Shame Storm • Hacker News Board

Re: Shame Storm

#41

Post by matt4077 » Fri, Dec 14, 2018, 6:36 PM UTC

manfredo wrote: post #32

jeremysalwen wrote: post #21

Don't really think the Kavanaugh example really fits in with the rest. Sorry, if you want to be a Supreme Court justice, yes, you should should be held to a much higher standard. Yelling about "revenge on behalf of the Clintons" does indeed count as "partisan bitterness".

If allegation of a decades old crime at an unspecified date, time, and location, and with no corroborating evidence is enough to block a Supreme Court nomination then we're not going to be nominating new justices any time soon (Democrat or Republican).

You’re willfully misrepresenting the accusations, and completely ignoring the reaction to them that many considered to be even more problematic. But let’s not rehash this particular flamewar.

Re: Shame Storm

#42

Post by weberc2 » Fri, Dec 14, 2018, 6:36 PM UTC

zozbot123 wrote: post #13

The rule for how to deal with this sort of "shaming" is quite simple: no matter what you may have been 'accused' of, always double down and never issue anything that might even loosely resemble an apology or an admission of weakness, no matter what the costs might be. Then simply wait until the mob gets bored and moves on to the next easy target. There are very high profile examples of this working quite well, but me…

It's hard to make heads or tails of this without a better definition of what constitutes "doubling down" or "working quite well".

The example that comes to mind is James Damore and he "doubled down" in the sense that he stood by his original statements (which made sense because his original memo was clearly and explicitly not endorsing the things he was accused of endorsing). It "worked out quite well" in that he _only_ lost his job and endured a lot of harassment, abuse, and slander (although who knows what kinds of psychological scars this treatment could have left him with), but probably didn't have a hard time finding another job and the mob did eventually (mostly) move on.

So either the Damore example satisfies your definition of "working quite well" but not mine (or probably most people) or this example illustrates that your prescription doesn't always work. Perhaps it is exceptional, in that most mobs aren't marshalled by major publications nor do they conspire with the CEO of one of the most prominent companies in the world.

Re: Shame Storm

#43

Post by ThrowawayR2 » Fri, Dec 14, 2018, 6:36 PM UTC

blattimwind wrote: post #30

Why is this dated January 2019?

The site seems to be for a print magazine so this article is slated to appear in the January 2019 issue.

Re: Shame Storm

#44

Post by sethrin » Fri, Dec 14, 2018, 6:38 PM UTC

hopefulengineer wrote: post #34

progressives have taken us back in time to the days of the inquisition where heretics must be removed from society. These beliefs have absolutely taken on a religious fervor James watson, the man who discovered DNA structure, has been excommunicated for saying intelligence could be genetic and that would ruin the equality movement so he had to be removed It reminds me of galileo and his imprisonment related to helioc…

You should read more about Gallileo. He was wrong in many ways, and it's entirely likely that he was punished for his tendency to be a jerk as much as anything else. Actually, the analogy isn't half bad, come to think...

http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-great-ptolemaic-smac...

Re: Shame Storm

#45

Post by twblalock » Fri, Dec 14, 2018, 6:38 PM UTC

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #26

tlb wrote: post #8

Public shaming can either become less common or more common over time. If it becomes more common, it might eventually become less damaging. Right now, because only 1000s of people have been targets, it's feasible for employers to search online and not hire people who've been shamed. A historic parallel of diminishing effect is posting identifiable pictures on the Internet. It used to be a big no-no, because when only…

This comment seems to woefully underimagine ways that public information can be used against you. Your public photos that are now just one in a large crowd are also subject to having your image deepfaked into revenge porn, used as a spam photo for bot account sign ups, scraped for facial recognition, found instantly by a background check seen by your employer, used to attach demographic info to your name in those shi…

The OP was saying that if shaming becomes common then being shamed can't hurt you relative to the general public, because most of them have also been shamed.

Re: Shame Storm

#46

Post by matt4077 » Fri, Dec 14, 2018, 6:39 PM UTC

So anything concerning, for example, racism or sexism in Silicon Valley is flagged to hell as too „political“, but this is not?

It‘s already triggering comments comparing „progressives“ to the inquisition, just in case anyone thinks this is just neutral griping about the death of free speech, or whatever.

Re: Shame Storm

#47

Post by jerf » Fri, Dec 14, 2018, 6:41 PM UTC

As I've mentioned before, one of the interesting things I like to study in a casual way is the effect of social community structures on behavior. At this point it is not terribly controversial that modern social media systems encourage shame storms, via things like easy "viral" sharing, the existence of moderation systems that can be used to nuke any attempt to defend oneself out of existence, and the way modern social media encourages cheap virtue signalling by its nature (if nothing else, because there isn't really a way to demonstrate an expensive commitment to anything, everything is cheap words).

So, as an interesting constructive exercise rather than just bemoaning the situation, how could a social system be engineered in a way that it might address the staggering ease with which this sort of shame storm arises, feeds itself, and flings itself against individuals? You can either start from an existing system and try to tame it, or start from scratch.

It's worth thinking about both because it's fun, and because the people who may actually someday fix it may well be here.

Re: Shame Storm

#48

Post by manfredo » Fri, Dec 14, 2018, 6:42 PM UTC

perfmode wrote: post #39

manfredo wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If allegation of a decades old crime at an unspecified date, time, and location, and with no corroborating evidence is enough to block a Supreme Court nomination then we're not going to be nominating new justices any time soon (Democrat or Republican).

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.

Behavior such as? Most people who I've seen criticize his behavior essentially boil down to criticizing him for not admitting guilt, or because he tried to discredit Ford - neither of which are valid points in my view. Defending oneself from an accusation inherently entails discrediting the accuser, to criticize defendants for doing so is essentially saying it should be socially unacceptable to defend oneself from an accusation. While I probably won't agree with Kavanaugh's court opinions, the opposition to his appointment also has negative effects. It was correlated with a drop in trust for alleged victims of sexual assault, for example: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/10/15/after-a-...

Re: Shame Storm

#49

Post by oh_sigh » Fri, Dec 14, 2018, 6:44 PM UTC

CydeWeys wrote: post #20

busterarm wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You aren't debating their points, you're debating their motives, as does your top post. This is literally textbook ad hominem here.

I can't help but notice the irony that all you're doing here is ad hominem against me, in an even purer form.

How exactly does one call out an ad hominem without saying that a person is performing an ad hominem?

Re: Shame Storm

#50

Post by vkou » Fri, Dec 14, 2018, 6:45 PM UTC

warp_factor wrote: post #28

The issue is also that people got more and more sensitive over ybrast decades. Political correctness seems to be at a all time high. Try to say openly in the bay area that you support Trump and you will be shamed like never before. Shaming is now always in our mind and I find myself thinking more and more about redacting what I say to make it "unshameful" in order to avoid any possibility of shaming.

> Political correctness seems to be at a all time high.

Do you think it has something to do with all sorts of common, abhorrent behaviours that were tolerated, or encouraged in the past becoming unacceptable today?

Sixty years ago, it wouldn't be out of place to tell the ------ to go to the back of the bus. Social expectations change, and there's always a few people who double down, dig in, and drag their heels, and insist that everyone around them is being too fucking sensitive.