Comment by evo_9 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by evo_9 | Hacker News Reader

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Some time ago I worked for a small company and one of the owners was a pretty nice guy, often talked of his mountain home and being near nature versus in the city. Then one day he mentioned that he had to change the oil in his sons ATV and always did that at the downhill slope of his properties edge. He would park the ATV over a small stream and empty the oil directly into the water.

Of course the staff were all furious at hearing this, which he seemed to enjoy. I asked the other owner if he was serious and he said he 100% was serious. So I approached the owner dumping the oil why he did this, why he didn't just empty the oil into a container, etc. Long/short he said it didn't effect him and couldn't care what any of us hippies though of the practice.

I would say that there is a fundamental difference in the way people are; they either view things in the long-term and strive to ensure the best for all of us. The other side of the coin are people that just want what's best for themselves and maybe their family. They don't care or want to believe such actions have long term effects on them directly.

Of course the staff were all furious at hearing this, which he seemed to enjoy.

There's a certain personality type that derives more pleasure from the loss of another than a gain of their own.

"It Is Not Enough to Succeed; One’s Best Friend Must Fail"

Gore Vidal's vversion is well-known: "It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail."

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/08/06/succeed-fail/

In a survival of the fittest this makes perfect sense

I hadn’t thought about it like this before, but that’s like a twisted version of Kahneman & Tversky’s “losses loom larger than gains.” I wonder if the psychological weighting mechanism is the same.

I think you'll find this paper very interesting, as it distinguishes between pessimistic loss aversion and sadistic loss infliction. https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/8/e1600451

If my reading of that paper is fair, it suggests a third of people deliberately make choices that cause other people to suffer more than they do even if it increases their own suffering by a lesser amount. And that is terrifying.

I think this explains the state of the world, and given the state of the world: why is this surprising to us.

I guess people tend to believe that everyone else is like them, including those of us that aren't sadistic. And if a full 33 percent are sadistic, is it something that even should or can be corrected?

Now that's terrifying.

However, it is much better to simply look at a flower and meditate on how amazing it is that it exists at all than ruminate on the facts of how cruel the world is.

This educational game has some useful insights. While the distribution of people may not be something that can be corrected or easily altered (one disturbing insight of that Science paper is that personality types seem to be firmly established even in early youth), sadistic policies can be made more costly and thus less effective, reducing the incentive to maintain and reproduce them.

https://ncase.me/trust/

Yep. It's had a rather negative impact on my outlook over the last few years, to put it mildly.

Thanks, I’ll take a look.

...and worse, some of them relish the thought of tweaking those of us who do care.

It's not merely selfishness, it's sadism.

As one of those who do care, I think the charitable and more likely interpretation is that this behavior is a response to a lot of the self-righteousness that environmentalists have exhibited. I think if our messaging were more humble (i.e., do we really care about the environment, or is it just a moral issue that we can use to prop ourselves up and cut others down) we would encounter less of this kind of blow back. Moreover, this is all worsened by an increasingly divisive media and social media, so we need to be more careful than ever about our messaging and demeanor. This is just my humble opinion; I'm sure many will disagree.

What state is/was this? It sounds highly illegal and that person should be prosecuted. Make it have an impact by reporting them.

NY for example:

"Thus, for example, even a spill of a gallon of oil into a ditch is covered."

https://ag.ny.gov/environmental/oil-spill/oil-spills-homes-a...

California:

"California Penal Code 374.3 makes illegal dumping on public and private property punishable by a fine up to $10,000. Also, pursuant to Section 117555 of the California health and Safety Code, a person who dumps illegally is punishable by up to six months on jail."

https://pw.lacounty.gov/epd/illdump/penalty.cfm

Calcycle page on illegal dumping:

https://www.calrecycle.ca.gov/illegaldump

Colorado, and yeah we all talked privately about reporting him. One of the more upset staff members filed a complaint, I don't know if anything came of it. We never heard anything if it did. This is about 15 or so years back now.

Even if it was on private land that practice is likely illegal at the federal level, IIRC.

Doesn't sound like a nice guy.

Yeah I mention the nice guy part because it wasn't like he was a raving asshole day-in-day out. In fact he really was (outwardly anyway) a 'nice guy' pretty much always and didn't view his behavior as wrong at all (it was his 'property', etc).

Even guys that are seemingly nice have very odd beliefs. It really opened my eyes as to what to talk about at work, even if the topic didn't seem 'fringe' to me. Older dudes out west/here in Colorado in particular grew up with a sort of cavalier notion of what freedom and America means to them, and telling them what they can or cannot do on their own property is the heart of the matter.

I think in general people are wildly inconsistent in their beliefs and behaviors.

Most people believe crazy things, even those that don't tend to not behave in consistent alignment with what they believe to be true or good.

> do on their own property ...

Yea, but their property doesn't exist in a vacuum. They have neighbours and there's always downstream effects.

I'd say part of this attitude is an effect of rights becoming disconnected from responsibilities. Like, sure, one may "own" the land, but it better be well take care of, be a good steward. Not because there's immediate bad effects, but because those effects diffuse into the real non-human world.

"Is curious, but to park in the limit of your property and watch the trouts going upstream is much more satisfactory since I know that you empty the oil directly in the water"

This is the only type of correct answers for those cases

If pollution increases downhill, property prices increase uphill. Our economy is part of the problem.

Negative externalities will exist in any economic system, and most developed countries have implemented regulations to reduce pollution.

This isn't short term vs long term, it's city vs rural. If his mountain home is sufficiently low population density then everyone in the area could behave this way without causing meaningful harm. These ideas you have about the environment and the right way to behave are a cultural necessity because of the population density within cities.

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