People with autism less likely to succumb to bystander effect, research finds • Hacker News Board

Re: People with autism less likely to succumb to bystander effect, research finds

#81

Post by Yoric » Mon, Oct 30, 2023, 1:26 PM UTC

verisimi wrote: post #49

Yoric wrote: post #7

Anecdotal evidence: around me, several kids are on the autistic spectrum. It's hard to prevent them from intervening when they notice what they feel is an injustice, towards them or others. At some point, this included one of them regularly attempting to rescue babies from baby trolleys, which they considered a prison. Fortunately, the would-be rescuer was only aged 3 at the time.

Is it injustice, or is it adherence to certain principles (rules) that they have grasped?

I parsed this as injustice, but I could be wrong.

Re: People with autism less likely to succumb to bystander effect, research finds

#82

Post by mjburgess » Mon, Oct 30, 2023, 1:31 PM UTC

Podgajski wrote: post #66

mjburgess wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a dog, but i've known many and never a dangerous one. In the UK its very common to have large parks with dogs just running around; I'm not aware of any cases where this has caused a problem. I've no objection to the rule. My issue is with how the rule is being interpreted. If someone were to ask, 'please keep a leash on' i'd expect people to be polite enough to do so. But that's the gravity of the situat…

Can you imagine if the whole country was run this way? Please don’t steal things from other peoples houses. In this case, the discipline on the person who would be a fine. What do you think they’re going to do? Beat him and throw him in jail? As I said, I’m an advocate for anarchism, so my view on the police should be clear. But we do not live in an anarchistic society, and this is all I have to work with. unlimited…

> Please don’t steal things from other peoples houses.

That is how the country is run.

You can, if you so wish, steal from peoples houses with impunity. The crime will very rarely be investigated, you're unlikely to be caught, etc.

This system of black/white rules that you perceive exists, does not. This misperception lies at the origin of what's trigged your impulse to imagine some threat (which then triggers compassion).

Rather social reality comprises a series of negotiations whose moral content lies in how that delicate interaction takes place. Reducing this down to a chessboard-like system with presumed violent enforcement is itself immoral. It deprives people from living in this negotiated space where morality can take place.

Re: People with autism less likely to succumb to bystander effect, research finds

#83

Post by veeti » Mon, Oct 30, 2023, 1:36 PM UTC

mjburgess wrote: post #59

veeti wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are literally countless videos online of unleashed dogs attacking other dogs, animals, children and adults. Even if you think your precious Fifi would never do such a thing a leash keeps them safe and close to you in the event something happens or scares them off. For this reason using a leash is not only a recommendation on a sign but the law in many locales.

I don't have a dog, but i've known many and never a dangerous one. In the UK its very common to have large parks with dogs just running around; I'm not aware of any cases where this has caused a problem. I've no objection to the rule. My issue is with how the rule is being interpreted. If someone were to ask, 'please keep a leash on' i'd expect people to be polite enough to do so. But that's the gravity of the situat…

- A 2021 study of fatal dog attacks in Europe during the period 1995–2016 placed the United Kingdom (with 56 fatalities) as fourth in the top five countries for number of human fatalities alongside Hungary (#1), France (#2), Romania (#3), and Poland (#5).

- Hospital episode data for England also reveal an upward trend in the number of attendances for dog related injuries in the past 15 years. There has been an 88% increase in attendances, from 4699 in 2007 to 8819 in 2021-22.

- BBC News - Dog attacks: 34% increase recorded by police in England and Wales (2023). Last year, there were nearly 22,000 cases of out-of-control dogs causing injury. In 2018, there were just over 16,000.

But hey, you weren't a witness to any of this, so I'm sure it never happens. If you are trolling well played. You might as well argue we don't need seatbelt laws since you've never been in a crash.

Re: People with autism less likely to succumb to bystander effect, research finds

#84

Post by mjburgess » Mon, Oct 30, 2023, 1:46 PM UTC

veeti wrote: post #83

mjburgess wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a dog, but i've known many and never a dangerous one. In the UK its very common to have large parks with dogs just running around; I'm not aware of any cases where this has caused a problem. I've no objection to the rule. My issue is with how the rule is being interpreted. If someone were to ask, 'please keep a leash on' i'd expect people to be polite enough to do so. But that's the gravity of the situat…

- A 2021 study of fatal dog attacks in Europe during the period 1995–2016 placed the United Kingdom (with 56 fatalities) as fourth in the top five countries for number of human fatalities alongside Hungary (#1), France (#2), Romania (#3), and Poland (#5). - Hospital episode data for England also reveal an upward trend in the number of attendances for dog related injuries in the past 15 years. There has been an 88% in…

I'm not arguing against dog leash laws; nor against dog leash signs. The dog leashing issue is irrelevant to my point.

My point is about the role of such signs and rules in policing people's behaviour in the abstract.

If, in the situation so-described, the owner and their dog were in any way an actual danger, then they should be reprimanded. If they werent, then let's observe that they werent.

56 fatal dog attacks in a decade is perhaps lower than what i would have guessed anyway. I would have bet higher.

I just dont see why when invited to imagine that on some sunny day in a park, a person walking their dog without a leash, is precipitating the 57th death. This is absurd.

Removing all the information from the situation and reducing down to a fantasy of possible violence is the pretence here for 'preventing harm'. This prevents no harm in the particular situation involved.

I have no doubt dogs are dangerous, as is almost everything. I have extreme levels of doubt that some random guy in a park with a dog off a leash has anything to do with any marginal changes to the safety of people in that park.

My concern is how this snowballs in people's imaginations away from the concrete reality into some abstraction where there are victims involved.

Re: People with autism less likely to succumb to bystander effect, research finds

#85

Post by Podgajski » Mon, Oct 30, 2023, 1:51 PM UTC

mjburgess wrote: post #75

Podgajski wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rules and regulations are not needed to constrain compassion, they needed to constrain sociopathy. A Sign does not trigger an emotional response in me. My emotions were triggered by the action of the person walking their dog without a leash design told me that other people were compassionate, just like I am.

Compassion is more dangerous than sociopathy. Sociopaths are transactional, and often follow the rules on a transactional basis. To conduct a genocide, one needs compassion. In the way people are here having fantasies of dangerous dogs biting children, likewise similar fantasies of danger abound -- compassion for imagined victims driving overwhelming oppression. I dont consider this morality, quite the opposite. Mora…

I would love to know how compassion was used to cause the holocaust.

But I think I see. I think I see your mistaking compassion for the self as compassion for the other. It’s easy to cause a holocaust if you cause people to only have compassion for themselves or their own kind. It’s very hard to create a holocaust if you have a universal compassion for all humans.

So your answer is “well let’s get rid of all compassion” instead of making our compassion even greater.

Re: People with autism less likely to succumb to bystander effect, research finds

#86

Post by Podgajski » Mon, Oct 30, 2023, 1:58 PM UTC

mjburgess wrote: post #84

veeti wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- A 2021 study of fatal dog attacks in Europe during the period 1995–2016 placed the United Kingdom (with 56 fatalities) as fourth in the top five countries for number of human fatalities alongside Hungary (#1), France (#2), Romania (#3), and Poland (#5). - Hospital episode data for England also reveal an upward trend in the number of attendances for dog related injuries in the past 15 years. There has been an 88% in…

I'm not arguing against dog leash laws; nor against dog leash signs. The dog leashing issue is irrelevant to my point. My point is about the role of such signs and rules in policing people's behaviour in the abstract. If, in the situation so-described, the owner and their dog were in any way an actual danger, then they should be reprimanded. If they werent, then let's observe that they werent. 56 fatal dog attacks in…

You have not asked me once about what types of dogs they were or how the dogs were behaving. so I would say it’s you. That’s operating without any data and it’s just acting out of your imagination.

But it’s irrelevant. Because you’re just thinking about people being in danger and not the dog being in danger or not if it is disturb the other animals that also have at the park like the squirrels in the birds.

You’re only seeing the dog owner as the victim in the circumstance.

And all that doesn’t matter either, because we as a community created this rule, this law, that your dog needs to be on a leash went in this park. If you don’t like the law, you could push to overturn the law. Or if you don’t like the law, you can move to a place that doesn’t have these laws.

We have decided that the risk of even a slight chance of a dog hurting someone is more important than the slight inconvenience of someone having a dog on a leash. Of all people you in data science should understand risk benefit. What is the harm of a dog being on a leash?

Re: People with autism less likely to succumb to bystander effect, research finds

#87

Post by Podgajski » Mon, Oct 30, 2023, 2:00 PM UTC

mjburgess wrote: post #82

Podgajski wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you imagine if the whole country was run this way? Please don’t steal things from other peoples houses. In this case, the discipline on the person who would be a fine. What do you think they’re going to do? Beat him and throw him in jail? As I said, I’m an advocate for anarchism, so my view on the police should be clear. But we do not live in an anarchistic society, and this is all I have to work with. unlimited…

> Please don’t steal things from other peoples houses. That is how the country is run. You can, if you so wish, steal from peoples houses with impunity. The crime will very rarely be investigated, you're unlikely to be caught, etc. This system of black/white rules that you perceive exists, does not. This misperception lies at the origin of what's trigged your impulse to imagine some threat (which then triggers compas…

So now you wouldn’t call the place if you saw someone breaking into someone else’s house? Would you even call your neighbor? Would you do anything yourself? Gather gang of people together and go over there? But then you would be the police wouldn’t you?

Re: People with autism less likely to succumb to bystander effect, research finds

#88

Post by bjornlouser » Mon, Oct 30, 2023, 2:07 PM UTC

JonChesterfield wrote: post #19

Podgajski wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, I posted this study because I have Asperger’s and this is what was always said about my behavior. Yesterday I literally had to stop myself from sending photographs to the police of a guy walking his dog off leash in a park that has signs forbidding it. And my reason for wanting to call the police is because of my compassion for the dog or for anyone the dog to hurt. Not so much that it was only that the man was d…

Dogs like being off lead. Running around is sort of their driving motive.

In my experience the probability of dog poop getting scooped by the owner goes down if the dog is off leash.

Re: People with autism less likely to succumb to bystander effect, research finds

#89

Post by FooBarBizBazz » Mon, Oct 30, 2023, 2:11 PM UTC

mrangle wrote: post #68

OfSanguineFire wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think that concern for injustice is something universal or even necessarily widespread among autistic people. That is, I believe that there are plenty of autistic people who do not give a fuck, eschew social causes completely, feel misanthropic, etc. Rather, I think that the examples you encountered represent that segment of autistic people who do care, and due to the difficulty that autistic people have with…

By the same mechanism, Autistic people may be less likely to agree with the social group's view of an example of injustice. Especially if the wider agreement has a contagious element that oversees its facts. Instead, ASD people may be more prone to attending to injustices that they can individually percieve.

It wasn't about "autism", but there was a study done a while ago, where it was the "cranky independent" people who intervened most. They might have been left-styled or right-styled; what they had in common was that they didn't go along with the crowd.

Re: People with autism less likely to succumb to bystander effect, research finds

#90

Post by mjburgess » Mon, Oct 30, 2023, 2:14 PM UTC

Podgajski wrote: post #86

mjburgess wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not arguing against dog leash laws; nor against dog leash signs. The dog leashing issue is irrelevant to my point. My point is about the role of such signs and rules in policing people's behaviour in the abstract. If, in the situation so-described, the owner and their dog were in any way an actual danger, then they should be reprimanded. If they werent, then let's observe that they werent. 56 fatal dog attacks in…

You have not asked me once about what types of dogs they were or how the dogs were behaving. so I would say it’s you. That’s operating without any data and it’s just acting out of your imagination. But it’s irrelevant. Because you’re just thinking about people being in danger and not the dog being in danger or not if it is disturb the other animals that also have at the park like the squirrels in the birds. You’re on…

As I said, it's not really about the leash -- nor the sign.

It's about people who deputise themselves in the service of these rules, and who imagine risk, and appoint themselves enforces of a social order of values that is insensitive to particulars.

There are many things I dislike, take littering. I would find it very obnoxious for a person to litter in a park, and to ignore the signs against it.

But I feel no compulsion to go discipline them, or involve myself in their disciplining, or deputise myself as a member of some social police force. Were they to be murdering someone, that would be different.

I am not a person who 'thinks of the children', quite the opposite. I think of a world designed for children, and would then go out of my way to destroy it.

I am unsympathetic with these 'daily oppressions' which constrain people's lived freedom, in the service of radical abstractions with marginal effects; the service of imagined dangers, and the like.

I would much prefer a society in which people occasionally littered to one in which no one dead out of fear of some reprisal.

The problem with "what's the harm" thinking is its aggregation. When you have disciplined people's daily lives to that degree where all these "what's the harm"-level rules are in operation -- then you're living in a nightmare.

It is for this reason I took against ever living in america. Where 'neighbourly policing' seems everywhere; and 'city bylaws' run amok