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> I find it super interesting that people want to get other people in trouble over (often) things that don't negatively affect them I find it super interesting
by _jal 5y ago
> I find it super interesting that people want to get other people in trouble over (often) things that don't negatively affect them
I find it super interesting that people don't see a gradient here.
On one extreme, you have something like crossing the street against the light when nobody is at the intersection. On the other, you have all sorts of horrific things done to other people.
I'm pretty sure that the bulk of people in wealthy societies would intervene against "rule breakers" well before the horrific extreme. But where they start having qualms is interesting, and where you get all sorts of negative group behaviors, and that point will start to drift in response to how members of the group behave.
- aidenn0 5y ago> I find it super interesting that people don't see a gradient here. People tend to divide rules into 2 buckets: Ones that are inviolable and ones that are silly. It's like the old joke that "everyone who drives slower than me is an idiot, and everyone who drives faster is a maniac." In tight-knit homogeneous societies, this leads to a set of "unwritten rules," but in less well-connected or less homogeneous societies, this leads to quite a bit of friction and people harassing each other. My friend is a cop and he gets called to a lot of apartment complexes where there are two cultures abutting each other (e.g. Mexicano and non-hispanic) and it's just both sides calling the cops on each other (in his estimation) not out of racism, but because they disagree on the unwritten rules. Then as each side becomes more convinced of their moral superiority (because we obey all the important rules), the arguments become more and more petty and ticky-tacky.