supporting friends and acquaintances in need

How to pass, fit in, eventually set an example, and ultimately lead the way.
jacob
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Re: supporting friends and acquaintances in need

Post by jacob »

loutfard wrote:
Tue Sep 24, 2024 3:14 pm
I doubt if trying to draw a clear line between bad luck and bad choice is always useful. Perhaps trust in these people's future choices might be more useful a metric?
It really depends on what kind of systemic consequences you wish for. For example, it could argued that unconditional help to relatives (the feminine tendency 7wb5 describes) strengthens family and community bonds. On the other hand, it could be argued that unconditional bailouts teaches the wrong lessons and leads to more bad behavior not only in those who make bad choices but also in others who now conclude they can take extra risk since family members will have their back (moral hazard). Politically speaking, one can even argue whether risk or e.g. power structures would be or should be "socialized" this way. There are many moving parts here and one can rarely do just one thing.

I think you do see "a line" in both of your examples even if you don't like to see it: A comment that finally opened someone's eyes---perhaps to something obvious she should have accepted much sooner. That's a line. Or a situation where someone was too naive, didn't do their research, and risked overextending themselves... IOW they gambled. That's also a line.

One can metaphorically see this is as chess game. I'm a decent amateur and can typically see about 4 moves ahead. A noob will typically see 2 moves ahead. A club champion will see 5 or 6. It is interesting to play with both types(*). One is blind to anything beyond their move-horizon: As far as they're concerned what happens after that is random or unpredictable [to them]. It's good luck if it favors them and bad luck if it disfavors them. What is clear is that some people have a better understanding of what's going to happen a few moves later in the game than others. Here one can explicitly draw the line in terms of how many moves someone sees ahead.

(*) It's even more interesting to play with someone with the same horizon as one self. In that case, one can truly say that the outcome of the game is based on luck. In many games are played the win/lose ratio between two people with the same horizon should be 50/50. Whereas the odds of a game with different horizons will be greatly tilted towards the player with the greater ability to predict consequences.

What's interesting here is that people are often given good advice (although to be fair, sometimes they're also given bad advice) yet they choose to ignore it. There can be all kinds of reasons why they ignore it. Perhaps there's no reason at all. Perhaps they're stuck on some silly idea or detail that doesn't matter. The better player can likely point that out too.

Overall, this means that some people just play the game of life badly. Typically not because they're unlucky because luck has a way of cancelling itself out in good outcomes and bad outcomes over time ... but because they're adding, essentially "negative alpha" to their decisions.

In terms of actionable strategies to identify whether someone is unlucky or really just a "bad player", one can be inspired by Bayesian thinking in which probabilities start at 50% (benefit of the doubt) and gets updated for each incidence/piece of new information. I find if someone has achieved the position of being family or a friend they generally have provided a lot of such probability updates already. All this is basically summarizes in the idiom: fool me once, shame on you, follow me twice, shame on me. In conclusion it should eventually become clear what someone's decision skill is. In real life, people might be helped the first time ... but maybe not so much the ith or jth time.

I suppose one could also look at it in investment terms. It could be that what you're seeing really was a case of bad luck in which case "investing" in these people's future would be a good idea. OTOH, it could be that what you're seeing is the result of bad investing skill in which case helping out is more like throwing good money after bad.

Add: I should also point out that humans are strange in that some are bad players but are also willing to listen and learn. Over time these become good players. But some bad players do for whatever reason have no interest in listening or learning and so they remain bad players forever even though it's clear to everyone, often including themselves that they are bad players. I am not sure what creates this difference. I think it's related to the 10000 hour rule in that perhaps deliberate practice is required. Some people might go through life deliberately in what they reflect on their choices and if bad things happened they try to understand why. While others dismiss outcomes as fate or luck and so don't reflect at all.

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Re: supporting friends and acquaintances in need

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@zbigi:
FEMALE EDUCATION AND HOMICIDE RATES ACROSS COUNTRIES:
EVIDENCE AND SOME EXPLANATIONS
by Julio H. Cole and Andrés Marroquín Gramajo
Abstract:
This paper attempts to explain the cross-country variation in homicide rates (per 100,000
population) for a large sample of countries. One major finding is a curious and unexpected
statistical relationship between the level of education and homicide rates: while an increase in male
education tends to reduce homicide rates, an increase in female education tends to increase
homicides. The paper reviews the evidence regarding this phenomenon, and suggests some possible
explanations.
This finding also correlates well with my personal anecdotal experience that I am most likely to find myself in the same room with a man breaking up some furniture on occasions when I forget to not be obnoxiously nerdy. For example, one gentleman with a PhD threatened to "bash my teeth in" when I corrected his recollection of a topic. One of my closest friends was physically abused by her M.D. husband. Another friend by her self-made millionaire businessman husband. I'm sure that many another female has found herself hung upon the petard by her own blue-stockings. However, I would also note that the 100X ratio I heard on a videocast interviewing a conservative male evolutionary biologist of my generation yesterday appears to be a huge exaggeration as well as quite dependent on how finely you categorize the "others." Maybe he meant 100% more likely, so 2:1 for Your Husband: Any Other Human and 1,000,000:1 for Your Husband: A Bear. Which should give one frugal pause to reflect upon the money wasted on purchases of bear spray when husband spray has yet to be made available on the market.
jacob wrote:What we're missing here is the forest for the trees...
I believe that you once noted that you yourself were primarily motivated by survival...it's entirely possible to make a comeback to happy, successful, fit live player from "broke, depressed, and thoroughly out-of-shape", but, dead, not so much.

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loutfard
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Re: supporting friends and acquaintances in need

Post by loutfard »

jacob wrote:
Tue Sep 24, 2024 3:56 pm
It really depends on what kind of systemic consequences you wish for.
...
On the other hand, it could be argued that unconditional bailouts teaches the wrong lessons and leads to more bad behavior not only in those who make bad choices but also in others who now conclude they can take extra risk since family members will have their back (moral hazard).
I have one specimen of each of these as first degree relatives. Both quite disgusting creatures.
Politically speaking, one can even argue whether risk or e.g. power structures would be or should be "socialized" this way. There are many moving parts here and one can rarely do just one thing.
You were the one who changed my mind about social democracy beyond a fairly basic level. By repatching individual people's feedback loops to a centralised system, individual resilience goes out the door.
I think you do see "a line" in both of your examples even if you don't like to see it: A comment that finally opened someone's eyes---perhaps to something obvious she should have accepted much sooner. That's a line.
Chances are this is what happened indeed. I am not sure if she will or will not walk into similar shit in the future.
Or a situation where someone was too naive, didn't do their research, and risked overextending themselves... IOW they gambled. That's also a line.
Of course they made a risky, stupid decision.
Overall, this means that some people just play the game of life badly. Typically not because they're unlucky because luck has a way of cancelling itself out in good outcomes and bad outcomes over time ... but because they're adding, essentially "negative alpha" to their decisions.
How do the mentally disabled fit into the framework you just described?
In terms of actionable strategies to identify whether someone is unlucky or really just a "bad player"
....
it could be that what you're seeing is the result of bad investing skill in which case helping out is more like throwing good money after bad.
I'm not sure if one follows from the other. I could be willingly supporting someone who's a lousy player in one dimension with no perspective for improvement in that dimension. Example: my hippie uncle is incredibly bad with money, but his art is extraordinary.

I should also point out that humans are strange in that some are bad players but are also willing to listen and learn. Over time these become good players.
Quite sure this is the case for our neighbours.

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Re: supporting friends and acquaintances in need

Post by jacob »

jacob wrote:
Tue Sep 24, 2024 3:56 pm
Overall, this means that some people just play the game of life badly. Typically not because they're unlucky because luck has a way of cancelling itself out in good outcomes and bad outcomes over time ... but because they're adding, essentially "negative alpha" to their decisions.
loutfard wrote:
Tue Sep 24, 2024 5:55 pm
How do the mentally disabled fit into the framework you just described?
The answer would seem to be obvious, so I'm not sure what you're asking?

Framework: It would stand to reason that the outcome of any choice is some combination of luck and decision making. Like e.g. a card hand is drawn randomly but played according to decisions made leading to an outcome. Over time one would be subject to good luck and bad luck, like good draws or bad draws. Yet the quality of one's decisions will skew the outcomes in a given direction for the outcomes. If luck is 99% of the factor and decision making accounts for only 1% of the outcome, a lot of decisions (different hands played) are needed to see a difference in the outcomes. The difference in outcome over 100 decisions may be 48% bad outcomes to 52% good outcomes. OTOH, luck is 50% of the factor and decision making is the other 50%, then good decision ability will show up in the statistics much faster.

Now it may be that we can not nail down completely what makes for good decision skills. However, it is possible to look at the outcomes. Someone who consistently shows bad outcomes is likely to add bad decision-making ability to the mix thus skewing them negative. And vice versa. They may claim that they're perennially unlucky but in reality they just make mostly bad decisions.

All this can be rooted out statistically complete with t-tests.

Now if someone is mentally disabled or more generally simply bad at making adult decisions, like a lot of people are, I personally default to the "no responsibility without authority". In short they should give up some authority or rely on the authority of people with better decision making abilities. Another solution would of course be to let them accept the full responsibility of their bad decisions and let them be clobbered with the consequences. Yet another solution would be for others to carry the consequences of their bad decisions due to a belief that everybody should have the authority to do whatever they want without repercussions. Or maybe they just care for other reasons like family, tradition, society, ... art? It could be all sorts of reasons.

This framework just describes what happens in a way that's more accurate than ascribing outcomes to "unfairness" or "bad luck". It doesn't say what the moral action should be.

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Jean
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Re: supporting friends and acquaintances in need

Post by Jean »

@7w5
I'm curious what those number look like when you ponder vs time spent with husband/any other human/any bear

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Re: supporting friends and acquaintances in need

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@Jean:

Time spent would be difficult to estimate, but in terms of population density, the ratio of bears to male humans of any age is about 1:380 and the rate at which women in the U.S. are murdered by a male husband or intimate partner is around 3.5/day and the rate at which humans of any sex are killed by bears is less than 1/year, but not non-existent, so maybe call it .25/year. So, it certainly could be argued that bears might be as murderously aggressive as human males at the rate of random encounter with high degree of dependency upon the mean roaming range of modern human female. It is also the case that in the much less likely circumstances (rate of around .5/day) of men being murdered by women and women being murdered by women, it is also much more likely that the female murderer is an intimate partner. The most frequent motive associated with male murdering female intimate partner is sexual infidelity (unlikely motive for a bear) whereas the most frequent motive associated with female murdering male intimate partner is prior abuse/self-defense (also more likely motive for a bear.) Gun ownership is also strongly correlated (also highly unlikely for a bear.)

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Re: supporting friends and acquaintances in need

Post by ffj »

@loutfard

People are most charitable when an emergency or an injustice occurs, such as your neighbor. One of the reasons I was a volunteer firefighter for over 20 years. No matter what led up to the emergency, there was no doubt it was an emergency when we were called.

But it's a judgement call whether someone "deserves" my help and/or money otherwise. Some are easy calls, such as pan-handlers. But some are tricky, such as family members that chose a partner poorly. And they have kids, which never consented to be in that situation.

Generally I have very little patience for chronic people. People incapable or unwilling of learning from their mistakes, whether they are addicted to something or not. And this includes energy vampires that want to complain about the same shit over and over yet never do anything to change their circumstances. They exhaust me with their ridiculous and self-inflicted neediness.

If I do give money, it's always one-on-one. I don't trust charitable organizations well enough to spend my money wisely. But I prefer donating time and skills over money anyway because it feeds my ego if I am honest and hopefully it might inspire the recipient that they have more control over their lives then they think. I also believe it promotes "paying it forward" so others may benefit also. Giving is good, but you have to be careful that it is beneficial too.

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Re: supporting friends and acquaintances in need

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

jacob wrote:All this can be rooted out statistically complete with t-tests.
Yes, but the t-tests won't be as easily able to root out variations in preferred outcomes or all aspects of conflict between preferred outcomes. For example, I was recently made happy to learn that the likelihood that I may experience the outcome of (at least 1 grandchild) has greatly increased. Yet, that doesn't imply that this would be a preferred outcome for all humans or even that I would necessarily regret decisions that I made when younger (stop having kids at count of 2) that decreased the likelihood of this outcome for future me. Preferred outcomes may be highly path dependent.

I suppose you could measure relative preference over current collection of outcomes with an individualized measure of contentment with circumstances, but it is known that reported happiness level is 50% genetic (luck of draw.)

Also, relating decision quality to chess skills and authority to decision quality might lead to an easily imagined unhappy outcome as we move into the era of AI.

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Re: supporting friends and acquaintances in need

Post by jacob »

@7wb5 - It exists. Besides the point was that it's possible to detect a difference in outcomes based on a decision making skill. As such it does not matter whether the preference changes or conflicts with something else. It only matters whether someone experiences their preferred outcomes based on their decision for each and every case, essentially "detrending" (deprefering) the data. In any case my point was that this [idea] is so well established that it is literally possible to formalize it mathematically and assign probabilities and confidence intervals to it should anyone so desire.

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Re: supporting friends and acquaintances in need

Post by Sclass »

I like buying the pre packed donation grocery bags at sprouts that come out around thanksgiving and Christmas. Sometimes I get two.

I still worry I may be feeding the healthy kid who’ll shank me in an alley in ten years.

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Re: supporting friends and acquaintances in need

Post by chenda »

Sclass wrote:
Wed Sep 25, 2024 12:15 pm
I still worry I may be feeding the healthy kid who’ll shank me in an alley in ten years.
It's a sort of Malthusian problem.
ffj wrote:
Wed Sep 25, 2024 10:40 am
Generally I have very little patience for chronic people. People incapable or unwilling of learning from their mistakes, whether they are addicted to something or not.
This also touches on how much free will people have, and how much that can erode with say age or trauma. A low IQ person may lack sufficient cognition to make sound judgements about anything (20% of people are functionally illiterate, although that isn't always a reflection of low IQ) OTOH some people really should know better and need a good sound kick up the arse to get their life in order.

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Re: supporting friends and acquaintances in need

Post by DutchGirl »

How about helping the next generation? I once was a young person who had no money and little earning capacity - I'm glad my parents helped me out a bit and helped me fund my studies. That lead to a higher earning capacity and now I'm the generation that has some time and money to help the younger ones.

I'm gifting money to my niblings annually since they were born. Hopefully their parents teach them well and they will use it for something worthwhile. But maybe other young people who are starting out with zero money also could use some help to develop & prosper?

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Re: supporting friends and acquaintances in need

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

jacob wrote:Besides the point was that it's possible to detect a difference in outcomes based on a decision making skill.
Yes, I agree that thoughtful employment of multivariate t-distribution could serve to answer some of the objections I offered above in a manner roughly analogous to its application to portfolio management. As you may recall, I once made the attempt to correlate my time spent on specific activities within my web of goals with my self-reported daily happiness level, and even this rather ridiculous model proved to be somewhat revelatory.

(pauses to puzzle out how she might here insert a phrase more consistent with "and" rather than "but"....) It is also the case that my other muddled objections based on an imagined scenario in which the assorted goal collections of the individuals under observation moving like ants through n-dimensional outcome space are unknown could possibly be resolved through application of clustering algorithm. Furthermore, if goals/outcomes could be appropriately framed in terms of binary success/failure then multivariate logistic regression could be employed and/or apples to oranges or quantitative/qualitative comparisons might be better resolved within a framework more consistent with satisficing than maximizing and also more in accordance with overriding principle of resilience.

Anyways, it remains true that there are methods by which decision-making skill may be isolated and estimated. For example, you could even estimate and compare decision-making skill of your Your Neighbor's Lost Dog vs. Your Early Model Roomba vs. Your Spouse After Consuming 5 Shots of Tequila prior to deciding whether to engage with any of them altruisticly.

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Re: supporting friends and acquaintances in need

Post by macg »

Frita wrote:
Mon Sep 23, 2024 4:16 pm
Second, I view the money as a gift, not a loan. If I am paid back, bonus. If not, I don’t completely lose the relationship like I would if a loan wasn’t paid off.
To me this is the key strategy - remove yourself from the money.

Even with strangers, say I give to a homeless person.. there's a story I saw a few years ago in the form of a meme, something like, "A man and his son were walking down the street, and a homeless person was asking for money. The dad gave the homeless person $20 and continued walking. The boy said, 'They are just going to spend it on drugs.' The dad replied, 'What they spend it on defines their character... Me donating when I can defines mine.' "

I also feel like people judge other people's methods of dealing with things too harshly. The homeless guy uses some money to buy alcohol to get through the night escaping his pain? Is that so different than the guy who does the same thing but owns a home? Or me eating way too much sugar? Or someone else getting a handful of coffees? Life and the world sucks for a lot of people, most are just doing whatever they can to get to the next day

So in my opinion, if you can and want to, give the gifts... Just don't invest in the outcome. Some people might "waste" it in your opinion, but ultimately that shouldn't matter - in the end you are helping people regardless.

And if you can't or just don't want to, then don't give the gifts.

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Re: supporting friends and acquaintances in need

Post by Frita »

macg wrote:
Fri Sep 27, 2024 2:22 pm
These situations are so nuanced. I agree compassion should trump control. At what point does something become enabling? Are there other options to consider? Do my actions serve the other person or tamp down my discomfort?

My son and I once had a meaningful conversation with a high, homeless guy while standing in line for the best fried chicken in Denver. He asked for money and told me it was for drugs. When I asked if he thought I should be giving him cash, he said, “no.” He shared a little about his life, told my son to make better choices. That day all we did was treat him like a fellow human; he bought his own chicken. It seemed connection was what he craved.

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