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Started by Whatever, November 17, 2010, 08:34:29 PM

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the last yatto

Quote from: Doktor Blight on November 17, 2010, 11:52:00 PM
Quote from: Pēleus on November 17, 2010, 11:38:40 PM
Never drop a quarter for someone sitting there
But  once gave a hundred bucks to a homeless girl playing the violin

That's either a lot for a song, a very little for the violin.

Three songs actually and she had a great outlook and was short on a bus ticket
Look, asshole:  Your 'incomprehensible' act, your word-salad, your pinealism...It BORES ME.  I've been incomprehensible for so long, I TEACH IT TO MBA CANDIDATES.  So if you simply MUST talk about your pineal gland or happy children dancing in the wildflowers, go talk to Roger, because he digs that kind of shit

Lies

Signs of the end times, ITT.
- So the New World Order does not actually exist?
- Oh it exists, and how!
Ask the slaves whose labour built the White House;
Ask the slaves of today tied down to sweatshops and brothels to escape hunger;
Ask most women, second class citizens, in a pervasive rape culture;
Ask the non-human creatures who inhabit the planet:
whales, bears, frogs, tuna, bees, slaughtered farm animals;
Ask the natives of the Americas and Australia on whose land
you live today, on whose graves your factories, farms and neighbourhoods stand;
ask any of them this, ask them if the New World Order is true;
they'll tell you plainly: the New World Order... is you!

Sir Squid Diddimus

I certainly care. I don't think it's a care issue.
Anyone ever been told by someone "don't get involved"? I have and I told that person that they suck.

I have to agree with Hoops on the twitter issue though. Sitting in silence, disbelief and shock are one thing. Fucking tweeting about what's going on while you sit there is another.

I love Bill Nye. That made me sad.  :sad:

Richter

Quote from: Cramulus on November 17, 2010, 10:46:41 PM
I think that insularity is a survival skill in the modern jungle

I confess to passing car accidents, ignoring beggars, and voting by die roll


my girlfriend Chloe is a really compassionate type. When she sees somebody suffering she really feels right alongside with them. I have met few people as charitable as her. And somehow it constantly bites her in the ass. Like for example there's this kid Frank she used to have classes with.

Frank was a little autistic and had trouble making friends. He had a bad past of being abused and manipulated. He talked frequently of killing himself. It broke Chloe's heart. She decided to be his only friend. She hung out with him every day and begun to teach him how to live. how to cook, how to make appointments, how to not sweat the little stuff...

But Frank's problems consumed Chloe's life. He was sending her over 200 text messages per day, needing her contact constantly. She spent hours checking him into suicide wards and picking him up when he got out, only to drive him back the following week. Frank's therapist couldn't handle that he seemed to require 5+ hours of therapy per day and "dumped" him. Frank told Chloe she was the only reason he wasn't killing himself. The desperate texts increased. He'd call her up at 3:30 in the morning to talk for an hour and a half about the stuff going through his mind. She couldn't take it any more.

In the end Chloe had to cut off the friendship. She didn't allow herself to feel bad about it. It steeled her in a way... it made her realize that she can't take responsibility for everybody's burden, she has to get her own shit squared away first. And in the long run it made her more hesitant to help out strangers.

I find the whole episode incredibly sad. But we live in a world full of sad, wounded animals. I'm not saying that it's acceptable to watch somebody get stabbed or have a stroke and not do anything. But if we open our hearts to everybody that needs them, we will have nothing left for ourselves. We cannot address every injustice, every malice, every bastard out there. There are too many. So we have to prioritize.

Shit man.  Sucks, but you're right, that's what it is.
Nicely worded, too, that's a good read.
Quote from: Eater of Clowns on May 22, 2015, 03:00:53 AM
Anyone ever think about how Richter inhabits the same reality as you and just scream and scream and scream, but in a good way?   :lulz:

Friendly Neighborhood Mentat

Triple Zero

Quote from: Hoopla on November 17, 2010, 09:44:41 PM
Quote from: Cramulus on November 17, 2010, 09:23:13 PM
twitter isn't to blame here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_responsibility



Also, I don't think that because there's a name for the phenomena means that these people should feel morally just for their actions.

Absolutely. It's among the most morally reprehensible qualities us human beings have.

Buildings burnt down to the ground because all the 200+ onlookers thought somebody else surely must have called the fire dept already, no sense in calling them again.

(heard from a psychologist friend, could have happened in NL, but it sounds more plausible than the Genovese case, so I figure it's true, otherwise it could have easily happened).

QuoteA lot of people probably thought that someone else was going to call the cops to help Kitty Genovese

Actually, not only that. While it certainly plays a part, more factors were at play. There were plenty of actions that could have been taken besides calling the police that would have been visible to onlookers, and nobody took those either (yelling out the window, actually going down and stopping it, etc).

It's even weirder and more gut-wrenchingly wrong than that, the onlookers didn't do anything, because nobody did anything, and therefore that was probably the right way to behave in this situation that they had never encountered before and therefore looked for the behaviour of others to determine how they should behave.

Really. Combine it with some people's tendency to try and appear as if they know what they're doing even if they don't and you got poison.

That's the Machine again.

Quotebut all it would have taken was ONE.

That's true. As I said in the "Fear of Darkness"-thread, I have vowed to myself to be that one person, whenever possible.

That's one of the defenses against this rotten human monkey subroutine. Be that one hero person. The other defense is, when you are in trouble yourself (having a stroke at a concert/festival), single out a person from the crowd ("hey you with the red jacket") and tell them exactly what to do ("I want you to call a doctor") (there was a bit more in this approach from the Cialdini book "On Influence", but I forget).

QuoteCertainly Twitter itself is not to blame here, but a lot of the mindset of Twitter is.  Remember, these people didn't just sit there in stunned silence, they TWEETED about it.  There is some form of spectator sport in that, and I would rather distance myself from it, before I see some indication of that in myself.

I fail to see that point. It is bullshit, in fact. The same reasoning you would stop looking out windows after hearing of the Genovese case.

It's the people that were rotten. Whether they sat in stunned silence or were doing any other activity has nothing to do with it, or at least, it doesn't make the other activity rotten.

I get how you feel, it seems as if those people thought the tweeting was more important than helping this person, and that would certainly make Twitter look very bad. But I think the examples above and the psychology behind this phenomenon show that it's not like tweeting somehow took precedence to otherwise having helped Nye.

Quite the contrary. Because of the phenomenon, people looked to each other for what to do, and the situation got in a Deadlock and nobody did very much of anything. This is of course highly conflicting behaviour to a well-meaning individual (of which there were more than enough, in the audience), and cognitive dissonant situations like these makes humans (and many other animals btw) redirect their attention to unrelated behaviour.

Hence some of them started tweeting.

But you know what? A large part of the people without smartphones probably starting biting their nails or adjusting their clothes. In fact, I would bet there must have been at least a couple of people that had the audacity to get a little mirror and check their make-up during these events. It's all exactly the same thing.

The point is, these people were cunts, not bipeds, redirecting their behaviour to something unrelated. Don't blame the unrelated thing, though.

BTW, unless you actively promise to yourself to BE that person that breaks the spell and goes against the group behaviour, requiring you to get up and indeed become the center of attention in a group of perhaps hundreds, don't fool yourself by thinking "I probably wouldn't behave like that". The numbers don't lie. The audience had enough people in it that there were probably 5 other individuals that knew, and honestly believed they would never just sit and watch, just like you, and they still did.

Seriously. You are a monkey too, don't believe this type of programmed instinctual behaviour does not apply to you, because it does and it will. Instead, realize that the behaviour DOES apply to you, just like it does to anyone else, and that in order to counter it, it will require CONSCIOUS and DELIBERATE and WILFUL action in an uncertain situation that will go entirely against the grain of your instincts screaming at you to look at the group to see what you should do. You'll be fighting against your monkeybrain. okay that may be a bit of exaggeration, but it's better to expect an inner struggle than to believe you're such a decent human being that you'll surely do the right thing when the situation arises.

(BTW for people that have already been in these kinds of situations, and already been the helpful heroes, it may be different. But probably not the first time)
Ex-Soviet Bloc Sexual Attack Swede of Tomorrow™
e-prime disclaimer: let it seem fairly unclear I understand the apparent subjectivity of the above statements. maybe.

INFORMATION SO POWERFUL, YOU ACTUALLY NEED LESS.

Triple Zero

Quote from: Niamh on November 17, 2010, 10:24:52 PM
Quote from: Net on November 17, 2010, 09:56:16 PM
Quote from: Niamh on November 17, 2010, 09:50:50 PM
I put the blame on the disappearance of basic human compassion for their fellow man.

Right, because not too long ago we actually danced naked in tropical forests in perfect harmony with nature, only taking breaks to snack on berries and give each other back massages.

It was only due to the advance of technology that transformed us into cold brutes, who would consider feasting on Bill Nye's eyeballs if he didn't come to fast enough.

Bullshit.  I never insinuated anything so disgusting.

People do not give a flying fuck about anyone else anymore.

You said they used to. That something disappeared.

QuoteThey actually used to.

Oh look. There you did it again. Stop doing that, please.

Are you aware that they have found 6000 years old Egyptian hieroglyph scriptures that complain about current day's youth and their lack of morals and how surely everything must be going to shit now.

And there we are, 6000 years later, not having changed a single fucking bit.

QuoteI've seen it in action.  As violence has become more prevalent, people have become numb.  I never mentioned technology, it was part of the article.  My disgust was not with Twitter who cannot control what the stupid fuckers post, but with humanity making the fucking posts.  I have no fucking issues with technology.  My issue is with the emotional lack in the humanity that surrounds us.

Okay, I mostly agree. Except that there's no reason to assume it used to be better or that it has gotten worse.

QuoteI wouldn't have stood there.  In a group or alone, I would have tried to help in both situations.

Unless you actually have been in a situation like that (in a group) and KNOW you have been capable of acting against your human built-in instincts, that statement holds exactly zero value, because most people in the audiences of horrible incidents like these would have said exactly that, before they ever encountered a situation (in a group) like that.

I know I do, and therefore the only thing I can currently say and repeat is that I firmly vow for myself to try my best, go against my instincts and not just stand there, if I ever get into a situation like that. But I somewhat lack the arrogance and feeling of superiority over my fellow humans to bluntly state "I wouldn't have stood there" until I have been in such a situation and have proven myself to be capable of that.

And I don't believe that people used to be more capable of going against their monkeybrains than they are today. But maybe you can show us some evidence to how it used to be better?

QuoteI understand life isn't all peaches and cream.  I'm not stupid.  However, there is no crime for having the basic compassion to try to help a man lying and dying on the street, or to see if the person on the stage who just fell out is still breathing.  People haven't always been this way.  I wasn't raised to be that way.

Really I'm going to have to say :cn:


And as far as how you were raised properly, lots of people are. And they still stand by and do nothing.

QuoteThey had a bunch of kids record this bully beating up a "special needs" kid on the schoolbus here.  People were outraged that the kids taping it were in trouble.  I told my kids at the time they would have no clue what trouble was if I ever found out they had stood by and let something like that happen.  AND DO NOTHING?  Fuck that.

Very good. Did your kids already encounter a situation like that and have been able to act as you taught them? Cause as kids the inhibition might be lower, so it's a good time to get the experience. But if not, it's just all talk. And they are just "raised properly", just like some people in those audiences/crowds must have been, standing there, doing nothing, because nobody else did much of anything.

And it's disgusting and it's morally reprehensible. But I must repeat, unless you have actually BEEN THERE, the only thing you can do is firmly decide to act that way and be the one, and maybe you will, but it's pure arrogance to state with any certainty that you "wouldn't just stand by".
Ex-Soviet Bloc Sexual Attack Swede of Tomorrow™
e-prime disclaimer: let it seem fairly unclear I understand the apparent subjectivity of the above statements. maybe.

INFORMATION SO POWERFUL, YOU ACTUALLY NEED LESS.

Triple Zero

Quote from: Cramulus on November 17, 2010, 10:46:41 PM
Frank was a little autistic and had trouble making friends. He had a bad past of being abused and manipulated. He talked frequently of killing himself. It broke Chloe's heart. She decided to be his only friend. She hung out with him every day and begun to teach him how to live. how to cook, how to make appointments, how to not sweat the little stuff...

But Frank's problems consumed Chloe's life. He was sending her over 200 text messages per day, needing her contact constantly. She spent hours checking him into suicide wards and picking him up when he got out, only to drive him back the following week. Frank's therapist couldn't handle that he seemed to require 5+ hours of therapy per day and "dumped" him. Frank told Chloe she was the only reason he wasn't killing himself. The desperate texts increased. He'd call her up at 3:30 in the morning to talk for an hour and a half about the stuff going through his mind. She couldn't take it any more.

Damn. Please tell Chloe for me that this random person from the Internet said she is a great human being?

I wish that Frank would have lived in the Netherlands, he would have gotten a personal budget to buy a coach who would do the things Chloe did for him, except they'd be trained to do it for him and get paid. Additionally, unpaid friends and family doing this (and similar) work are called "mantle care", and can apply for additional benefits (like the "mantle care compliment", which is 250 EU in tax-free cash to buy something nice).

I get parts of these benefits myself, but whenever I hear stories like this I always get the idea that there are so many people out there that deserve them so much more than I do. (although frankly I don't know how deep in shit I would have been without that help, so maybe I did deserve it)
Ex-Soviet Bloc Sexual Attack Swede of Tomorrow™
e-prime disclaimer: let it seem fairly unclear I understand the apparent subjectivity of the above statements. maybe.

INFORMATION SO POWERFUL, YOU ACTUALLY NEED LESS.

Triple Zero

Quote from: Hoopla on November 17, 2010, 10:55:51 PM
Which brings up another question... where the hell were the people who organized this talk?  Surely there should have been someone backstage that could have run on to assist?

Actually, maybe it wasn't there when you clicked it, but the article now has an Update at the bottom that explains quite a lot.

Apparently, Nye was only out for 5 or 6 seconds, which wasn't enough time for people to get beyond the first WTF, realize what's going on and jump up and help. Then Nye got up by himself, and almost immediately after that people from organisation/stage rushed up to check on him. I'm willing to bet that people only grabbed for their phones after those 5 or 6 seconds either, but we'll never know that.

QuoteEDIT TO ADD:  Again, it's not exactly that nobody jumped up to help that bothers me, its that nobody jumped up to help because they were busy tweeting about it.  Somethings not right there.

Yes. What's not right here is that that's not what happened at all. Even without the update of the article, I'm fairly sure that nobody would think "I'll tweet first and then I'll help him". As I said, they weren't helping first, and they were tweeting second. If they didn't have a smartphone they'd be biting their nails out of conflict-redirect-behaviour.
Ex-Soviet Bloc Sexual Attack Swede of Tomorrow™
e-prime disclaimer: let it seem fairly unclear I understand the apparent subjectivity of the above statements. maybe.

INFORMATION SO POWERFUL, YOU ACTUALLY NEED LESS.

Triple Zero

Quote from: ☄ · · · N E T · · · ☄ on November 18, 2010, 12:26:32 AM
Quote from: Niamh on November 17, 2010, 11:00:48 PM

Which may be why people don't seem to care anymore.  We've become immuneto that which we see evey day?   

:cn:

No man, humans have been complaining about this for thousands of years now. That means it's an age-old wisdom, and therefore it's right: Modern society IS degenerate. It always has been!

We just don't care anymore, compared to some arbitrary cherry-picked moment in the past where people incidentally cared more than they do or did right at another, currently more current moment when people obviously cared less.

And that's a bad thing.

And surely it has nothing to do with that we remember good things from the past significantly better, and that we feel bad things in the present significantly (2-3 times, afaik) stronger.

No Net, we are fucked. Society is just not what it has been anymore. And it never was, and it never will. NOTHING will EVER be the same again!





Oh reminds me, one of these old Greek dudes, either Socrates or Plato or Archimedes or Aristotle .. one of them. He already knew, this new-fangled technology is going to be the end of us all. Seriously. If the common man starts to read and write, and start writing things down, surely they'll forget how to remember stuff!


Ex-Soviet Bloc Sexual Attack Swede of Tomorrow™
e-prime disclaimer: let it seem fairly unclear I understand the apparent subjectivity of the above statements. maybe.

INFORMATION SO POWERFUL, YOU ACTUALLY NEED LESS.

ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞

P E R   A S P E R A   A D   A S T R A

Triple Zero

Look at this man! Verily, he hath forgotten how to think!!
Ex-Soviet Bloc Sexual Attack Swede of Tomorrow™
e-prime disclaimer: let it seem fairly unclear I understand the apparent subjectivity of the above statements. maybe.

INFORMATION SO POWERFUL, YOU ACTUALLY NEED LESS.

Whatever

Yes, I have and still do try my damndest to help alone or in a crowd. 

As for my kids, they've all received disciplinary action at one time or another for going after a bully. 

Maybe violence is down from years ago, or maybe it is just that modern technology and the internet has put it in our face more than it has ever been.  I grew up in a relatively small town compared to the city I live in now.  Maybe that has as much to do with my perspective as anything.

I know that I personally wouldn't have stood there and watched a man die and not have tried to do something, even if it was just hold his damned hand so he knew he wasn't dying alone.


Jenne

QuoteUPDATE: A USC student who attended the lecture wrote in to contest the assertion that students in the audience were tweeting and texting after Nye fell. He writes: "When Bill Nye fell, he was only down for a very brief 5 to 6 seconds. During this period, everyone was so confused and shocked, we assumed it was part of the show and no one could have, or did, know that it was a medical problem. It was our childhood hero, we did not want it to be a medical issue. Everyone was so riveted and confused, NO ONE reached for their phone. We wouldn't even know what to say, we had no idea why he had fallen anyhow. The whole auditorium was silent and on edge, we were at once concerned and confounded. Once he came to, apologized for falling, and stumbled while grabbing on to the podium, everyone realized the awful truth and stage hands jumped to the stage to assist him."


I was actually thinking THIS was probably what happened--it was a PERFORMANCE, and they probably thought it was part of the schtick and sat in stunned silence until it was clear what had happened.  The action of twittering furiously instead of helping seemed off-base to me.  Glad I was right.

Jenne

The Messy Mya death...I'm wondering what undercurrents are actually in THAT situation in the Treme that we just don't have details about.  The reason why I say that is the fact that there's a kill-or-be-killed desperation out there in NOLA right now...people are offed for no fucking reason.  Spike Lee's follow up to his "When the Levees Broke" was a chilling tale of how little life means to people on the streets of N'Awlins these days.  Messy Mya was obviously caught in that and lost his life because of it.

hooplala

#59
Quote from: Triple Zero on November 19, 2010, 09:00:28 AM
Quote from: Hoopla on November 17, 2010, 09:44:41 PM
Certainly Twitter itself is not to blame here, but a lot of the mindset of Twitter is.  Remember, these people didn't just sit there in stunned silence, they TWEETED about it.  There is some form of spectator sport in that, and I would rather distance myself from it, before I see some indication of that in myself.

I fail to see that point. It is bullshit, in fact. The same reasoning you would stop looking out windows after hearing of the Genovese case.

It's the people that were rotten. Whether they sat in stunned silence or were doing any other activity has nothing to do with it, or at least, it doesn't make the other activity rotten.

I get how you feel, it seems as if those people thought the tweeting was more important than helping this person, and that would certainly make Twitter look very bad. But I think the examples above and the psychology behind this phenomenon show that it's not like tweeting somehow took precedence to otherwise having helped Nye.

Quite the contrary. Because of the phenomenon, people looked to each other for what to do, and the situation got in a Deadlock and nobody did very much of anything. This is of course highly conflicting behaviour to a well-meaning individual (of which there were more than enough, in the audience), and cognitive dissonant situations like these makes humans (and many other animals btw) redirect their attention to unrelated behaviour.

Hence some of them started tweeting.

But you know what? A large part of the people without smartphones probably starting biting their nails or adjusting their clothes. In fact, I would bet there must have been at least a couple of people that had the audacity to get a little mirror and check their make-up during these events. It's all exactly the same thing.

The point is, these people were cunts, not bipeds, redirecting their behaviour to something unrelated. Don't blame the unrelated thing, though.

BTW, unless you actively promise to yourself to BE that person that breaks the spell and goes against the group behaviour, requiring you to get up and indeed become the center of attention in a group of perhaps hundreds, don't fool yourself by thinking "I probably wouldn't behave like that". The numbers don't lie. The audience had enough people in it that there were probably 5 other individuals that knew, and honestly believed they would never just sit and watch, just like you, and they still did.

Seriously. You are a monkey too, don't believe this type of programmed instinctual behaviour does not apply to you, because it does and it will. Instead, realize that the behaviour DOES apply to you, just like it does to anyone else, and that in order to counter it, it will require CONSCIOUS and DELIBERATE and WILFUL action in an uncertain situation that will go entirely against the grain of your instincts screaming at you to look at the group to see what you should do. You'll be fighting against your monkeybrain. okay that may be a bit of exaggeration, but it's better to expect an inner struggle than to believe you're such a decent human being that you'll surely do the right thing when the situation arises.

(BTW for people that have already been in these kinds of situations, and already been the helpful heroes, it may be different. But probably not the first time)


Very good point, Trip... I went off a little half-cocked there, which I have an alarming tendency to do.  It's ridiculous, obviously... it's like people who threaten inanimate objects when they don't behave the way you want them too... which I also do.  I should seek therapy.

Anyway, you have pierced through at least this layer of my insanity and shown that I stand here nude.  And for that, I salute you, sir.  (I would feel a tad sheepish to open a new Twitter account, though.)
"Soon all of us will have special names" — Professor Brian O'Blivion

"Now's not the time to get silly, so wear your big boots and jump on the garbage clowns." — Bob Dylan?

"Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)"
— Walt Whitman