Communal Harm-Reduction Norms | Hacker News Reader

Communal Harm-Reduction Norms

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20 pointsexolymph8 comments

Harm-reduction is a communal and cultural process as much as anything else.

I keep seeing harm-increasing and harm spreading behaviors online and in real life. I remember being in New York in the 1990's. People would call you out for doing minor harm, like needlessly holding up a line. Fast forward to 2017, I see a guy at West Oakland do a ridiculous dance standing on the yellow strip to purposely hold up the BART train. No one besides the conductor says anything. Our culture has lost the ability to spread and enforce such norms.

One guess would be that people have become afraid to step in.

I think people are rationally not stepping in, as those who do step in don't get recognition. They do however risk getting a lot of flak for having been insensitive or whatever.

They do however risk getting a lot of flak for having been insensitive or whatever.

In other words, there's no culturally accepted way of calling people out.

Alternatively, New York and West Oakland have different norm enforcement behavior.

I think the phenomena you’re describing is not uniformly common.

Alternatively, New York and West Oakland have different norm enforcement behavior.

Of course.

I notice that people are very enthusiastic about calling me out for running across the crosswalk so the driver can get through the intersection. It's even happened to me in the Financial District. So it's alright if it's in support of harm-spreading?

I think the phenomena you’re describing is not uniformly common.

Of course. It's different in different times and places. I think the overall trend is a good hypothesis, however.

I really think we should get rid of work-related drinking culture altogether. People should not be routinely encouraged to get tipsy or intoxicated around coworkers that they barely know but will have to interact with subsequently as strangers, as we see happening in company-promoted "events", "parties" and the like. It's not something that promotes 'cooperation' as some might naïvely assume; if anything, it's the very opposite of professionalism and a recipe for severe social conflict. If we're going to pursue "harm reduction" in our alcohol-related culture, let's make the workplace a temperate environment first and foremost.

It would work until you have obstinate drunks who start fights and annoy random people. A simpler solution is to only be around people who have better self-control and aren't liabilities than shifting the externalities of habits and behaviors onto others... Tragedy of the Commons and freeloader problems.

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