaching tolerance and considering themselves to be tolerant.

mschuster91 10mo ago

> In the US, the homeless population exploded, in the 1980s, when they closed down all the mental institutions. ... and for good reason, because it turns out that people with no support network (which most mentally ill people and a lot of prisoners are) are perfect victims for all kinds of abuse - both from other inmates and from "wardens". They didn't end up in an asylum randomly, they ended up in there because their family didn't want or could not provide care for them. And it's not just mental "health" institutions or prisons... all forms of "care" breed abuse. The Catholic Church for example is still reeling from constant discoveries of abused children in orphanages. Elder care institutions, particularly severely understaffed, routinely have to deal with inmates being injured by anything from a lack of care (e.g. bed sores) over physical abuse to sexual abuse [1]. And to make it worse... private/family care without independent oversight is just as bad. A lot of homeschooled children are heavily abused, caregiver burnout and its fallout is also a nasty issue, and particularly in men with dementia, they can also be the abusers. In the end, the root problem is that we as a society haven't yet figured out how to properly deal with the balance between care work, employment work and rest, and we also haven't figured out how to properly reward and audit care work. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jun/06/shocking-rate-of-sexual-abuse-against-aged-care-residents-barely-changed-since-royal-commission https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jun/06/shock...

hamdingers 10mo ago
No, the reason was to save tax money by making mental healthcare a personal responsibility instead of a social one. There were many justifications (abuse, new drugs, etc), but the reason was cost. Abuse was/is a reason to improve controls over abuse and increase funding to improve conditions. It is not a good reason to abandon inpatient care wholesale. Imagine if we had made the same decision about hospitals or schools, both of which engaged in routine abuse in the early 20th century.
- cogman10 10mo ago
  > reason was cost Yeah, it was supposed to be replaced with a kinder/gentler system, but that never came. They shut down the support system completely with a "we'll figure out how to fix this later" and that never came. I think the solution is pretty obvious, TBH. Pay people to take care of their family with disabilities. It's often a full time job to take care of someone with a severe disability. Some states do make allowances to pay out to family caregivers, but it's a convoluted system where you have to be employed by a private care agency which is ultimately reimbursed for the care. There's a pointless private business in the way just adding on admin fees. But there desperately needs to be something in place for people without that support. Parents die/leave/are incarcerated and we really don't have any sort of system setup to handle that.

ento 10mo ago

> people will always end up being frightened of "the difference" I've also come to accept this about myself, but I had to stumble through a dark tunnel of feeling inadequate and feeling like an inhuman monster. The typical list of traits that should not be used as a basis for discrimination is on a spectrum of how instinctual or fear-based it is, which I don't think have seen mentioned in training materials on unconscious bias.

echelon 10mo ago

> when they closed down all the mental institutions. Why on earth did we do this? I look back at period pieces - films showcasing the 40s, 50s, etc., and it seems like mental institutions would be a wonderful way to house these folks and keep them fed and warm. I know there were abuses, but we have cameras now. And that's surely better than leaving them on the streets to freeze to death. I can't imagine it would cost that much, and it would clean up the streets of drugs and homelessness. And reduce the tax on emergency services responding to calls. I feel so bad for what we as a society do to these people. When my city closed down the local homeless shelter in midtown, the people on Reddit - supposedly leftists - cheered. I was so sad. These are the same people that call me fascist all the time for being a fiscal moderate and saying we shouldn't build subway to the suburbs. Being humanitarian would cost 1/10,000th of that.

throwaway078315 10mo ago
If you take the average person who doesn’t have a mental illness and has no relationship with anyone who does, the system we have is pretty well optimized for their needs. We balance many difficult and inherently conflicting goals, such as: 1) minimizing treatment, which is expensive and does have bad side effects 2) sufficiently good access to treatment where it’s economical for prevention 3) fear of being wrongly hospitalized (error, political motivation, etc.) 4) sufficient ability to lock other people up for frightening or violent behavior in public It’s a tough problem, but I think the tradeoffs are managed near optimally, granting that the rights and interests of the mentally ill don’t matter at all to most public officials or voters.
- dgacmu 10mo ago
  Except that those same people then complain about how many homeless people there are. Reagan's destruction of the mental health system was really awful. The system needed improvement and more accountability, but we need it. I had an adult step-brother too ill with schizophrenia to be cared for at home (he began making violent threats and stealing things, up to and including my mom's car), but under the current threshold for being compelled to take his medication. My mom (his step-mom; an attorney) spent years trying to find ways to get him help, but he bounced in and out of being homeless and ended up being murdered at about age 60 in a halfway house. Just a stupid, tragic waste of a life and all of the resources mis-allocated. Sadly, it's just another example of how the US is penny-wise and pound-foolish when it comes to social services.

BurningFrog 10mo ago

Around the same time, much of the US also stopped building housing at the rate needed. I'm pretty sure there would be far less homeless if there were a lot more homes around.

itsthecourier 10mo ago

don't worry, brother, come to Reddit where all we autists live in harmony

KPGv2 10mo ago
Redditors are anything but harmonious with each other

fsckboy 10mo ago

>In the US, the homeless population exploded, in the 1980s, when they closed down all the mental institutions it was the 1970s, SCOTUS decision in O'Connor v. Donaldson, when the court said that the mentally ill who were not dangerous could not be held in institutions against their will. The 1960s had seen a series of scandals concerning callous treatment of inmates in institutions (for example, see Titticut Follies) and that created the climate for deinstitutionalization.