Comment by Nition | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Nition | Hacker News Reader

> I recently engaged in a fun, joint Psych Spectrum roller coaster with a stranger on an airplane. We were on the runway, getting ready to take off, and I was doing my typical “I know the flight attendant said to turn all phones onto airplane mode but the whole policy is really quite inane so I’m just gonna keep texting until we take off and I lose service” thing, and a woman next to me decided I was an asshole and loudly told on me to the flight attendant, who was busy and didn’t hear her. So I did the only reasonable thing—I stealthily turned my phone onto airplane mode, re-opened my texts, and very out in the open, started typing a long text. The woman—my new eternal arch-nemesis—took the bait. She saw me texting and again got the flight attendant’s attention, saying, “Excuse me but he’s still texting.” When the flight attendant asked me to turn airplane mode on, I showed her my phone and calmly explained that airplane mode has been on this whole time and I just like to get some texting out of the way during flights—texts that don’t send until I land and re-connect to the internet. The flight attendant said, “Oh then that’s totally fine—my apologies.” I replied, “that’s okay,” and did a little “it’s amazing how awful people can be right?” sigh. Satan watched the whole thing and then just sat there silently, hopefully very embarrassed. It was an unbelievably satisfying, triumphant moment.

Not the main point of the article obviously but man, the writer makes himself sound like a bit of an asshole with this story. Didn't encourage me to listen to his other opinions.

Edit: I kinda regret making this comment since I think it detracts from discussion of the article itself, which is very thorough and thoughtful in general. Maybe this is a meta Psych Spectrum commentary.

Literally the next paragraph he writes:

“But that’s not what happened, because her aggressive tattletale move immediately threw my Primitive Mind into a rage, plummeting me down the Psych Spectrum. This banished my Higher Mind to the closet of my subconscious, allowing my Primitive Mind to come up with a genius-yet-psychotic plan for revenge. Which worked, and made my Primitive Mind feel deeply satisfied in a very not-grown-up way.”

His entire point is that the average person acts like an asshole some of the time and like a kind person some of the time, and that it is incredibly easy to cherry-pick examples to paint someone in a bad (or good) light.

Which is exactly what you have done here, proving his point!

I'd like to think most people would act more civilized initially in that situation. In fact the most civilized thing to do would have been to simply follow the rules in the first place, knowing that most passengers will believe they must be important.

For sure, everyone likes to think themselves and most people act decently 100% of the time and never irrationally. But then sometimes, everyone acts irrationally, for one reason or another.

I think that's his point. The jerk can be him. It can be you. It can be me. We are all of us able to be like this, able to be controlled by the "primitive mind", able to engage in power games.

And I differ a bit with your reasoning. Follow the rules because most passengers believe they must be important? Not because, say, the airline thinks they must be important?

Why? The rule is absolutely stupid, and pointless. It's about as meaningful to airplane security as TSA. In other words, none at all.

I mean if rules say you need to report your fellow Uighurs, you should follow them because other will?

Because it's likely to cause discomfort and negative attention from the other passengers who will worry it could jeopardize their flight, and not using your phone for a little while isn't a big deal. It's not so much about following a rule or not, as just being socially responsible.

Pantomiming the lie isn't being socially responsible

So, if everyone does it, it's ok?

If everyone reports on their fellow Jew/Uighur, you should follow along? I mean not doing so might cause distress to your neighbor.

I'm not interested in this particular case, but in general.

I agree, if it actually mattered then flight attendants would check for cell connections as rigorously as they do seatbelts. Even if you've never flown basic logic will tell you on a flight of 100+ people not everyone remembered to switch off their device. Trying to rat on your fellow passenger is the real offense here. Maybe I'm the jerk here but do we have to regulate our behavior to make nosy neighbors comfortable?

The argument goes that you have to regulate your behavior to assuage someone else's feelings, for the sake of getting along. This is a very good thing to do in many cases but the same argument still gets used even when other people's feelings are completely irrational. Why can't we sometimes just tell other people to get a handle on their feelings so as not to impose unnecessarily on my behavior?

At some point we have to put a cap on how much we value other people's feelings. There are neurotic personality types that by nature literally make up asinine things to worry about, and you'd have to run an infinite treadmill conforming to their nonsense. Empathy is an important value but its not an idol to be worshipped, and it should not be a rhetorical superweapon.

Agreed. However that is the point he was making - in the next paragraph he goes on to explain that he was being “a bit of a cock about it” and why

Does he? Not sure I agree.

I knew someone would disagree, but it just sounds really antisocial to me. Sure, the woman should have asked him to put his phone in airplane mode instead of going straight to the attendant, but he could have also replied with an "oh, sorry" and put his phone on airplane mode when told off about the rule he was in fact breaking.

And the author in fact says in the article that that is what he should have done.

The whole thing is about how everyone can be anti social from time to time

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