Harmful social behaviors are the toughest to shift | Hacker News Reader

Harmful social behaviors are the toughest to shift

blog.pnas.org

26 pointspseudolus14 comments

Before one speculates this has greater societal ramifications:

They had 276 people play 2 rounds of a video game where bots helped, harmed, or didn’t interact with the player. Only players who were first harmed by bots continued to exhibit “harming” (a mechanic that removes players from the game) into round 2 even when bots stopped doing anything.

Based on this super narrow definition I would hesitate to say this says anything on a societal scale.

Anecdotally I can confirm this. Whenever my friends and I get together, we zap each other. Sometimes it’s frequent but beneficial, sometimes it’s more like active harm. Either way we always agree at the end of the night that the most harmful social behaviors are the toughest to shift.

Dayam. Change the carpet or take off your shoes already.

This is a no zap safe-space, unless it's a consensual thing.

You didn’t read his comment fully. They are deliberately trying to destroy each other’s expensive electronics.

I can’t imagine why, but at least it does sound consensual.

Why? For the love of the game.

I would be exhausted by any game that involved that much shuffling over carpet...unless you guys resort to mechanical assistance....

Mechanical assistance, medical assistants. We have been doing this for decades and everyone signs a waiver regarding the “risks”

Interesting, so you could carry a battery powered electrostatic zapper OR have someone to help you if you cramp, trip, or have a heart attack while shuffling on the carpet. I could see different strategies for the different gameplay.

And of course instead of batteries you could have long cords and plug your zappers in.

Ok, life does sound like consensual fun for you and your buddies.

Yes something like a personal defibrillator (many cramps, no trips, and an outsize count of heart attacks). I’ll make a full blog post about it some day. When it happens we call it a “fallen angel” - don’t misunderstand me, there’s nothing holy about the arrangement. Pure thrill seeking that happens to align with a love for academia and a hoorah attitude towards the university of Haifa’s scholarly pursuits.

If it were an Olympic sport it might be enough to get me to care about the olympics. Of course the countries with the best portable defibrillators (and cheapest laptops) would collect all the medals.

Don’t get me started with the damn Swedes…

https://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulation/john-travoltage

> Here, a crowd gathers without social distancing in May 2020.

Something >90% of COVID transmission happens in indoor settings. They're all wearing masks. I think it is unreasonable to describe that as an "actively harmful" social norm, there are already a lot of controls here against coronavirus spread.

In May 2020 it was totally unclear that we were about to, having never developed a vaccine for coronaviruses in humans before, rush out vaccines at a speed that leaves prior records in the dust.

There are enormous benefits to forming strong social bonds. It is night and day. I think whoever captioned that picture is over-weighting the risks of disease against the other risks we face in life.

heh. p nas.

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