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People behave more sadistically when they’re bored

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Re: People behave more sadistically when they’re bored

#71

Post by elliekelly »

lapsedacademic wrote: post #41
lostcolony wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be happy if we'd just get over this vindictive need to deprive prisoners of basic pleasures. I've seen outrage over the idea that prisoners have access to TVs, or gaming consoles, or similar, stories of wardens confiscating books and pen and paper and such. I understand there are some other concerns that may warrant keeping usage of some of those under surveillance or similar (keep a pencil from being used as a s…

> confiscating books Deb Alderson's Global Tel*Link is replacing libraries with locked down tablets that have e-reader apps. Inmates are charged a couple bucks an hour for access to the tablet and are limited to 90 minutes of reading time. E.g., https://www.jurist.org/news/2020/11/allegheny-county-jail-li... https://moguldom.com/241982/exploiting-prisoners-w-virginia-...

Tangentially related, a few years ago the New Yorker published a wonderful article about reading in prison called "A Prisoner's Reading List": https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/a-prisoners-read...

Re: People behave more sadistically when they’re bored

#72

Post by sleepysysadmin »

Taywee wrote: post #43
sleepysysadmin wrote: post #4

Pleasure is fleeting. It must be or else you'd still be glowing from your first orgasm. Inevitably the search for pleasure will require variety and inevitably that variety brings you to inflicting pain on others. We do it publicly. The romans fed people to the lions. We have lots of violent sports. Nascar isn't about driving left. It's about the crashes. Hockey is about the fights and checking. Lets not even evaluate…

Out of the hockey fans I know, only the really casual watchers are interested in fights and checking at all. The big fans are way more interested in the strategy and statistics and many of them are annoyed when a big fight breaks out and wastes time in the game. If what you were saying was true, way more people would just be watching videos on the internet of people getting into street fights than professional sports…

>Out of the hockey fans I know, only the really casual watchers are interested in fights and checking at all. The big fans are way more interested in the strategy and statistics and many of them are annoyed when a big fight breaks out and wastes time in the game. If what you were saying was true, way more people would just be watching videos on the internet of people getting into street fights than professional sports.

To be fair I havent watched in quite some time but as the saying goes... I went to a fight, and a hockey game broke out!

This is very simple to evaluate. What would happen to the NHL is fighting and checking was banned. Any physical violence is an immediate contract break and players thrown out of the league? Dont get another $.

Obviously violence would go away but how'd the sport work out? I'm thinking hockey would suck pretty hardcore. NHL viewership would be at all-time lows without question.

Also yes, street fighting videos are ridiculously popular but also why they were banned on so many platforms.

>It's way easier to find videos of car crashes than it is to watch hours of cars driving in circles. I don't understand the appeal of NASCAR, but it's clearly not about the crashes.

I mean no offence against nascar. F1 has nothing but crashes as well. Every highlight reel is about the crashes. So it is about nascar. Nascar highlights are all about crashes.

>Why not? You might find that long-term players of games are more interested in good gameplay than bloody effects or the violence itself. I've noticed that games in general are tending toward less violence and blood than a decade or so ago.

The violence is the point being made. Pleasure is fleeting. Violent video games are fantastic because it lets you chop someone's head off when you cant do it in person. When you have gone so far as to needing that level of pleasure, the next step in solving boredom will be more extreme.

>I think you are being unfairly judgemental about things that you don't understand.

Not judgmental at all. I've got my TF2 and skyrim installed. I watch violent sports. Im not judging people who do these things. I can see that's how people took my post by the heavy downvotes.

The point being made isnt about NHL being bad or good or that fights are or arent part of it. Its that this pleasure seeking constantly increases.

Re: People behave more sadistically when they’re bored

#73

Post by lapsedacademic »

simmanian wrote: post #36
quacked wrote: post #2

If this is indeed true, it is yet another piece of evidence in the case for prison reform. Prisoners are universally bored, yet in many cases insufficiently protected from one another. Read accounts of any long-time convict's time in prison and you'll hear about excruciating boredom punctuated by acts of outrageous sadism.

I believe we should focus on separating criminals from non-criminals instead of punishing and torturing them. Give them an environment where they can thrive without being harmful to themselves and others. Let them re-join the society ONLY when they pose acceptable risk. This means violent criminals may never get to re-join the society, but that's okay given that they are still given a humane environment where they ca…

Penal colonies and other forms of exile are cruel and unusual. It's hard to conceive because this form of punishment has been disused in the west for nearly as long as drawing and quartering, but historical use of exile gives a sense for how extreme permanent exile is as a punishment.

Even in the age of drawing and quartering, penal colonies were used primarily as an alternative to capital punishment. In the age of gruesome physical torture, exile was used primarily an alternative to execution.

Re: People behave more sadistically when they’re bored

#74

Post by good8675309 »

ppeetteerr wrote: post #7

Scientific proof that "The devil makes work for idle hands to do" is accurate Edit: not in a religious sort-of-way

Do non-christians really reject this type of wisdom just because it's biblical and only now accept it because we have scientific proof of it?

Re: People behave more sadistically when they’re bored

#76

Post by lkasdjfb09u »

dang wrote: post #53
lkasdjfb09u wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you just try to criticize gaming on HN? See you at the bottom.

Could you please stop creating accounts like this? It will eventually get your main account banned as well. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

No post body was provided.

Re: People behave more sadistically when they’re bored

#77

Post by CapitalistCartr »

stcredzero wrote: post #68
dang wrote: post #54

I have a similar thought about flamewars on the internet, or rather about why generic discussions so often turn into flamewars: the mind resorts to indignation to amuse itself in the absence of anything more interesting. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

I wonder if this doesn't have some survival value for Homo sapiens ? If people are bored, it often means that they are secure and well off. At that point, to maximize the survival of the species, perhaps it would be of strategic value to send people off exploring to create new settlements? From the standpoint of genes, in small settlements, there would tend to be some inter-relatedness, so this would be a way for gen…

Little children putting stuff in their mouths has an immediate use. I discovered this with a child that lacked this stage of development. It's important to their eating. Babies learn to eat whatever they're fed. If they're fed spicy food, Thai hot, that's their normal. Being willing to taste/try anything makes this pretty easy. And, overall, babies are hard.

Re: People behave more sadistically when they’re bored

#78

Post by Apocryphon »

lprubin wrote: post #30

There is an interesting exploration of this in the Altered Carbon universe. If people can become functionally immortal, will they inevitably grow tired of societally acceptable pursuits and move on to sadism?

It's a sci-fi trope of sorts. Also see the Elder from Warhammer 40,000.

Re: People behave more sadistically when they’re bored

#79

Post by notdemo88 »

lprubin wrote: post #30

There is an interesting exploration of this in the Altered Carbon universe. If people can become functionally immortal, will they inevitably grow tired of societally acceptable pursuits and move on to sadism?

You don’t need fiction to explore it; look at the rich and comfortable in our society forcing austerity on the poor.

Bored people playing the only titillating game available to them.

It’s not lost on me these folks are generally of the age to have lacked the variety of multimedia we have now. Raised on tales grounded in literal global conquest and missionaries of their culture, chasing “forever life” through family tree taxonomy, enlisting their kids as “skins” in the battle to maintain order as they see it.

Of course ideas that challenge their poetic vision are illiberal nonsense.

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