Comment by raganwald | Hacker News Reader

Comment by raganwald | Hacker News Reader

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I resent the expression "culture of fear." I wear a seat belt when I drive. I will be wearing armour tomorrow when I risk my life riding DH-MTB. I train extensively to dive deep, cold water. I rock climb. I do not live in a "culture of fear." I do, on the other hand, come up with a different result when asking myself if I wish to hurtle down a mountain vs. if I wish to recover a used laptop from petty criminals.

I am pointing out that it is prudent to consider the risks, rewards, and potential for catastrophe when making a decision. Having done so, you make your own call. If you think the balance tips in favour of trying to recover the laptop, that is your opinion and I do not argue with your conclusion. But there is no "culture of fear" involved, there is simply a decision that differs from your own.

Now if you want to condone the idea of psycho-analyzing strangers based on their HN posts, I would encourage you to ask whether people who set out to recover the laptop are thinking strictly about the utility of the laptop, or whether they have an emotional desire to one-up the thieves or perhaps show the police up as inept.

Or maybe... And I encourage you to spend some quality time with a mirror while thinking about this... Maybe there is an emotional desire by some people to prove that they not afraid. This latter emotion is particularly dangerous. Ironically, it is often motivated by fear of being cowardly.

(And yes, the point is NOT to be taken seriously. I am not Dr. Phil!)

The culture of fear I'm talking about is a social fear, this idea that there are lots of evil people in the world, ready to do you harm. It divides society; makes people even more individualistic, suspicious of one another, and it has corrosive effects on public goods. Instead of helping out your neighbour (metaphorically, and perhaps even literally), you sneak past and think "there but for the grace of God go I". And the irony is that this attitude actually makes the world less safe. Situations can be taken advantage of in the knowledge that people won't interfere, precisely because they are too afraid.

It's a culture that leads to people driving around in SUVs, living in gated communities, to the point of carrying guns where legal, and voting for governments who promise safety and deliver it with mechanisms of control: filtered internet, surveillance society, TSA, etc. Its endpoint lies somewhere in a Ballardian dystopia, like High Rise or Super-Cannes.

Are you saying we should all just trust the laptop thieves of the world a little more? Maybe stealing a laptop is the worst thing a thief will ever do; maybe not. It's not unprecedented for a criminal to murder a witness to a relatively minor crime in order to avoid a third strike conviction. Is it worth the risk to find out?

There's a difference between "living in fear" and "minimizing risk" just as there's a difference between "living without fear" and "courting danger."

I also am disturbed by the culture of fear you describe.

You're a lot more likely to end up dead scuba diving than arguing with petty thieves, and you don't even get a free laptop out of it.

I get a lot more out of diving than I would tricking a petty thief into returning a stolen chattel to me. And I do not have any evidence that confronting thieves is less risky than diving.

I suppose it's hard to get good denominator data for confronting petty thieves. However, most people are very unlikely to kill anybody, ever, and would rather die than kill somebody in self-defense. (See On Killing.) By the numbers, Torontonians are substantially less likely to be cold-blooded killers than the average person.

Now, we had a mafioso living in the apartment downstairs from us for several months, with a couple of warrants out for his arrest. Good buddy with the police who patrol our street. Real friendly guy. Name was Teddy (yes, I know that's not a Spanish name). Stole all the landlord's furniture from the apartment, even the refrigerator. I don't remember what the warrants were for, but there's a substantial chance that he was a cold-blooded killer. But if he'd been on the other side of that table, I still don't think he'd be very likely to try to maintain possession of the stolen laptop by killing you. I'm sure he'd do his best to intimidate the living fuck out of you, maybe threaten to call the police himself, but I don't think he takes violence so lightly that he would stab you with a Starbucks knife in order to keep the laptop.

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