Comment by clarkema | Hacker News Reader

Comment by clarkema | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

We enforce rules in our society because they make that society better. Basic shared rules of behaviour are a precondition for social cohesion and prosperity, _not_ a luxury that we can only afford when everything else has been taken care of. This goes 10x in small groups in rigorous environments.

I wouldn't call resources in the Antarctic winter "incredibly scarce"; expeditions have been wintering South for decades now. We know what's required, and it's available, in quantity, with backups. It's true that people are trapped together for months at a time; we also rely on each other for survival. Under such circumstances, it's entirely backwards to claim "local society can't afford to have such strict standards." Just the opposite; strict standards of social behaviour are _required_ for the group cohesion and trust that's necessary for collaboration and survival.

A candidate who demonstrated this attitude would never get through BAS' hiring process. If, by some mischance, they did manage to make it South, they certainly wouldn't be overwintering.

Source: Wintered in Antarctica. Did not regress to the state of a caveman clad in penguin skins, nor did I become "prone to sexually harassing women."

Yes, you have a personal anecdote but the data suggests that people do indeed become prone to sexually harassing women.

I certainly won't claim that no harassment ever takes place; every wintering team is different, and I have no doubt that plenty of women _do_ experience some form of harassment or unwanted attention. When you live in a small, close-knit community with (generally) a large gender imbalance, there will be tensions.

What I object to is the unsubstantiated claim that Antarctica "brings out the animal in each of us"; that the environment is one of such privation that all those who venture there necessarily regress to some more basic form and that standards of civilized behaviour become something we can't afford, sacrificed on the altar of survival.

This is patently false, and frankly a very limited and limiting view of the human condition.

What you like to dismiss as a "personal anecdote" I'd prefer to call "multiple seasons of lived experience in the environment under discussion."

While I can't speak for the hiring procedures of other nations, the majority of the interview process for the British Antarctic Survey centres around the interpersonal side. If you're sitting in the interview in the first place you're assumed to be technically competent; once that bar is passed they select primarily for people who will survive the isolation and be able to work as independent members of a small society. Are the results perfect? Of course not -- failures happen and bad winters happen. But they are well aware of how important social dynamics are to the overall success of the winter.

So much preventative process and yet so much violence still occurs. The environment must be truly stressful. The concept of the animal within each of us isn’t metaphor—we are literally animals. Our environment strongly affects what sort of behaviors appear in the aggregate. This isn’t to disparage your character. This is to be aware that we are all capable of evil and we must be aware of it. Process alone cannot snuff out our instincts.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com