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

The Death of Shame Is Tearing Us Apart

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 109 posts

Re: The Death of Shame Is Tearing Us Apart

#81

Post by VladStanimir »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #77
fyredge wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think these two concepts go hand in hand. Perceived cancel culture is the thing that pushed some people to disregard the concerns of others entirely and live without shame. Another example is the concept of involution and lying flat in China. You can't have both if you assume that the entire population is equal. Too much involution breeds lying flat. Too harsh of a cancel culture (for minor faux pas, not sexual ass…

What's your definition of "involution" here? I looked it up, but I don't understand how it relates to lying flat.

Involution in the context of China laying flat means you work harder and harder only to stay in place with no chance of getting ahead. In China they work 12h day 6 day a week and still have 0 change to buy a home, start a family, etc. The lying flat movement is about giving up on the rat race and working just enough to get by because going above and beyond only get you working yourself to death for no tangible benefit.

Re: The Death of Shame Is Tearing Us Apart

#82

Post by 1d22a »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #77
fyredge wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think these two concepts go hand in hand. Perceived cancel culture is the thing that pushed some people to disregard the concerns of others entirely and live without shame. Another example is the concept of involution and lying flat in China. You can't have both if you assume that the entire population is equal. Too much involution breeds lying flat. Too harsh of a cancel culture (for minor faux pas, not sexual ass…

What's your definition of "involution" here? I looked it up, but I don't understand how it relates to lying flat.

> I’m more and more convinced that all of AI engineering is Neijuan (内卷, meaning curl inwards). In China it describes a system that demands ever more effort and competition without improving output. The way in which it sometimes shows up in the West is the 996 nonsense. The English term for Neijuan is “Involution” from the book Agricultural Involution. Agricultural involution describes the intensification of farming that raises productivity per square meter while leaving productivity per head unchanged.

Discussed earlier today here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49654229

Re: The Death of Shame Is Tearing Us Apart

#83

Post by TFNA »

jhbadger wrote: post #64
exitb wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some places it's shameful to show one's hair, or to eat while you walk in public. In some, people don't think about those things at all. In others, the ability to do those things can be an expression of personal freedom. What you experience is a cultural difference.

Well, not quite. Not showing your hair or not eating in public may have meaning in somebody's culture/religion, but it doesn't hurt anyone else either way. Playing video/music without earphones does. And surely people must have experienced it from the other side when people nearby were playing music they didn't care for. I think it is reasonable for people to ask themselves "Would I like it if someone near me did ?",…

Have you traveled Latin America? Loud audio in public is so normal there that immigrants to Europe often can't see what all this fuss is about when people complain about loud phones on public transport. This is very much a mutable cultural thing.

Re: The Death of Shame Is Tearing Us Apart

#84

Post by red-iron-pine »

plantain wrote: post #4

Sit on public transport and listen to everyone playing music / watching tiktok without headphones. Shame is dead.

shame only works if there are consequences. if you're not calling them out then you are complicit. you are accepting that, and you need to live with it.

if you want someone to respect your feelings then ultimately you will have to make them. for broke-ass hoodrats, for whom economic factors won't work, that means eventually going to Louis' ultima ratio -- e.g. calling this out may lead to a fistfight on a moving bus.

Re: The Death of Shame Is Tearing Us Apart

#85

Post by GuestFAUniverse »

dguest wrote: post #52
plantain wrote: post #4

Sit on public transport and listen to everyone playing music / watching tiktok without headphones. Shame is dead.

In my experience it's dominantly teen-aged kids who are just figuring the world out, or in more unfortunate but very rare cases 30-somethings who never quite grew up. I was that shameless annoyance once too. It doesn't mean shame is dead.

It's easy to blame the young generations.

I noticed olders are more ignorant too:

* Standing prolonged in the way during smalltalk? Even 60y+ seems to have lost the art of stepping aside as much as possible.

* Stopping a crosswalks, esp. when children are waiting? 50y+ seem more prone to just driving ...

Re: The Death of Shame Is Tearing Us Apart

#86

Post by TFNA »

tbrownaw wrote: post #67
exitb wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some places it's shameful to show one's hair, or to eat while you walk in public. In some, people don't think about those things at all. In others, the ability to do those things can be an expression of personal freedom. What you experience is a cultural difference.

> What you experience is a cultural difference. In that not all cultures recognize causing negative externalities as a bad thing?

Negative externalities is culturally dependent. The Japanese consider the sight of a person eating while walking to be a negative externality. Are we going to start complaining here on HN about people doing it? No, we recognize that those taboos vary across time and space.

Re: The Death of Shame Is Tearing Us Apart

#87

Post by red-iron-pine »

igsomething wrote: post #49
dguest wrote: post #37

Football / Soccer had "flopping" [1], which anyone who watched it in the early 2000s would recognize: every foul was accompanied by a "victim" writhing on the field in agony, in excess of anything you'd see in much more violent sports. Apparently it's diminished a bit in recent years, but not because it's clearly shameful behavior: the leagues started issuing bans. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diving_(associati…

It wasn't about diving in particular, but rather post-match revisions and sanctions becoming more common to punish unsportsmanship. Add VAR in recent years, and the newest "1 minute out" rule for fake injury, and today players don't gain anything from diving.

but the lesson is clear: there needs to be consequences for shameful behavior. introduce a meaningful sanction and the behavior stops.

Re: The Death of Shame Is Tearing Us Apart

#88

Post by account42 »

exitb wrote: post #57
jhbadger wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That I really don't get (and I experience it a lot using transit for my commute) . It seems more common now, but you'd think it would be less common. Headphones used to be bulky things, now Bluetooth earbuds are tiny things easily put in your pocket -- why not use them?

In some places it's shameful to show one's hair, or to eat while you walk in public. In some, people don't think about those things at all. In others, the ability to do those things can be an expression of personal freedom. What you experience is a cultural difference.

But then people get angry if you don't want those "cultural differences" in your daily life. And when people question why you prefer private transportation.

Re: The Death of Shame Is Tearing Us Apart

#89

Post by eudamoniac »

red-iron-pine wrote: post #84
plantain wrote: post #4

Sit on public transport and listen to everyone playing music / watching tiktok without headphones. Shame is dead.

shame only works if there are consequences. if you're not calling them out then you are complicit. you are accepting that, and you need to live with it. if you want someone to respect your feelings then ultimately you will have to make them. for broke-ass hoodrats, for whom economic factors won't work, that means eventually going to Louis' ultima ratio -- e.g. calling this out may lead to a fistfight on a moving bus.

More to the point, we currently share a society with many people of a violent culture, which makes directly shaming them dangerous and unwise. This was not always the case. The death of shaming is largely related to the increased daily proximity to violent subcultures who do not fear consequences.

Re: The Death of Shame Is Tearing Us Apart

#90

Post by account42 »

jhbadger wrote: post #64
exitb wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some places it's shameful to show one's hair, or to eat while you walk in public. In some, people don't think about those things at all. In others, the ability to do those things can be an expression of personal freedom. What you experience is a cultural difference.

Well, not quite. Not showing your hair or not eating in public may have meaning in somebody's culture/religion, but it doesn't hurt anyone else either way. Playing video/music without earphones does. And surely people must have experienced it from the other side when people nearby were playing music they didn't care for. I think it is reasonable for people to ask themselves "Would I like it if someone near me did ?",…

Eating in public places not mean for eating subjects others to the smell of your food in the same way that listening to something on speaker subjects them to unwanted sound. Hijabs are more indirect but I would disagree that it doesn't affect others.
Post reply on HN