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Comment by duxup | Hacker News Reader

I recall some research that indicated that embezzlers are far more likely to think that "everyone does it" as well.

That attitude is touched on near the end.

Had multiple leech brother in laws.

One was a lawyer who defrauded his elderly clients and the other just only worked for his parents his whole life after getting kicked from university for cheating and then attached himself directly to the teat after they retired. Once his father died he took over the life of his mother as she was descending into Alzheimer's and looted her assets with the help of his brother before he was disbarred.

Both thought that everyone else was doing it too- it was just about not getting caught. They literally couldn't comprehend the idea that others weren't just hypocrites.

> They literally couldn't comprehend the idea that others weren't just hypocrites.

I read a book once [0] that claimed sociopaths (who come in more-boring flavors than just Hollywood villainy) have a similar confusion: Since certain norms aren't as intuitive/automatic, it's as if everyone else is secretly playing a game with a set of unspoken barely-explained rules.

Some of them end up concluding it's all a cynical manipulative scam, and everybody else is the same as themselves except absurdly dedicated to keeping up the fiction.

[0] "The Sociopath Next Door" by Martha Stout

A friends mom always said, "There are rules, you just dont know them yet"

But are they? Or are they just conventions backed by people with various degrees of certainty about them?

Why are you asking me?

That's exactly what rules are.

> Since certain norms aren't as intuitive/automatic, it's as if everyone else is secretly playing a game with a set of unspoken barely-explained rules.

That's exactly how I feel lol biggest reason why I minimize my interaction with most of the society

Anyway, I think that people in general assume that others behave in a way similar to theirs, which works if you're average, but doesn't if you're not. You can see this when two cultures with opposing attitudes meet: both of them think "obviously I'm normal, it's them who's acting weird".

See also Three Christs of Ypsilanti

I think that general feeling -- of playing a game where the majority of players know the rules and you don't -- is something most people have felt at one point or other. I've certainly felt like that in foreign countries or at new jobs. Friends report a similar feeling while starting the process of buying a house, or getting married, or re-entering the dating scene.

I used to feel like this when I was a teen. Now I think everyone are mostly clueless trying to make do with what they have.

> Some of them end up concluding it's all a cynical manipulative scam, and everybody else is the same as themselves except absurdly dedicated to keeping up the fiction.

See most people who use the phrase "virtue-signaling" pejoratively.

I think most behaviors in both corporate and actual politics are pretty much that of psychopaths. I don't believe this is true in general. Am I the psychopath?

If you cynically believe no one ever is truly empathetic towards an outgroup, or can hold altruistic values on the basis that you yourself do not, then I think it's a sign of something - perhaps not rising to the level of psychopathy - but it certainly shows a lack of imagination.

I use the phrase virtue signalling pejoratively to refer to things like https://www.shell.com/sustainability/nature.html. It's precisely because of the existence of real virtue that virtue signalling is able to be differentiated.

I suppose I should have specified when the pejorative is directed towards individuals. Companies are amoral, and have no values by definition.

So then it sounds like you agree that an identifiable subset of advocacy is only faking virtue, you just disagree with the scammers on which subset that is.

I do not agree.

Companies have always done brand advertising - Marlboro cigarettes didn't truly care about independence, ruggedness or cowboys - they just wanted to be associated with those themes to sell more product - hence the "Marlboro Man". Clint Eastwood, on the other had, seems to personally buy into that image in earnest - so Clint Eastwood doesn't "virtue-signal" about ruggedness and the old west and anyone who accuses[1] him of that is doing so in bad faith.

The culture warriors pretend companies pandering is new, and they term the branding/pandering they don't like "virtue-signalling"

1. He has some pretty strong opinions on who ought to be in westerns that I believe are misguided. My disagreeing wirh him doesn't mean he is insincere/virtue-signaling to the Country-music-listening demographic.

Okay sure. I’ll grant you that calling Clint Eastwood “virtue signaling” is misguided. But you were criticizing the use of the term in general, including for calling out ineffective actions that accomplish nothing substantive but make a brand look good. So you just moved the goalposts, if that matters to you.

Companies tend to be amoral, but nothing precludes from codifying a set of morals in their documents.

“Virtue signaling” absolutely designates a natural, useful category that, in no way, rejects the need for real virtue:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23474142

I ... can actually sympathize with that, even as I don't try to scam people (at least, I don't think I do). It can be infuriating to see others get what they want in a way that's "what??? Why does that work?" It can feel like the real rules are being deliberately concealed from you, and you are just fighting back by using the hacks that you think everyone else is.

I remember having this feeling hit me hard when I read the part of the Richard Feynman book when he calls a woman a selfish wh--- and that results in her adamantly wanting to sleep with him.[1]

If you can shuck the siren's call of the mob, you can sympathize with the incel and MGTOW crowd who felt they weren't taught the right model.

I've kind of taken it on as a life motto: "No cheat codes." If there's something that magically works, it deserves to be exposed so everyone can use it, and also learn why it works. That is, everyone deserves the same hack. Yes, even when it costs my information monopoly.

[1] Blog post summarizing it: https://geekfeminismdotorg.wordpress.com/2011/01/05/feynman-...

Old Dutch saying: ‘As the host is, he treats his guests.’

> They literally couldn't comprehend the idea that others weren't just hypocrites.

I've worked for/with a number of narcissistic sociopaths. They love to surround themselves with two types of people:

1. Loyal fawning adorers who give them narcissistic supply.

2. Other narcissistic sociopaths.

2 was a surprise to me when I figured it out. Why would they want to be around their competition?

Because they actually believe there are only those two types of people in the world. And Type 2 are "their tribe." Anybody who claims not to be one of those two (i.e. "Type 3") is obviously a lying hypocrite and is not to be trusted. We Type 3s make them very uneasy.

If you find Dracula lore amusing, it's astonishing how these 3 types map:

1. Humans (i.e. food)

2. Vampires

3. The Van Helsing family (i.e. vampire slayers)

"Everyone does it" is an incredibly common statement to justify all sorts of bad behavior, whether legal or not.

I think it's an expression of the natural human tendency to think that our personal experiences and attitudes are representative of the mean.

Another common one is "if I don't do it, someone else will". Which completely misses the point that even if true, it doesn't mean that it's ok to do it.

I think it is a utilitarian argument - if its true that someone will inevitably commit the crime then the fact that I commit the crime is victimless or at least had no additional victims than there would have been without my action.

To say that a victimless crime is wrong requires a more deontological approach to morality.

Casual embezzling on all levels of society was extremely common in communist Czechoslovakia (and probably other Eastern Bloc countries). For example construction workers might steal material from their job site to build their own house (often during work hours as well). There was even a popular adage normalizing this behaviour: "One who doesn't steal steals from his own family".

Years ago I recall a guy in Russia who documented over several years the continuous announcement of a given local road being improved. Every year trucks, supplies and such would show up at the appointed time, local news would show up with a local authorities and they'd point at things and film. Then the next day everything was just left in place, no workers, eventually each night the construction equipment would slowly vanish, and finally other trucks would come and slowly collect the supplies. Then next year same thing again, same spot, they'd dig up the same ground for TV, wash rinse, repeat.

This is why punishment for any non-trivial corruption by officials should be a life sentence. So they would know, if they are caught, it will be maximum possible penalty. Because, unlike usual theft, embezzlement affects lives of many people.

How would that work in Russia?

There's no independent judiciary, those in power are not going to jail ...

Good thing all my enemies are corrupt.

Stealing from work in the USSR was so normalized that people just referred to at as "carrying out". Workers sometimes picked careers based more on how much they could steal than on the nominal salary. An engineer had a higher monthly salary than a waiter, but a waiter could effectively earn more than the engineer by stealing food.

https://youtu.be/Jz4lD76nbds?si=iUXoDEAZI8SMJ8z4

If you own the means of production, is it really “stealing” though? /s

That's very much how it was justified. There was a saying in USSR:

"Tащи с работы каждый гвоздь - ты здесь хозяин, а не гость."

translating to:

"Grab every nail from work - you're the master here, not a guest."

essentially parroting the Soviet cliches about how proletariat was in charge etc.

Not to totally discount embezzlement, but I think people underestimate just how poor these countries were after world war 2.

Usually people are talking about the 60s-80s when sharing these stories since that’s what grandparent/parent generations remember. USSR did experience significant growth at least at the beginning of this period and most of that theft/embezzlement was certainly committed to later sell/exchange those goods for profit (e.g. working at coffee shops was were lucrative since you could just reuse the same ground coffee for 5+ cups and steal the rest).

This was a case in Poland as well. And the reason was simple: communist countries were in a constant supply crisis. Even when you had money you couldn't just go and buy material to build your own house, you had to steal it, otherwise you'd never get your house built. That's why all those great construction projects of communism like factories, power plants, etc. were so expensive: half of the material never made it to a site, being stolen along the way.

Or as I like to say: Eastern bloc communism was often so bad that it makes Objectivism look like a reasonable philosophy.

You see a similar phenomenon with propensity for litigation and pushing to limits of the letter of the law in the US. "everyone"'s doing it, which leads to people feeling like they have a right to and like they're missing out if they don't. But in the end most people lose out overall.

In USSR similar adage was: “No matter how much you steal from the State, you can’t get even.” (Сколько у государства не воруй — все равно своего не вернёшь.)

embezzlers are far more likely to think that "everyone does it" as well

Funny, but I have observed this with regards to lying.

I'm a goody-two-shoes yet I also think all successful people must cheat. I don't see how anyone can compete against cheaters. It's like running a race where some people start at the halfway mark... You know for sure who the winners are going to be.

It's just far more likely to get you in trouble if you steal from the more powerful, IMO

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