Comment by kbenson
13 hours ago
Almost everything is a choice. The difference is that sometimes you're making a rational one and sometimes you only think you're making a rational one and to outsiders and in retrospect it obviously wasn't the best choice, or event a good choice.
There are two aspects to the type of question that was asked. How do you prevent people from ha I g to make choices which are rational and good for their options but still really bad overall, and how do you convinve/educate people about available options they weren't aware of so they don't make outright bad choices when better ones are available that they are unaware of.
There are many possible answers to "why did you take off to the west and ride trains and sleep in parks and steak to feed yourself", but most of them aren't "well I just felt like leaving my entirely stable, loving and supportive friends and family." What to an outsider seems like a poor choice to a specific person imight seem like the decision that saved their life, even in retrospect.
This question jumps past the more fundamental question of whether policymakers, and the government in general, should prevent people from making their own choices.
Education is a very different story which ends with letting people make their own decisions after (hopefully) having more information about realistic outcomes.
I don't personally want a government preventing me from making my own choices. That line is blurry for sure, like if my decision directly negatively impacts someone else for example. But if packing up and riding the rails or sleeping in parks primarily impacts only me, the government shouldn't be able to stop me because they "know" its the wrong choice.
> This question jumps past the more fundamental question of whether policymakers, and the government in general, should prevent people from making their own choices.
When your choices include terrorizing businesses and being a public nuisance to everyone else, then yes, government should prevent people from making those choices.
Well said here.
We don't have a honest discussion about the progression of addiction so the choices are not visible, until later.
The first beer is the most critical choice, yet it's made for us (in 99% of the cases) by our peers. So is it a choice really?
We're routine (addiction) prone herd animals and as long as we pretend otherwise (free will and the likes) we're stuck in repeating this.
Why is the first beer the most critical choice?
Why isn’t the last beer the most critical one, for example?
Without the first beer there is no last beer.
9 replies →
And the substance abuse is a progressive lying disease so once we figure out "this has gone too far" the threshold for abuse has been crossed a long time ago in most cases.
First the close ones see the problem and the individual in question is the last to see it. Thus a lying disease.
When the train hits you, it isn’t the caboose that kills you.
> you only think you're making a rational one and to outsiders and in retrospect
In retrospect? It's really not hard to determine before the fact that petty crime is not a road to good things.
We have ways to prevent people from going down this path. It's called enforcement. He was more or less allowed to steal and sleep in the parks. If there was strict enforcement, this wouldn't have been a medium term viable option. Doesn't have to be throw the person in prison for the rest of their life, but either accept help, go through the criminal justice system or figure out another way to contribute to society in a positive way. It sounds like the author at any point could have found some kind of employment, but chose this because it was viable. And society wasn't doing him any favors by looking the other way
Enforcement is right of boom, essentially a safety net for the negative external affects of a person having already made a series of choices that resulted in an enforceable outcome. My impression from the thread is a query to identify the things that can prevent an enforceable outcome in the first place.
While one might say strict enforcement would discourage particular behavior choices. I would not disagree and add that suppression of behaviors is not as effective as replacement of behaviors.
I don't think humans are so straight forward. We have an instinctive nature to rebel that's not going anywhere, and we're all just so absurdly different, so what works for one person or family, may fail spectacularly for another. My opinion is that all you can do is be honest about things. DARE, for instance, ended up resulting in more kids trying drugs after all was said and done. It relied heavily on exaggeration and misleading statements - a lot like contemporary politics. And once people realized some of what was said was lies, the entire foundation fell apart and it all became seen as a joke.
So for instance I'll happily tell my kids that marijuana is enjoyable and relatively harmless in and of itself, yet you end up smelling bad, it ruins motivation, hurts your short-term memory, gives you the munchies, and is just generally is self-escapism, like most drugs. Gotta work on my exact pitch there, but that's the spirit of the point - honesty. They will make plenty of bad decisions in life, but I'd rather that with each one they see I was right, rather than see that I was lying or exaggerating - driving them further away from everything else I taught them.