I grew up in poverty, so I’ve been a client of the Public System from birth. What this means is that I’ve been coordinating with all kinds of professionals to attempt to meet my needs for a long time. Like most domains/games/systems, the longer you are involved in/with them, the more you understand the limitations and problems of them. This is the case for me in trying to get out of poverty and homelessness.
So while I can appreciate the concern for my safety, I can assure you I’ve been connecting with health professionals and their support systems for decades.
This is also one of the main reasons why for the past 7 years I’ve been attempting to create and study a conceptual model of what I call “Cultural Lag” in a sort of “Social Physics” system, in order to better help myself help the people trying to help me. For example, the amount and variety of technical and scientific knowledge generated by academia and the like is amazing, and the amounts, varieties and quality of the knowledge is only increasing as time goes by.
But why it is that it takes so long for those cutting edge insights to make their way downstream into places like the Social Sciences and Social Services? What is it that is causing this lag in the dissemination and integration of the worlds best science (or money, or dispelling of myths and stereotypes, etc. etc.) into certain parts of society? I’m not satisfied anymore with the answer I keep getting from the people who are supposed to be helping me, namely that “The system is broken.”
This is the crux of my concern personally, socially and intellectually at this point. I seem to be in a position such that in order for me to make progress in those areas, I have to fix the parts of the system I’m ‘connecting’ with. I spend way too much time explaining to the people who are supposed to be helping me, why what they are doing hasn’t worked in the past, isn’t working now, and trying to suggest avenues for them to take.
It’s usually a year to two later that they start to actually take my suggestions, at which point I’ve wasted a couple years trying to work with someone who wasn’t equipped to help me in the first place, and in the meantime I’ve already moved onto to trying to understand my issues myself in a way which means I’m still not getting much ‘help’ from the professionals I work with. I often think I should be getting paid to teach these people an hour at a time, instead of paying them by the hour to ‘try’ to help me using outdated information.
So I understand the concept of a Hamming Question better, but I think where I’m having issues in general, is trying to understand my work (what I do—ALOT of—even though I don’t get paid to do it) and how better to define it so I can adjust my approach to doing it, and can speak more authoritatively about it.
From an Epistemic Statement perspective, I would consider myself an Independent Researcher of sorts, as I research, diagram, write and think about issues I find resonate with me. But I’m not allied with an institute of learning or research, so a lot of the resources which would be helpful aren’t available to me. Going back to school isn’t an option, and I can read all the books in the world, but it’s not my lack of curiousity or lack of motivation keeping me from being more successful. What I think I need is to be able to find some people who might be able to give me some insight into how my work can be leveraged to become something I can do to make a living.
This is why I originally came to LW after doing some research after reading an article in the New York Mag about Julia Galef and her new book. Somehow I was unable to connect with a community like LessWrong until recently despite having many of the same ideas and interests the LW community posts about. So I was heartened to find such a thriving community I somehow missed out on.
So with the aim of trying to take part in the community here online, and hopefully, maybe make some connections in the real world, I’m taking the site and people on it seriously in the belief that working for rational solutions to issues is better than the alternative.
I hope you are able to use some of the ideas here to leverage what resources are on offer from the professional providers in your area to make some progress!
Thanks. Unfortunately I am coming to LW trying to figure out how I can leverage the resources here to help the professional providers in my area. This is the paradox of my situation. There is a cultural myth that states that when most people fall into homelessness, there is some sort of a moral reason for it—they did something ‘wrong’ to cause their ostracization from society. This is a prevalent bias (in my opinion) of most providers in my area, if not everywhere.
It usually takes me about a year to two years to sufficiently explain to the professionals I work with that it’s not me that is the problem, that it is in fact a systemic problem. At which point I hear “The system is broken, there’s nothing I can do.” This is not the answer anyone wants to hear, but I have heard it enough to know that it’s an unacceptable answer for me. Which is why I try to study why the system is broken.
Professionals tend to only want to work with other ‘professionals’, and don’t like the idea that maybe it is them that is part of the problem. So that not having another piece of paper on my wall is both keeping me from being taken seriously by them, but in some ways is the only thing that keeps me from falling into the same irrational logic loops they’ve been educated and trained to inhabit professionally.
Which is why I came here, hoping to find some people who might take my crazy ideas seriously enough to help me prove them. I understand into everyone’s life a little shade must fall, but in my situation, considering how long I’ve been trying to solve the same problems over and over again, I’ve come to the conclusion the problem isn’t me.
So I suppose my Hamming Question is “How do I get people in positions to be helpful to take me seriously enough to help?”
I grew up in poverty, so I’ve been a client of the Public System from birth. What this means is that I’ve been coordinating with all kinds of professionals to attempt to meet my needs for a long time. Like most domains/games/systems, the longer you are involved in/with them, the more you understand the limitations and problems of them. This is the case for me in trying to get out of poverty and homelessness.
So while I can appreciate the concern for my safety, I can assure you I’ve been connecting with health professionals and their support systems for decades.
This is also one of the main reasons why for the past 7 years I’ve been attempting to create and study a conceptual model of what I call “Cultural Lag” in a sort of “Social Physics” system, in order to better help myself help the people trying to help me. For example, the amount and variety of technical and scientific knowledge generated by academia and the like is amazing, and the amounts, varieties and quality of the knowledge is only increasing as time goes by.
But why it is that it takes so long for those cutting edge insights to make their way downstream into places like the Social Sciences and Social Services? What is it that is causing this lag in the dissemination and integration of the worlds best science (or money, or dispelling of myths and stereotypes, etc. etc.) into certain parts of society? I’m not satisfied anymore with the answer I keep getting from the people who are supposed to be helping me, namely that “The system is broken.”
This is the crux of my concern personally, socially and intellectually at this point. I seem to be in a position such that in order for me to make progress in those areas, I have to fix the parts of the system I’m ‘connecting’ with. I spend way too much time explaining to the people who are supposed to be helping me, why what they are doing hasn’t worked in the past, isn’t working now, and trying to suggest avenues for them to take.
It’s usually a year to two later that they start to actually take my suggestions, at which point I’ve wasted a couple years trying to work with someone who wasn’t equipped to help me in the first place, and in the meantime I’ve already moved onto to trying to understand my issues myself in a way which means I’m still not getting much ‘help’ from the professionals I work with. I often think I should be getting paid to teach these people an hour at a time, instead of paying them by the hour to ‘try’ to help me using outdated information.
So I understand the concept of a Hamming Question better, but I think where I’m having issues in general, is trying to understand my work (what I do—ALOT of—even though I don’t get paid to do it) and how better to define it so I can adjust my approach to doing it, and can speak more authoritatively about it.
From an Epistemic Statement perspective, I would consider myself an Independent Researcher of sorts, as I research, diagram, write and think about issues I find resonate with me. But I’m not allied with an institute of learning or research, so a lot of the resources which would be helpful aren’t available to me. Going back to school isn’t an option, and I can read all the books in the world, but it’s not my lack of curiousity or lack of motivation keeping me from being more successful. What I think I need is to be able to find some people who might be able to give me some insight into how my work can be leveraged to become something I can do to make a living.
This is why I originally came to LW after doing some research after reading an article in the New York Mag about Julia Galef and her new book. Somehow I was unable to connect with a community like LessWrong until recently despite having many of the same ideas and interests the LW community posts about. So I was heartened to find such a thriving community I somehow missed out on.
So with the aim of trying to take part in the community here online, and hopefully, maybe make some connections in the real world, I’m taking the site and people on it seriously in the belief that working for rational solutions to issues is better than the alternative.
Thanks. Unfortunately I am coming to LW trying to figure out how I can leverage the resources here to help the professional providers in my area. This is the paradox of my situation. There is a cultural myth that states that when most people fall into homelessness, there is some sort of a moral reason for it—they did something ‘wrong’ to cause their ostracization from society. This is a prevalent bias (in my opinion) of most providers in my area, if not everywhere.
It usually takes me about a year to two years to sufficiently explain to the professionals I work with that it’s not me that is the problem, that it is in fact a systemic problem. At which point I hear “The system is broken, there’s nothing I can do.” This is not the answer anyone wants to hear, but I have heard it enough to know that it’s an unacceptable answer for me. Which is why I try to study why the system is broken.
Professionals tend to only want to work with other ‘professionals’, and don’t like the idea that maybe it is them that is part of the problem. So that not having another piece of paper on my wall is both keeping me from being taken seriously by them, but in some ways is the only thing that keeps me from falling into the same irrational logic loops they’ve been educated and trained to inhabit professionally.
Which is why I came here, hoping to find some people who might take my crazy ideas seriously enough to help me prove them. I understand into everyone’s life a little shade must fall, but in my situation, considering how long I’ve been trying to solve the same problems over and over again, I’ve come to the conclusion the problem isn’t me.
So I suppose my Hamming Question is “How do I get people in positions to be helpful to take me seriously enough to help?”