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What Happens When You Taunt 4Chan: Story of Lacey Vicich

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Re: What Happens When You Taunt 4Chan: Story of Lacey Vicich

#81

Post by icebraining »

georgebarnett wrote: post #70
veb wrote: post #34

I remember when this started happening, something trickled over to Reddit and so I investigated to get the full story. Needless to say, it was rather quite horrible and I really did feel for the girl. At the same time, I was utterly confused as to why on earth she tried to poke a hornets nest... It's a shame that people are still trying to ruin her life more. It's almost like some people think if something is done ov…

I wonder how much of this issue is aggravated by the fact that we are unable to identify children on the internet. In regular society, we would not dream of putting up with anti-social behaviour of this type but online we seem only too fight for their right to do this, with what seem to be rather drastic consequences.

I think these behaviors are extremely innocent compared to some anti-social people we put up with in regular society. Any important soccer match around here involves way more destructive behavior than this.

Re: What Happens When You Taunt 4Chan: Story of Lacey Vicich

#82

Post by andreasvc »

dmix wrote: post #74
ktizo wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think empathy is more of an experience you feel when confronted with a situation or story, rather than something you grant to people after a process of logical judgement.

I disagree that empathy can only be the result of an emotional response and not rational thought.

But that's how it's generally defined, e.g. wikipedia:

"Empathy is the capacity to recognize feelings that are being experienced by another sentient [...] being." -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy

Re: What Happens When You Taunt 4Chan: Story of Lacey Vicich

#84

Post by andreasvc »

3143 wrote: post #80
andreasvc wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because it's bloody obvious that they're doing things specifically to hurt people. Humans don't desecrate graves by instinct, that requires malice, I'd say.

Hurting other people is an instinct.

Citation? I was under the impression that humans do not have instincts.

Re: What Happens When You Taunt 4Chan: Story of Lacey Vicich

#85

Post by lwat »

kaonashi wrote: post #7
Ensorceled wrote: post #2

"I think I will poke this bear with this pointed stick I'm holding ... what could go wrong?" Not defending 4Chan here but, wow, this is "walking alone in the bad part of town at midnight" type of stupid.

That's not even dangerously close to blaming the victim; that is blaming the victim.

If someone pokes an alligator and gets into trouble, is that blaming the victim?

Re: What Happens When You Taunt 4Chan: Story of Lacey Vicich

#86

Post by dmix »

andreasvc wrote: post #82
dmix wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree that empathy can only be the result of an emotional response and not rational thought.

But that's how it's generally defined, e.g. wikipedia: "Empathy is the capacity to recognize feelings that are being experienced by another sentient [...] being." -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy

Although tempting, debating the meaning of empathy is probably not a beneficial contribution to this HN thread.

But I will say, the initial emotional response (for ex. feeling sad someone was harmed) is largely out of our control. But spending time feeling bad after the fact is a controllable state, and is the basis of a large amount of psychological and behavioral therapy.

Re: What Happens When You Taunt 4Chan: Story of Lacey Vicich

#87

Post by icebraining »

NotaFingah wrote: post #57
saxamaphone69 wrote: post #21

There is more to 4chan than just /b/. Yes, /b/ seems to be the only reason people hear or know about 4chan. But /b/ has done this sort of stuff in the past for massive 'lulz', and they have also stopped stuff like animal cruelty, or even that one kid who decided to post a pic of his feet in people's salad (which got him fired). Good times here, http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/tom-green-raids There's another 50 boards o…

Why would I want to explore a place that hosts a filthy cesspool crawling with loathsome sloths and immature rejects from all walks of life? Thanks for your great advice, but I think I'll just stay as far away from that place as possible. I'm sure I'll be able to read about it somewhere else, the next time these mindless children decide to go too far.

Because it's interesting.

Re: What Happens When You Taunt 4Chan: Story of Lacey Vicich

#88

Post by ktizo »

dmix wrote: post #74
ktizo wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think empathy is more of an experience you feel when confronted with a situation or story, rather than something you grant to people after a process of logical judgement.

I disagree that empathy can only be the result of an emotional response and not rational thought.

My current view on it is that empathy isn't specifically an emotional or a rational response, but is more a sensory mirroring of the state of another entity real or imagined, and I am not sure that you can pick apart the strands into one realm or the other.

It can be influenced by conscious thought and logic, sure, but as it is primarily experiential in nature, I usually have an experience that I then rationalise about, rather than rationalising what my experience will be beforehand.

Re: What Happens When You Taunt 4Chan: Story of Lacey Vicich

#89

Post by Cushman »

andreasvc wrote: post #40
Cushman wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's not a direct causal connection -- that's how we use "and" in English -- but basically, moral responsibility is commutative. Bears don't have a responsibility towards us: they're bears, they don't realize it's wrong to eat hikers. And accordingly, we don't have a responsibility towards bears: If there's a bear that's eating hikers, we don't try to have a conversation with it, we shoot it and move on.

> moral responsibility is commutative That's nonsense. A baby doesn't know right from wrong, but parents are obliged to care for it. Just because a bear doesn't have responsibility doesn't mean we can shoot it wily-nily, there has to be some justification such as in the example you mention. And commutativity is a property of operations, you probably meant that moral responsibility is a symmetric relation.

Infants have no ability to care for their parents. Do you truly argue that a child, when they become able, has no responsibility to take care of their parents, when they become infirm?

And metaphor need not hew closely to semantics, but having is, linguistically, a ditransitive operation-- technically stative, but the difference isn't important here. I may have responsibility, and I may have responsibility toward you. Responsibility may commutatively have me toward you, if that made sense, or you might commutatively have responsibility toward me, which is the more sensical. In any event, the metaphor is clear.

Re: What Happens When You Taunt 4Chan: Story of Lacey Vicich

#90

Post by sltkr »

andreasvc wrote: post #65
awakeasleep wrote: post #63

I feel that somewhere in the progress of western civilization, our culture lost track of some of the important but nasty sides of human nature. We censure them, and to an extent refuse to believe they exist. I hope that the 'wild internet' reintroduces society to the fact that people have a tendency to lash out and hurt others, and that reintroduction serves to help us put value back on thoughtful and caring behavior…

This is a perverted view of history. In fact, in small hunter-gatherer tribes it was easier to keep track of each other and hold each other accountable, so crossing someone would be risky. Today, with large societies that are increasingly anonymous, one can more easily get away with screwing people over--you can always move someplace else. So I don't think being nasty is particularly natural for humans, it just comes…

On the other hand, when people have nowhere else to go, they are extremely vulnerable to exploitation of those in power.

(Go watch Dogville for an exploration of that idea.)

I think it's a bit naive to suggest that if people lived in smaller communities, nothing nasty would happen to anyone.

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