Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by ronilan | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

ronilan

> This is people being assholes because they know they can get away with it.

Nope.

These people are being assholes because they ARE assholes.

Never attribute to rational decision making what can be attributed to rotten character.

View on HN

People aren't archetypes or labels; that's too black & white, un-nuanced thinking. Psychological and sociological reseach proved most people act however they're expected to within a given power dynamic circumstance, except for a few outliers which will go their own way, for anti- or pro-community.

This wrong "bad apples" analogy as it applies to police or genocide perpetrators also is dangerous because it's simply untrue. Well meaning people will commit atrocities if directed to by a superior authority figure; the Stanford Prison experiment and the Milgram experiments underscore this.

Instead, there must be social and business pressures brought to bear to prevent emboldened behavior with accountability. If there is boundaryless affluenza anarchy, spoiled brats will overtly behave however they wish. If there are consequences, the behavior will be reduced and become covert. There must be constant vigilance on the part of those stakeholders to enforce consistent accountability for professional/personal behavior.

some people are assholes, very few but some

> Instead, there must be social and business pressures brought to bear to prevent emboldened behavior with accountability.

Some of the actions described in the article are crimes - these assholes should be prosecuted.

Yes. It is a slow, slow decline into the kind of behavior described in the article that could have been stopped or mitigated at any point along the way but wasn't. Not necessarily in terms of how someone is deep down, but in terms of their understanding of how they can/should interact with people around them.

Rather than refuse to understand how someone could have gotten there, let's try to understand the assumptions they made along the way. Then rather than pretending we're unaffected by the culture around us, let's see if we share some of those assumptions. If we want to fix things rather than be blindsided by them, these are at least the first steps.

Sorry but no. The two experiments you cite are ancient and riddled with holes, they are red flags for any psychologist worth their salt. The people described in this article are sexist assholes, plain and simple. You can argue all about how the environment they grew up in made them that way, but not that that's not what they are.

Milgram's experiment has been replicated several time, even in several cultures. Good to know social psychology researchers are not "worth their salt"

And yeah, actually, your culture and socialization is a big part of what you are. You can blame them, but refusing to try and understand how they became assholes means nothing will change.

People must be responsible for their actions, even if an environment influenced their decisions. Yes, to fix the issue, there needs to be larger societal change. But individual perpetrators need punishment as well.

There are two reasons for this. First, punishment of the "bad apples" deters others in the future, and brings about the larger societal change. Second, as a basic principal of a free society, people must be held accountable for their actions.

What Milgram and Stanford experiments showed: ordinary people might do something evil if ordered by a person.

What this article is about: rich white men are sexist.

I fail to see the connection.

>Nope. These people are being assholes because they ARE assholes.

To be fair, even an asshole may show some restraint when they have a clear understanding of consequences. Thinking their money buys them immunity from consequence is an enabler as they don't believe they have the slightest need for this kind of rational self-interest.

You are both right, an asshole is an asshole as you suggest, but even so, assholes are worse when they think they won't face consequences as the poster your replied to implied.

I think it's important to distinguish that these aren't people who are necessarily assholes to everyone. They have plenty of friends and acquaintances who would never believe they'd do something like this. And others who upon hearing it, would've assumed it was a harmless misunderstanding.

I think one of the larger problems that society is struggling with is the idea that two different people can be in very similar proximity, interact with the same people and yet one can have to suffer through radically different (and horrible) treatment.

The reason I believe this is so difficult, is the other person legitimately think "I know that person, I know that place, I've gone through that and I've never seen anything remotely close to that." And reasonably conclude that it didn't happen. It's difficult to accept that there is an entire world that they don't ever experience.

But we all need a find a way to account for this, because too many people go through beimg mistreated and their concerns are simply dismissed.

How does their niceness in other situations matter?

It proves that "being able to get away with it" is significant factor.

It matters because it creates a situation where one set of people have an awful experience with someone, and another set all say "well, in my experience he's perfectly nice and would certainly never do something like that..."

I suppose the fact that they are assholes in one situation but behave respectably in another is what makes this discrimination? If they were assholes to everyone then....

I think it is an interesting thing I see with successful people that they often attribute too much of there success to their personalities and too little to luck and circumstances. This makes them believe their own bullshit about how great they are, and how bad other people are.

Because the people who have only witnessed them being "nice" are less likely to hold them accountable when hearing of their terrible behavior with others.

Exactly. This article helped me understand the whole situation a bit better: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/04/why-is-...

Men need to work hard to jail those assholes, here's why: They are the reason why men are described as generally threatening, discrediting and imposing huge constraints in advance on all men who show proper social restraint and respect for women.

I wonder how many innocent people we'll end up condemning with this posture. It's not like history lacks any examples that demonstrates that this is exactly what happens when you get tough and prosecutorial. You're pretty much sanctioning a pitchfork and torch attitude and that evolves into mobs that are often wrong.

These days it feels like we've learn nothing from stories like the Scarlet Letter that describe a time from our history where we treated women how you now propose that we treat men. Neither gender deserves this.

> You're pretty much sanctioning a pitchfork and torch attitude and that evolves into mobs that are often wrong.

What you are seeing is the decline of rational and logical thinking. No one wants to think critically anymore, because smart phones reduce available cognitive resources.

So you end up in situations where an inflammatory, poorly researched article emotionally hijacks the brain of a person who would have normally been capable of rational thinking.

I'm not saying that's the case here, but there are numerous cases where outrage porn has ruined the lives of innocent people.

I wonder how many innocent people we've already condemned with this attitude.

Men aren't going to be on the front line of this for the same reason white people aren't on the front line of combating racism [0]: even if we don't do awful things one side effect of which is to reinforce privilege, we still benefit from that privilege. A woman seeking funding has to worry about all the things a man seeking funding has to worry about, plus she has to deal with being pressured into sex. That's not great for society, but it is an advantage for men.

[0] as a white man, it is my privilege to make sweeping statements about whites and men b^)

While I get and understand your sentiment, the problem is that being an asshole and a creep isn't illegal in itself. If some male VC groped a female founder in the course of trying to set up a funding deal, then sure, press charges and make it right, but texting a founder "Why are you still with your boyfriend/partner/girlfriend? We should go out for drinks, I'm so much better than him" is just wrong, but not criminal.

As much as I would like to see punishment for clearly abusive and shitty behavior like this article describes, 90% of the time it comes down to character profiles as this thread explains. Even if it found its way into court, the defense would almost certainly try to be framed as a misunderstanding. Instead of punishing and potentially ruining lives for what is sounding like thought-crime, lets just get men off the pedestal and put them on the same goddamned level as women. A woman shouldn't have to defend her reputation for not being slutty if she gets groped, assaulted or raped, and more importantly shouldn't have to fear retaliation for accusing someone of being not just an asshole, but a dangerous asshole.

Then why does their behavior disproportionately affect women, who have less power to complain about their behavior? If this were entirely an aspect of their character or personality they'd be an asshole to everyone equally, not opportunistically take advantage of people who have less ability to stop them.

By your definition of "asshole", are openly bigoted people not assholes because they're not "an asshole to everyone equally"?

But that's not the definition that was given:

> These people are assholes because they know they can get away with it.

So yes, openly bigoted people are assholes. But if they knew their bigotry wouldn't fly, they would at least not be open about it and not be assholes to people.

> they'd be an asshole to everyone equally

I think they often are. But you don't hear about it, because almost no one cares about males at the bottom of the social ladder. At the bottom, men are "valued" (for a lack of a better word) even less than women.

Or perhaps being an asshole to someone in the mailroom because you didn't like the way round a letter was put on your table is not in the same scale of things as trying to coerce someone to have sex with you

Part of poor character is picking on people from a position of power, when they have something you want. Part of poor character is putting your urges ahead of your empathy.

Mostly due to the halo effect.

Generally, when guys get screwed over by a terrible VCs it's "well they're a terrible vc ... you know them." But when it's by women "they crossed this boundry? I'm shocked!"

>Then why does their behavior disproportionately affect women

I'm sure they use their positions of power in many different ways that affect both men and women, but their sexual advances obviously target women because most of them are straight.

>women, who have less power to complain about their behavior

The exact opposite is true. Almost nobody would take a man who complains about sexual harassment seriously. Just look at the night and day difference in response to teacher student abuse when the student is a guy or a girl.

I do not understand what world people live in where constant special concern is twisted into a lack of it. I mean, I do, in so far as it's just benevolent sexism masquerading as equality, but I can't wrap my head around those people considering themselves rational.

The lack of concern is evidenced by nothing actually being done about it.

They act that way because the other person is in a vulnerable position. Most of them will shrink pretty fast when confronted by someone who is not. So they are "selective assholes" so to speak.

>These people are being assholes because they ARE assholes. Never attribute to rational decision making what can be attributed to rotten character.

This kind of thinking is even worse than what they did, because it crystalizes them into some of their decisions and deprives them of being human.

While their acts are bullying, harassment, etc., this characterization is not that different to labelling a race inferior (or attributing some other characteristic as an unshakeable part of it). Only instead of a race it does that to a person (or a number of persons) based on past behavior.

People change, people can behave like assholes in one instance and be sweet and caring in another, and tons of other distinctions.

In the end, this type of thinking is what condemns those convicted in the US to inhuman treatment -- the belief that they are incorrigible because of something they did, and as thus deserve only hell.

Mister Rogers says:

  But the very same people who are good sometimes
  Are the very same people who are bad sometimes.

High functioning sociopaths. A person can be an asshole and not know it. A sociopath knows they're not acting within acceptable social norms and hides it. These investors are sociopaths. An asshole will make a comment and not deny it. A sociopath will try to twist it into a seemingly logical action ie "I was just trying to get rid of her because I didn't like her idea." By that logic who knows how many Jehovah's witnesses this person groped and/or fucked.

>High functioning sociopaths.

That's actually a medical/psychiatric diagnosis. I don't really think it applies here (or maybe it does, I don't know, I only know that you can't just throw that casually at run-of-the mill creeps).

I believe OP was referring to the studied fact that leaders and business moguls tend to exhibit many more of the sociopathic check points than the ordinary person.

Right, you might call these people manipulative, but on a level where they can camouflage their behavior.

Bill Cosby for instance could possibly be considered one. His also seems more methodical. What's worse: 60 possible rapes spanning decades or 60 possible rapes spanning a year?

> By that logic who knows how many Jehovah's witnesses this person groped and/or fucked.

I'd love to know what you mean here, because I can't see how this follows anything.

To get rid of them. Me, I start going on about the benefits of trepanning, and invite them out to the workshop ;)

I see :).

Life pro tip: just say them in a calm, explicit and direct manner that you are not interested in receiving their visits and information from them. They respect that. They might show up after a year or so, just to check out if this is the same family living under the number.

They're pretty organised and respectful in what they do, so polite and direct works best.

Seriously, yes. And indeed, I've sometimes enjoyed talking with them.

I prefer to open a door in leather pants with no shirt and say "Ah yes, did you bring me the virgins?"

You have never seen slow walkers move that fast from the building.

I mean... rotten characters can make rational decisions, to achieve their rotten ends.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com