131–140 of 299 posts
Can't think of a way that brains doing this is adaptive in an evolutionary sense.
Time slowing down does seem useful in the event you can actually affect your circumstances.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Their life is shit already, that's why they act as they act, passing aggression on to others in vain effort to get rid of some of that 'evil' in them. I understand this knee-jerk reaction very well, but it just feeds the neverending spiral of aggression. We humans act like storage of both good and bad, it then comes back up in various situations. What I want to say - you just beating up a bully will mean some other k…
IIRC this is a misconception and bullies bully strategically to climb the social ladder and benefit from it. It's possible that they do it because they learned pathological systems of behaviour from pathological family/social experiences, but even if fighting back against them is also shitty, it beats enabling them to keep doing it (especially to you)
a) Either there is no objective morality and then anyone can do anything they can justify using their personal moral system, as long as it's internally consistent (it blatantly isn't for most people and perhaps subtly isn't for the rest)
b) or there is objective morality and then anyone can dispense punishment (for example by fighting back) because there's no reason the objective morality would favor a given person over any other.
The idea that people should not solve their own problems or other people's problems stems from:
- People in positions of power wanting to justify their power, thus indoctrinating everyone into believing they need protection. The more authoritarian the state, the more restrictive guns laws. Authoritarian teachers demanding absolute order and children punishing each other is disorder.
- The difficulty of ascertaining who the original aggressor is and who is just fighting back.
- The likelihood of people making mistakes and punishing the wrong person of overshooting the level of appropriate punishment.
- Internal conflict weakening the whole groups, making it more susceptible to outside aggression - better to punish both sides fighting to keep order and appear strong.
All of these have some merit in some situations and to some extent but IMO none of them justify their logical conclusion - total submission to a supposedly unerring position of power.
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But back to fighting back:
I've seen two groups of children - those who were encouraged to fight back and those who were encouraged to endure it or ask teachers for help.
You don't see the first group bullied much so you might not even identify the group as a target of (potential) bullying.
Meanwhile I have never seen the second group's strategy working out - the bullying always escalated until a breaking point.
Additionally, from what I've seen, when the second group changed strategies to fighting back, the bullying stopped.
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Finally, another pattern I see emerging from personal experience is that the parents of the children involved often know each other because they went to school with each other, even if not necessarily one class. And the parents of aggressors ("bullies") behaved the same way. The behavior absolutely is transmissible and I don't believe it's solely through social means. Some anti-social personality traits have a large genetic component and these traits are often a major cause of the need to hurt others.
I’m sure there would be a long line of willing terminal and euthanasia patients who would join a study to record their final moments, I’m surprised this hasn’t been done yet.
I am not so sure about this. What would motivate someone to willingly transform their last moments into a medical experiment, with all the risks of being treated in not-so-nice ways? Almost nobody wants to die in a hospital in the first place. And as part of a medical "experiment", no thanks. Science can fuck off as long as they don't have control over their (small, but existing) emotionally detached workers. https:/…
I'm curious about my death, too! I've sat with people who are very close to that edge, and I realize it's the last experience I'll ever have, the last lesson I'll ever learn, and find it poignant that I won't be able to tell anyone else about it. Being part of an experiment like this would be... satisfying, somehow. It feels like it would give meaning to my death.
I respect that you have a different point of view, but I hope that helps you understand what would motivate someone to do something like this.
I’m sure there would be a long line of willing terminal and euthanasia patients who would join a study to record their final moments, I’m surprised this hasn’t been done yet.
Ethicists forbid studying anything interesting, leaving us to scrape up data from natural experiments like this patient having a heart attack while already hooked up to an EEG.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
IIRC this is a misconception and bullies bully strategically to climb the social ladder and benefit from it. It's possible that they do it because they learned pathological systems of behaviour from pathological family/social experiences, but even if fighting back against them is also shitty, it beats enabling them to keep doing it (especially to you)
No, that is absolutely not a misconception, and is backed by peer reviewed research such as https://www.hks.harvard.edu/publications/why-stigmatized-ado... . What you may be thinking of is research showing that when kids get to know each other, the ones who will become socially dominant tend to be aggressive early. But once they achieve social status, they usually turn around and become far nicer. With further aggres…
> But once they achieve social status, they usually turn around and become far nicer
This sounds to me that their (unprovoked) aggression worked and that counter-aggression should have been encouraged earlier to make it a less viable strategy.
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This also does not describe any kind of bullying I've seen or heard about. It was always those with a high social status, usually a group, though often with a clear leader, targeting one or two children with a low social status.
Some of this bullying was not even driven by the need to gain social status but simple pleasure - see my other comments - pleasure/amusement/entertainment is a major reason for bullying.
I've literally never seen a low-social status child bully a high-social status one. How would that even work? Wouldn't the supposed target be defended by his group?
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This idea is naively appealing, but is not backed up by research. Closely related, corporal punishment results in kids who are more likely to try to get their way through violence. Though they'll also take care not to be caught doing so. This is one of the big reasons why psychologists argue against using corporal punishment.
I do believe there's a difference where the punishment comes from. Aggressors[0] generally attack others one of or a combination of these reasons: 1) Pleasure/amusement/entertainment. Some people simply enjoy seeing others (everyone, specific subgroups or specific individuals) suffer. 2) Personal benefit/gain. Very often this is simply social status among peers. As aggressors grow, they refine these strategies (both…
Now, there are some side notes: the standing up must be timely and appropriate. The revenge shouldnt be served cold and the revenge shouldn't raise sympathy for the bully.
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I'm sorry that happened to you. That's so horrible. Wanna make me beat up bullies, man. Got damn bullies.
Their life is shit already, that's why they act as they act, passing aggression on to others in vain effort to get rid of some of that 'evil' in them. I understand this knee-jerk reaction very well, but it just feeds the neverending spiral of aggression. We humans act like storage of both good and bad, it then comes back up in various situations. What I want to say - you just beating up a bully will mean some other k…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, people think they can "fight" it, but you can't. That stuff will knock you out. The counting is just so they know when you're out.
It’s generally very quick, but I suppose not perfect as on one occasion, they had to give me some additional kind of injection because for some reason, I was still awake. The guy doing it seemed confused. With whatever he did additionally, as he did it he goes: “Let’s try this again, start counting back from 10” I might have made it to 9 the second time around. Does this mean they messed up the dosage or something? I…
The fact that he gave you something else that time, and that you've never had that experience again would make me believe he thought it was a fault in the product he initially gave you.
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> you just beating up a bully will mean some other kid(s) will get beaten up (or beaten up even more) further down the line oh you need to convince them that more beatings would be forthcoming if they step out of line again.
This idea is naively appealing, but is not backed up by research. Closely related, corporal punishment results in kids who are more likely to try to get their way through violence. Though they'll also take care not to be caught doing so. This is one of the big reasons why psychologists argue against using corporal punishment.
Telling kids not to fight back is a terrible cowardly thing to do, the adults who do that are either oblivious idealists or are just cynically covering their own ass because they don't want to get in trouble for encouraging a confrontation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> you just beating up a bully will mean some other kid(s) will get beaten up (or beaten up even more) further down the line oh you need to convince them that more beatings would be forthcoming if they step out of line again.
This idea is naively appealing, but is not backed up by research. Closely related, corporal punishment results in kids who are more likely to try to get their way through violence. Though they'll also take care not to be caught doing so. This is one of the big reasons why psychologists argue against using corporal punishment.
Please do not conflate those two things.
If a bully has never felt what they dish out, they may not like it.
Self-defence is ok.
For the young people in my life, I always advise to not escalate, be clear it's not ok, seek an adult's help, and if all reasonable attempts have failed, it's a-ok to stand up for yourself and neutralize a threat when the people and systems around you aren't.
I don't condone violence. But I also see we live in a world where the world fights to force it's way on others.
I take massive grains of salt on such opinions someone is from a group more likely to be a bully or not.