Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Shame Storm

firstthings.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 247 posts

Re: Shame Storm

#101

Post by busterarm »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #83
busterarm wrote: post #9

I think one of the biggest misconceptions that highly educated people have is to think that they are immune to the effects of an angry/unruly mob. As participant or as victim.

I think one of the biggest misconceptions that anti-mob people have is that there is no cost to letting people go un-shunned. There is much hand-wringing over the handful of people wrongly shunned, but many of the wringers give no thought at all to the victims who are forced out of their careers, families, and communities every day because the people around them refuse to consider the possibility that there is a wolf…

I'll admit that I'm fairly sketched out in general at the suggestion of extra-legal measures of justice in a civilized society. I think the potential for harm far outweighs the good that might be done and that your goal of a 1:1 ratio sounds a lot like "eye for an eye". It's about as counter to societal progress an idea as I can think up.

And I say all that as someone who saw the Surrogate Court system abused to steal away all of the lifetime wealth honestly earned by my mother.

Re: Shame Storm

#102

Post by lifeformed »

jerf wrote: post #53
perfmode wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His attitude while defending himself on the stand is the basis for which I would rescind his nomination. His behavior was not befitting of someone who is about to be conferred lifetime appointment to the highest court in the country. I don’t want him crafting laws and making decisions that impact huge groups of people.

Stand in his place for a week and tell me that. To echo manfredo, if the only people we can nominate to the Supreme Court are people who can just calmly sit there while the absolute worst accusations possible are flung against them, we're not going to be nominating new justices any time soon (Democrat or Republican). Or, alternatively, we're going to get a very, very distorted set of justices who lack all emotional a…

In Kavanaugh's case, the problem is deeper than the rape accusation itself. False accusations are horrible but we have to stop pretending that the people pushing for his nomination even cared if it was true or not. A majority of Republicans polled said that he should be confirmed even if it is proven he is a rapist. The Republican senators said they'd push the nomination through no matter what was found. It's clear from these facts that these Republicans were not approaching the nomination in good faith.

If you were interviewing someone for a job, and then found that he was accused of rape multiple times, do you:

A) Ignore them.

B) Not hire him.

C) Look into the situation more deeply.

D) Want to hire him even more.

I think we can agree C makes most sense, but most Republicans were pushing hard for D. They were an inch away from doing it without an investigation, but finally caved due to one holdout senator, and then did a quick crippled investigation where they couldn't even interview Kavanaugh or the accuser Ford.

As for the accusations itself, we know that Ford named Kavanaugh as her rapist to multiple people decades ago. We also know that Kavanaugh sent texts about how to deal with another accuser, before the accuser even went public. Also, he then perjured himself saying he didn't know about her until she went public.

Because of these reasons, I think the outcry against Kavanaugh's nomination was justified. If the Republicans really wanted the best person for the job, and if he really was innocent, they should have all agreed early on for a thorough FBI investigation which should clear his name. Instead, they made it a culture war issue and played up the circus. If they didn't want it to be a shame storm, they could've taken the allegations seriously and do their job to represent the will of the citizens.

We all know that we're not going to get 100% evidence of if he did it or not, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't seek to find what we can and build up some percentage of confidence in the candidate. If the available evidence instills us with perhaps 30% doubt of his word, should that have a factor in our hiring decision? Or do we only consider 0% or 100% conclusions? Is 30% too risky for hiring someone for what is arguably the most important job in the world?

To be fair, I don't think a media circus crucifixion is the right outcome of an unproven allegation, but it's also wrong to totally disregard such allegations when making such a high-stakes decision. It seems fair to me to at least take a risk-adverse approach without casting total judgement on the candidate.

Re: Shame Storm

#103

Post by jf- »

nardi wrote: post #99
jf- wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can’t be engineered, it can only be enforced. There have to be rules against these kinds of storms and those rules have to have some sort of effect. Social media platforms have to be actively moderated. There is no alternative to this. Having rules and enforcers is how we deal with negative behaviour everywhere, because that is the only thing that works. People’s lives are meaningfully impacted by these things to…

You can’t have a rule against a storm, only a raindrop. Rules have to be enforced against individuals. And what rule would you make that could be enforced? That isn’t to say you couldn’t have a storm response policy. But then how would you keep the storm from happening first?

Pretty simple: Disallow posts about the subject of the storm. Do so with the explanation that it is a moral good to prevent this kind of dogpiling and that those taking part should be ashamed of themselves.

Re: Shame Storm

#104

Post by wrycoder »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #65
alehul wrote: post #5

Really interesting read-- this reminds me a ton of the New Criterion, which is constantly publishing articles of a similar style [1]. It's composed in this verbose, sometimes satirical New Yorker-style of writing, and offers such a stark contrast to what's normally cited as a "politically right" source, like Fox News, which I find pretty abhorrent in quality. Thanks for linking to this; it's immensely important to le…

Fascinated with the concept, I subscribed to the New Criterion a year ago. I'm not right-wing by any measurement, and I didn't even know the mag was oriented that way, but the idea of a magazine with no ads, no glossy pictures, no 6th-grade reading level? Based around art and commentary? I had to try it. I like it a lot. It challenges me to be a more intelligent art consumer. It's not pumping stuff. It just wants to…

It’s a monthly review of books, art, classical music performance, the theatre, and the state of the world from the point of view of a classical liberal. There’s a refreshing lack of snark and partisan talking points. When I renewed, I gave a subscription to the local library.

Re: Shame Storm

#105

Post by lifeformed »

perfmode wrote: post #59
jerf wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stand in his place for a week and tell me that. To echo manfredo, if the only people we can nominate to the Supreme Court are people who can just calmly sit there while the absolute worst accusations possible are flung against them, we're not going to be nominating new justices any time soon (Democrat or Republican). Or, alternatively, we're going to get a very, very distorted set of justices who lack all emotional a…

That office is so important that I’m happy to wait until the right candidate shows up. And I don’t want republicans or Democrats. I want scientists of law with integrity. And there are plenty competent people with integrity. It is people who lack integrity that marginalize them.

Well there was one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrick_Garland

A bipartisan moderate that everyone loved, recommended by both parties, poised to take the nomination, then blocked for years by the Republican party just as a total partisan f-you to Obama.

Re: Shame Storm

#106

Post by Memosyne »

nostrademons wrote: post #100
Memosyne wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe these tendencies exist because of a strong emotional attachment to personal identity. If you engineered a social system where people devalued personal identity, then I doubt these problems would be so invasive.

That would be 4chan, and it seems to have the opposite effect.

4chan (and other such networking media) attract individuals who have developed in an existing social environment. My understanding was that jerf wanted us to engineer a new type of social structure that could be taught to children during their formative years of development.

Re: Shame Storm

#107

Post by jf- »

Memosyne wrote: post #106
nostrademons wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be 4chan, and it seems to have the opposite effect.

4chan (and other such networking media) attract individuals who have developed in an existing social environment. My understanding was that jerf wanted us to engineer a new type of social structure that could be taught to children during their formative years of development.

You want to teach them that they don’t have identities?

Re: Shame Storm

#108

Post by ballenf »

I'd recommend people having kids give them very common names and consider giving them modifications of the last name if it's rare. It's depressing advice and a bit like paying a lifetime of insurance premiums that's likely never to be needed.

Unless the concept of a search changes in the next couple decades, getting lost in a sea of similar names is the only defense against unfounded accusations. (Changing one's name after the fact doesn't work as you're required to give prior names for many jobs.)

Re: Shame Storm

#109

Post by gknoy »

jstewartmobile wrote: post #86
tlb wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you're being facetious, but dueling wasn't such a great thing for society. It gave tough people an advantage in life over smart or conscientious people. You wouldn't like living in a society where toughness won. It was one of Queen Victoria's great contributions to make dueling socially unacceptable.

Not joking. That, and it doesn't require toughness so much as good aim: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Hudson#Duel_and_disast... I'd much rather roll the dice with duelling again than introduce some new, elaborate, and untested form of social engineering.

Dueling implies that someone who is _better at one thing_ (hurting others) is inherently Right. It also means that someone who is sufficiently good at such things can act as a bully.

Dueling introduces personal risk for libelous claims, but it _also_ introduces the same risk for those who are making true claims. People already fear the people that hurt them; giving them a legally supported way of hurting them even more (as a legal "defense") would make people even less likely to report others' bad behavior.

Would you challenge someone to a duel, knowing that you're likely to die, even though that person wronged you? Few would take that risk.

Re: Shame Storm

#110

Post by malvosenior »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #83
busterarm wrote: post #9

I think one of the biggest misconceptions that highly educated people have is to think that they are immune to the effects of an angry/unruly mob. As participant or as victim.

I think one of the biggest misconceptions that anti-mob people have is that there is no cost to letting people go un-shunned. There is much hand-wringing over the handful of people wrongly shunned, but many of the wringers give no thought at all to the victims who are forced out of their careers, families, and communities every day because the people around them refuse to consider the possibility that there is a wolf…

I think it's safe to say that the costs of vigilantly mob justice is far higher than any benefit it might have. You usually end up with situations like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Scare

It's also impossible to have the full context of a story from the information available in a shame storm (often the other half of the story from the shame-ey is missing or not believed). The severity of the "punishment" that is doled out based on extremely thin "facts" is terrifying and not something a just society should encourage.

Post reply on HN