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I intensely dislike the cynicism of this and other similar statements. It's a truism of American culture that any group of people is somehow stupider, meaner,
by munificent 5y ago
I intensely dislike the cynicism of this and other similar statements.
It's a truism of American culture that any group of people is somehow stupider, meaner, and more hurtful than any of its individual members. Yet our lived daily experience is that often our most rewarding, beneficial, and joyful experiences come when being a member of a group.
I mean, we are a group right here and right now in this thread and I assume everyone participating still feels it is a net positive for them to do so. The idea that all groups become bureaucracies, mobs, or totalitarian regimes is this weird extreme perversion of American values. Call it toxic individuality.
I think a value-free and more accurate observation is that emergent properties exist: a group can have observed properties that are counter to the intentions of any of its individual members. The aggregation process itself can be dynamic, iterative, and complex in ways that break a simple coupling between invidual intent and total outcome.
This can be bad, when otherwise sane reasonable people get riled up in a mob. Or it can be good, when a choir's tone sounds more in key than any of its individual singers. It's highly dependent on both the individual members and the communication structure of the group.
- butwhywhyoh 5y agoThe quote is likely referencing large in-person groups. I would argue HN is absolutely _not_ a group in any meaningful sense. We are a bunch of individuals sharing individual thoughts asynchronously. We don't act in unison. 4chan, on the other hand... Using the combined tone of a group of singers as a counterexample seems like quite a stretch. Again -- the original quote: "... the total psyche emerging from the group is below the level of the individual psyche." He talks specifically about the emerging psyche, not some arbitrary emergent property of a group. Can you name one organization that became MORE ethical / smarter / nicer the larger it got?
- sergiomattei 5y agoI believe it's a group: Hacker News is a community. That we don't act as a hivemind is a result of our contrarian community culture.
- kragen 5y ago> I assume everyone participating still feels it is a net positive for them to do so. No, I don't, and I think some of the other people who think that are probably wrong.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- munificent 5y agoUnless you are and out and out masochist, your presence here indicates the contrary.
- kragen 5y agoThe fact that I'm engaging in self-destructive behavior doesn't imply that I enjoy it. Do you think smokers, alcoholics, and victims of domestic abuse are "out-and-out masochists" too?