After having interactions like this, I made a rule of not giving money to beggars who explicitly ask for it. If I want to give money to homeless people, it has to be for people not optimizing for it (sometimes aggressively so) in a race to the bottom against other homeless people. Especially if people pull the Reciprocity heuristic; due to my disagreeableness it was relatively not that hard to set an intention to still say no when people do that, for the most part.
A different idea I’ve considered is to have $1 bills (or whatever unit you wish) explicitly allocated for this. Or to keep track of people you pass, and use that counter to track giving to some more effective thing.
N-order effects of giving are probably more valuable than losing a few dollars, though. It feels really good to give to people. I spent a couple hours spontaneously delivering a $2 cookie to someone as a gift, recently.
Some people suggest to carry food on you that you can give to homeless people instead of money.
I’d advise setting a 5 minute timer to come up with a simple policy, and stick to it.
Hm, it’s interesting different people’s thoughts on and reactions to the same events. Every one of us are aliens. You see people optimizing for money and you feel negatively towards them for participating in a race to the bottom. I see people optimizing for money and I respect their hustle. Maybe it’s a class thing. I worked as a waiter until I found a way to hurt myself doing so (such tends to be how my stints of gainful employment end—I need to land an office job or one day I’ll trip on my own feet and stumble into an open grave), and I spent every minute of it optimizing for money, sometimes aggressively so. Maybe as I claw my way up the social ladder I’ll come around to your point of view. Yesterday was novel, I imagine it gets old.
I’m not as high on the social ladder as you’d think, though some of my perspective is probably colored by class views rubbing off on me from other people around me. I have been sort of homeless technically for much of the past couple years and actually think EAs should live in tent cities/off-grid villages. I’ve also briefly researched becoming a professional beggar in a really wealthy place such as Switzerland; this shifted into the idea of becoming a street performer, which didn’t work out.
My perspective was heavily informed by a couple of experiences with people using body language to get really close up to me and ask for a much larger amount of cash than I would otherwise give to the median person. I also had someone yell at me angrily when I didn’t say anything to them when they approached me at night. My experience of the reciprocity trick wasn’t with someone homeless, but with people hawking their mixtape and “giving it away”, as well as signing my name on it, only to take it away if I wasn’t giving them “a donation”. So I’m not lambasting the average beggar, it’s just we need to not let the most dark triad people shake people’s pockets and make it harder for more down-on-their luck, earnest people to be able to ask for help.
It was raining yesterday and I offered $4 to someone who was huddling in a tunnel, but they didn’t take it. I tend to feel spontaneously generous sometimes when the spirit moves me.
Yesterday was novel, I imagine it gets old.
Inurement is the strongest feature here, I believe. Once you see an endless sea of people, then it becomes overwhelming, demotivating, and you stop being as empathetic.
(Meta: Annoyed as heck by the upvote/downvotes here, coloring our discussion; is there a mod out there to not see karma on EA Forum, like there was for old LessWrong?)
You are an amazing alien, a soul akin enough to mine that I feel slightly less an alien for talking to you. I really don’t know why people don’t live stranger lives, when ordinary lives chasing money and status are so terribly depressing. It is nice to meet a fellow denizen of planet Camazotz dancing to the beat of a drum other than Its.
(Does one still waive the apostrophe when they’re referring to a possession of the proper noun It?)
Clarification clarified. If someone invaded my personal space and dark triaded at me, I imagine I would use my bigness and noise to make them leave. I’m sympathetic to people less big.
I feel fairly negative towards upvotes my self. They make it easy to pile on someone without actually engaging with them.
I relate to the angst.
After having interactions like this, I made a rule of not giving money to beggars who explicitly ask for it. If I want to give money to homeless people, it has to be for people not optimizing for it (sometimes aggressively so) in a race to the bottom against other homeless people. Especially if people pull the Reciprocity heuristic; due to my disagreeableness it was relatively not that hard to set an intention to still say no when people do that, for the most part.
A different idea I’ve considered is to have $1 bills (or whatever unit you wish) explicitly allocated for this. Or to keep track of people you pass, and use that counter to track giving to some more effective thing.
N-order effects of giving are probably more valuable than losing a few dollars, though. It feels really good to give to people. I spent a couple hours spontaneously delivering a $2 cookie to someone as a gift, recently.
Some people suggest to carry food on you that you can give to homeless people instead of money.
I’d advise setting a 5 minute timer to come up with a simple policy, and stick to it.
Hm, it’s interesting different people’s thoughts on and reactions to the same events. Every one of us are aliens. You see people optimizing for money and you feel negatively towards them for participating in a race to the bottom. I see people optimizing for money and I respect their hustle. Maybe it’s a class thing. I worked as a waiter until I found a way to hurt myself doing so (such tends to be how my stints of gainful employment end—I need to land an office job or one day I’ll trip on my own feet and stumble into an open grave), and I spent every minute of it optimizing for money, sometimes aggressively so. Maybe as I claw my way up the social ladder I’ll come around to your point of view. Yesterday was novel, I imagine it gets old.
I’m not as high on the social ladder as you’d think, though some of my perspective is probably colored by class views rubbing off on me from other people around me. I have been sort of homeless technically for much of the past couple years and actually think EAs should live in tent cities/off-grid villages. I’ve also briefly researched becoming a professional beggar in a really wealthy place such as Switzerland; this shifted into the idea of becoming a street performer, which didn’t work out.
My perspective was heavily informed by a couple of experiences with people using body language to get really close up to me and ask for a much larger amount of cash than I would otherwise give to the median person. I also had someone yell at me angrily when I didn’t say anything to them when they approached me at night. My experience of the reciprocity trick wasn’t with someone homeless, but with people hawking their mixtape and “giving it away”, as well as signing my name on it, only to take it away if I wasn’t giving them “a donation”. So I’m not lambasting the average beggar, it’s just we need to not let the most dark triad people shake people’s pockets and make it harder for more down-on-their luck, earnest people to be able to ask for help.
It was raining yesterday and I offered $4 to someone who was huddling in a tunnel, but they didn’t take it. I tend to feel spontaneously generous sometimes when the spirit moves me.
Inurement is the strongest feature here, I believe. Once you see an endless sea of people, then it becomes overwhelming, demotivating, and you stop being as empathetic.
(Meta: Annoyed as heck by the upvote/downvotes here, coloring our discussion; is there a mod out there to not see karma on EA Forum, like there was for old LessWrong?)
You are an amazing alien, a soul akin enough to mine that I feel slightly less an alien for talking to you. I really don’t know why people don’t live stranger lives, when ordinary lives chasing money and status are so terribly depressing. It is nice to meet a fellow denizen of planet Camazotz dancing to the beat of a drum other than Its.
(Does one still waive the apostrophe when they’re referring to a possession of the proper noun It?)
Clarification clarified. If someone invaded my personal space and dark triaded at me, I imagine I would use my bigness and noise to make them leave. I’m sympathetic to people less big.
I feel fairly negative towards upvotes my self. They make it easy to pile on someone without actually engaging with them.