Hacker News Reader

Comment by Balarny | Hacker News Reader

It makes me think of, funnily enough, a scene in an anime.

In this scene, set in a utopian, crime-free society (at least on the surface), a woman is beaten brutally in a public square in front of a large crowd. The people in this crowd just... stand and watch. They get their phones out and record it.

It is reasoned by one of the main characters that they act this way because they simply cannot process what is going on. The concept of this happening is so divorced from the reality they live in, it provokes little to no fear/horror/disgust/whatever response in them.

View on HN

Incidentally, that scene was inspired by something that happened IRL to a friend of one of the series writers: https://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=451019&show=0

Something to this effect really happened in New York City (if memory serves) which led to Good Samaritan laws which protect people trying to help someone in need from being prosecuted if the person needing help dies or things go south in general.

> Something to this effect really happened in New York City (if memory serves)

Something to this effect was widely reported, the Kitty Genovese case. But the reports were lies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Kitty_Genovese

The Kitty Genovese story was a psyop:

https://www.apa.org/gradpsych/2012/09/tall-tales

Discovering the truth about the Kitty Genovese's story give me new ideas about Rorschach from Watchmen.

The Wikipedia page is a bit better in giving the actual details in which the story is incorrect, and without the extended editorialising (though the final sentence is quite nightmarish even in its blankly factual wording):

> Because of the layout of the complex and the fact that the attacks took place in different locations, no witness saw the entire sequence of events. Investigation by police and prosecutors showed that approximately a dozen individuals had heard or seen portions of the attack, though none saw or was aware of the entire incident.[67] Only one witness, Joseph Fink, was aware Genovese was stabbed in the first attack, and only Karl Ross was aware of it in the second attack. Many were entirely unaware that an assault or homicide had taken place; some thought what they saw or heard was a domestic quarrel, a drunken brawl or a group of friends leaving the bar when Moseley first approached Genovese.[8] After the initial attack punctured her lungs, leading to her eventual death from asphyxiation, it is unlikely that Genovese was able to scream at any volume.[68]

And some slightly overlapping details in an article from which it quotes:

> The article grossly exaggerated the number of witnesses and what they had perceived. None saw the attack in its entirety. Only a few had glimpsed parts of it, or recognized the cries for help. Many thought they had heard lovers or drunks quarreling. There were two attacks, not three. And afterward, two people did call the police. A 70-year-old woman ventured out and cradled the dying victim in her arms until they arrived. Ms. Genovese died on the way to a hospital.

I think a lot of it comes not from worrying about being prosecuted, but in some situations you don't want to/can't help because you're worried about endangering yourself.

I know some people (usually men) are expected to be 100% selfless and run in to be defenders, but not all of us feel that way.

was this psychopass?

If it wasn't, psycho pass has a very similar scene.

> They get their phones out and record it.

IIRC UK encourages that if you can't help - that's in order to track down perpetrators.

It could also be the culture is unaccustomed to random gun violence so the people realized it was a targeted hit that posed little to no danger to themselves.

I imagine ordinary people (even most police) aren't legally able to carry a gun in Japan. Simply watching and recording is about all they can do in that scenario.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect

Which anime?

Psycho-Pass, is a really good anime in terms of society and crime

> Psycho-Pass, is a really good anime in terms of society and crime

At it's core it's an exploration in Bentham, Mill's view of Society, warped into some dystopian technocratic utopian ideal of what it should be.

Sadly, to appeal to the masses and get it on screen it had to be tied into some cop-drama, the first seasons were good, with good philosophical examination, but the movie in Netflix and following seasons were utter garbage. I've tried re-watching them, and other than re-hashing the cop plot it was pretty lame.

I highly recommend to first 2 seasons to techno utopians who have a very shallow and superficial understanding o the Human psyche and think that 'AI solves that' type hand wringing doesn't always end up like this. We Humans are the apex predator for a reason, and people who don't examine the Human condition and try to engineer society from an ivy tower always forget that.

The CCP is the best example of a Psycho-pass analogue and the mere fact that this latest hack reveals they are a more advanced Stasi-like police state with poor OPSEC shows just how feckless these things are in practice. Sadly, the consequences are real: Tibet, Xinjiang, Hongkong various African countries.

With that said, read this [0] as a primer and stick to the first 2 seasons in Japanese sub if you do give it a watch and end it with the movie if you MUST in order to spare yourself the disappointment of the latter parts.

0: https://logicmag.io/commons/panopticons-and-leviathans-oscar...

https://www.dawn.com/news/1652510

Reply on news.ycombinator.com