5 ms·

Of course, but I don't think it's specific to "the west" or "corrupt societies". It's human nature. If you're part of a group and you speak against the group, e

• mewpmewp2 3y ago
  Yeah, in the end it all comes down to game theory.
  • stjohnswarts 3y ago
    do you want to bet on that?
• lynx23 3y ago
  You pretty much nailed it. Its only a whistleblower to outsides, its a mudslinger to insiders.
  • BLKNSLVR 3y ago
    mudslinger to the people who are profiting from the bad behaviour that they want to protect for no reason other than greed? A more appropriate term than 'insiders' would be 'cunts'.
    • lynx23 3y ago
      [flagged]
• dustingetz 3y ago
  well stated! i would add that the solution is to find a path of action that does not actually go against human nature but rather embraces it. My favorite historical example is religion, e.g. Moses and the 10 Commandments.
  • indigochill 3y ago
    I stand by the 10 Commandments, but people don't even agree what human nature is. I believe it's a reflection of a loving creator and others believe it's an evolutionary fluke while yet others believe it's a piece of a quasi-conscious universe discovering itself. If we can't agree what human nature even is, we're not going to agree what is most in line with it.
    • dustingetz 3y ago
      we don’t need to agree, it just needs to be metastable, and “thou shalt not kill” is a successful example of solving a tragedy of the commons by coordinating values over a group at scale, and in a way that navigates from one less desirable equilibrium to another more desirable equilibrium through a transition path that is itself stable (otherwise cheaters collapse the transition path) citation: Learning from Schelling's Strategy of Conflict Roger B. Myerson JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC LITERATURE VOL. 47, NO. 4, DECEMBER 2009 (pp. 1109-25) https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jel.47.4.1109 https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jel.47.4.1109
• saiya-jin 3y ago
  This. Its an uphill battle, and given the risks and rewards ratio definitely the smartest thing is to quietly walk away and report to regulators anonymously if possible. The amount of cases where C-suites or owners take it very personally and go on vengeance streak are many... you don't want to fight bunch of very well-connected rich sociopaths hell-bent on destroying you or worse, and from position of a 'nice guy'.
  • BLKNSLVR 3y ago
    There's an odd angle in there that would make an interesting movie where, if the whistleblower was not, in fact, a 'nice guy', and was actually a sociopath who hadn't yet reached the level where they're the ones directing the bad behaviour. It would be their opportunity to reach said level. Blackmail their way up the corporate ladder. Is that how they get there?
• runnerup 3y ago
  I don’t think it’s normal human nature to assault / murder / psychologically torture / ruin the life of / etc someone who points out what your group is doing wrong. It may happen from time to time, enough that it should be a potential expected response. But just like psychopathy and schizophrenia are abnormal, so is murdering or ruining the life of a whistleblower. 1-2% of the population may be a sociopath / psychopath — but its still considered “abnormal psychology”. If someone had proof that a device I made was hurting people, I wouldn’t try to destroy their life or kill them. A lot of this whistleblowing doesnt even have jailtime as a consequence to those who failed their duty of care - often it just means they’ll make a few million less dollars but still be plenty comfortable. We shouldn’t feel its “normal” to murder / torture / assault or ruin the lives of these whistleblowers any more than we think sociopaths are “normal”. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/ebay-execs-sent-cockroaches-and-bloody-pig-mask-to-harass-journalists-feds/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/ebay-execs-sent-... <- this is not just normal “human nature”. It’s the result of abnormal psychology.
  • bambax 3y ago
    You don't think violence is part of human nature? I don't even know what to respond to that, except that it's not just socio- or psycho- or some other label of -paths. Everyone is capable of violence when threatened. Threatening the group is often perceived as worse than threatening a given individual, and will therefore induce a stronger reaction.
    • runnerup 3y ago
      I still dont think its normal to resort to violence just because someone will only make $400,000 this year instead of $4 million as a result of whistleblowing. Or even no change to their income but their company will make less profit as a result of whistleblowing. Or they’ll “be embarassed” as in the case of eBay. That’s not a “threat” - they’re in no danger.
• ikurei 3y ago
  So many laws go against human nature; those might be the most important laws. I don't expect the greedy and powerful to change, but as a society we should do more to protect whistleblowers, the same way we protect threatened witnesses. Also, more solidarity between workers, although not always possible, would go a long way. So many Google employees can definitely afford to quit in solidarity, or strike. Not saying it's easy, I recognize it isn't.
  • c0brac0bra 3y ago
    You might even say that ALL laws go against human nature. If it was in our nature to follow a certain law we probably wouldn't need it codified.
    • verisimi 3y ago
      Laws are for thee, not for me. They are a control mechanism for the masses, nothing to do with right or wrong, which is written in our hearts. But, if you want to disempower the individual, take his money (tax), use that money against him (police, tax inspectors) you need some authorised hymnsheet for the feeble minded to get behind. And that is law.
      • pixl97 3y ago
        >nothing to do with right or wrong, which is written in our heart It's just quite unfortunate we're all reading from different heart books.
        • verisimi 3y ago
          Really? Or is it that you've never looked, and take the poor imitation instead? Funny, btw. But, not all truth has to be found in a book.. Arguably, no truth is.
        • NemoNobody 3y ago
          I don't think we are reading different heart books at all - we are taught that we are but we are pretty much exactly the same when it comes to matters of the heart
• mr_toad 3y ago
  If you’re a good guy you’re “a member of the public”. If you’re a bad guy you’re “an individual”.
• ordu 3y ago
  > Laws that go against human nature fight an uphill battle I'm reluctant to name it "human nature", but let it be. Most laws are needed to restrict "human nature". Moral codes exist to restrict "human nature". So it is the fate of a law. > The function of the group is to survive as a group; it will do whatever it takes to achieve that. It is an oversimplification I believe. Groups have very different goals, and sometimes money is more important then group existence. Groups can accept additional existential risks to increase profits, in such cases it means money has more importance for a group than its existence.
  • gcanyon 3y ago
    > simplifying: "laws and moral codes exist to restrict 'human nature'" I strongly disagree with that. Laws (and moral codes) exist to codify the general, agreed-upon human nature. They therefore "restrict," as you say, a subset of people whose internal moral compass is broken. To pick the most extreme example: most people don't need a law, or even a moral code, to not kill other people. We all (for some large and growing, but not 100%) agreed that killing is wrong, and most of us do not need the threat of a murder trial to talk us out of killing someone who cuts in front of us at the fast food line. To be clear, not 100% of us, but more than 50%, and I hope in many places, much more than 50% of us. For other, less extreme crimes, the percent of people in consensus might be lower. But even for something like speeding on the highway I think human nature is, on average, a limiting factor more than laws or moral codes, rather than being an uncontrolled source of chaos reined in by law. People (on average) drive maybe 60-80 mph on the highway (depending on the highway -- looking at you, Montana). If there were no speed limit at all, that wouldn't jump that much: the average speed on the autobahn is apparently 125kph, or 78mph. Everyone's human nature is, on average, reasonably aligned, and laws tend to reflect that average.
    • pixl97 3y ago
      So the issue with laws is they are many types. Criminal, civil, statutory. Defining how the power grid works, what frequency it runs, what devices can be plugged into it so they don't explode is a set of codes/laws. If you violate those there are other sets of civil/criminal codes that can be used to remediate the situation. And that's just one facet of our lives. In a low complexity society, especially ones with smaller populations there are typically fewer laws. As society grows, and especially as the populations begin to specialize formalized laws are a natural outcome. The farmer, the taylor, and the brickmaker all need common set of rules for expectation in things like trade and debt that get very hard to coordinate as population size grows.
• WinstonSmith84 3y ago
  OP has written: > even here in the west No indeed it's not specific to the west, but the emphasis was worth it: many western people have such an high opinion of their country that they believe it could only happen in Iran, Russia, North Korea and the likes
  • PeterisP 3y ago
    There definitely is a difference. For example, he is alive - in countries around me there are similar cases which didn't end that well.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• Zambyte 3y ago
  > If you're part of a group and you speak against the group, esp. to another group, the group will move to destroy you. Not all "groups" are created equal though. I think a big factor in this is how much people make the group a part of their personal identity. If they feel like they are the group (ie "I am American"), then they feel like an attack on the group is an attack on them (is "Americans are dumb" means I am dumb). Not all groups latch on to their members sense of identity like that, and in that case an attack on the group is much more acceptable to members of the group.
• ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  > I don't think it's specific to "the west" or "corrupt societies". It's human nature. The west is unique because it has created a very believable façade of cleanliness, majority of the population believes that whistleblowing works and often allegations of corruption are treated like conspiracy theory. In, let's say, Russia, everyone knows that things are corrupt, at least they are realists. > fight an uphill battle For some reason our ideology talks about entrepreneurs as wealth creators and completely forgets about wealth creators that our society doesn't reward or punishes, like whistle-blowers.
  • oska 3y ago
    > In, let's say, Russia, everyone knows that things are corrupt My guess would be that things are less corrupt in Russia in 2023 than in most 'Western' countries now.
• dvdkon 3y ago
  You'd do good to expect a threatened group (or individual) to lash out, but that's precisely why we have anti-retaliation laws. Think of them not as telling people they shouldn't try to destroy opponents, but that the society around them will punish them if they do, since it's beneficial for that society. After all, laws in a rule-of-law country are better thought of as restrictions on the state, not the individual. Without criminal law, what's stopping a police officer for killing you if they think it's appropriate? Laws protecting whistleblowers can then be seen as a promise by society to individuals: "If you come forward, we have the power to protect you."