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Comment by wereallterrrist | Hacker News Reader

I just wish personal integrity mattered at any scale, anymore. I wish that people actually came to their opinions via some sort of logical process that could be easily later self-evaluated and reflected upon. There's this tendency to double-down, when "admitting a mistake" is really as simple as reflecting, realizing what assumptions were made wrong, going back to base principles and re-assessing. If you have integrity and good base values, then it's admirable to be able to see a mistake, acknowledge it and grow.

But what's frustrating is that this "double-down-at-all-costs" has worked for some at the top recently, and it seems to just be spreading, and spreading to those that don't have the money to escape the embarrassment/cost of repeating doubling down.

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>I just wish personal integrity mattered at any scale, anymore.

Interestingly in the legal system, accepting responsibility is "admission against interest", and actively warned against by counsel. There are some public figures who live and breath the lessons of an adversarial legal system. Self-reflection is reflexively rejected as having no possible upside, because any correction is an admission against interest. Such a mind has mutilated itself. That anyone finds such a mind attractive, worthy of emulation, is by far the most astonishing phenomena of my life.

Fascinating points about "admission against interest". It explains some characters I have encountered on this journey through life.

I think it's because it seems to work in the long term as long as there's any kind of success waiting for them down the line. eg. If Trump wins the next election, everything up to that point is totally justified and worth it and part of the plan, etc (no matter how true or false it is, nor how lucky they may have been to have achieved the saving-their-ass success).

The cult of personality makes it so. Humanity's short memory makes it so. The media's short memory makes it so. The media's short memory is driven by the same doubling-down, new outrage distracts from previous outrage upon which it turned out our reporting was highly questionable. Layer upon layer.

The other side of the same coinj is that those who double-down and don't reach any further justifiable success rightly fade from the public consciousness (selection bias?) for the very fact they haven't done anything media-worthy since.

It feels like the double-down-at-all-costs types are increasing and spreading, but is that just because they're the ones stupidly lucky (or rich) enough to maintain a media presence?

Lastly, and related, there's always the "no news is bad news" theory. We're still discussing Elon and Trump, so they're still making the news cycle, so they're still relevant, and irrelevance makes future success (on an Elon and Trump scale) more difficult.

Although I'm no fan of the acerbity of your other comments, that's an interesting observation. Presuming you speak of the US, I think there's an interesting tension between the notion of "holding our political leaders to a higher standard" and the fact that we vote these people in! That is, it's more likely that we vote for someone with a moral character as fallible as that of the average man, e.g. see Trump, Adlai Stevenson. It's a reversal of the private sector adage: "corporate culture is from the top down."

Shit yeah. I've noticed this in Australian politics, and it may not really be there, but it does feel as if the standard the politicians are setting is a standard being followed by the... more easily-led (ie. the majority), in not taking responsibility for, literally any mistake ever in their lives.

When the public-at-large start behaving and speaking like politicians about their past actions, the truth and accountability required to progress society will take longer to establish than we've got until the heat death of the universe.

This never happened, trust me. I would figure it has gotten better.

Look at the US and what was acceptable re: racist ideologies (the height of the lack of any logical thinking). US certainly is not the ONLY racist country either (have you been to Europe today? it is like going back 30 years with regards to racism, in a lot of countries!)

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