9 ms·

I often like to sum it up as: "Thinking gangs observed in prison represent human households." This goes along with an imagined mockumentary, narrated by a Davi

by Terr_ 2y ago

I often like to sum it up as: "Thinking gangs observed in prison represent human households." This goes along with an imagined mockumentary, narrated by a David Attenborough figure, ex: "In the living room, a confrontation is brewing. The Big Boss has informed the bottom-tier Henchmen Homies that it is time for lights-out, but they are not ready to leave the television and they resent the privileges of the older Made Man, who is permitted to remain. This is a problem for the Big Boss, since directly punishing them might undermine his claim to control the group as a whole. Fortunately for him, his Enforcer is arriving from the kitchen, attracted by the noise..."

HPsquared 2y ago
Maybe not all households, but some. And schools bear more than a passing resemblance to prisons.
- bestouff 2y ago
  Depends on the country.
  - bigiain 2y ago
    Yeah. Most countries manage to keep automatic weapons out of prisons.
    - worik 2y ago
      ...and schools
      - bigiain 2y ago
        (that was the joke...)
- eleveriven 2y ago
  Yet it interesting how much of what we consider "human nature" is just us reacting to the cages we put ourselves in?
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > interesting how much of what we consider "human nature" is just us reacting to the cages we put ourselves in? Or that we aren't dogs. Chimpanzees do have an alpha male who commonly achieves his role through violence.
    - eleveriven 2y ago
      But their (Chimpanzees') social dynamics aren’t solely based on violence
      - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > their (Chimpanzees') social dynamics aren’t solely based on violence Correct. A book on Chimpanzees was connected to human nature by a reviewer in the Chicago Tribune, a 1999 Time article and the obviously totally-scientific pick-up book The Game [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_and_beta_male https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_and_beta_male
    - psychoslave 2y ago
      Humans can also exhibit behaviors closer to those of Bonobos. https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11128 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11128
    - red-iron-pine 2y ago
      not solely through violence. alpha chimps are often big, but not necessarily the biggest. best way I've heard it explained: the alpha chimp usually does the most grooming of other chimps of any of the males in the troop. they're out there making deals and building relationships. tough guys can try to overpower those so the top chimp also gotta be tough enough to stand up, but it's as much about relationships as it is about muscles
- ninalanyon 2y ago
  > schools bear more than a passing resemblance to prisons. The qualifier some needs to be applied to that too. None of the schools I have any personal knowledge of in the UK or Norway bear (or bore in the case of my own childhood) the slightest resemblance to a prison. Well, there was one. I accompanied a colleague in the US when he picked up his daughter at the end of the school day, I was astonished to find that he had to present himself at a reception desk that was guarding locked doors that were the only way in and out.
  - graemep 2y ago
    I think you are taking it too literally. It is not about having bars and armed guards, it is about having a strong fixed hierarchy, fixed routines, rules far stricter than society outside, punishments such as being put in isolation etc. A lot of this applies to some other highly disciplined environments such as the military too, but it is not the norm for most of us (and the military volunteer to be there). The physical and security aspects of a school in the UK are not like a prison, but the social and discipline aspects are. More so at some schools than others and I think people who have only had contact with better schools do not realise how bad the bad ones can be.
    - _yb2s 2y ago
      > I think people who have only had contact with better schools do not realise how bad the bad ones can be I grew up in a poor rural area and my wife an upper class coastal community, both in the USA. It’s amazing to compare and contrast our public school experiences. I was just trying to survive a situation that was both psychologically and physically abusive, with public humiliation rituals, solitary confinement, and gangs of bullies that cornered and robbed people and violently punished social non conformity- I still feel terror remembering it decades later. Even the lessons were nonsense propaganda- science classes literally focused on creationism, history class on “states rights,” etc. She was in a playful relaxing environment that included regular upper class leisure activities like sailing, skiing, and horseback riding, and had well equipped science labs with teachers that were passionate about science.
- qrsjutsu 2y ago
  [dead]
- RobotToaster 2y ago
  > And schools bear more than a passing resemblance to prisons. and some workplaces. Arguably many cities more resemble "captivity" than a natural environment.
- b3lvedere 2y ago
  Everywhere where you are unhappy and/or uncomfortable is a prison for yourself. It could be a football stadion where some weird guy has made you the mocking target.
ada1981 2y ago
Genius concept.
jojobas 2y ago
Gangs in prison represent gangs out of prison though.
- skyyler 2y ago
  I don't think that's true, actually. Do you have any evidence that suggests prison gangs are similar to street gangs?
  - pineaux 2y ago
    I think they are, but causality is the other way around. A lot of gang originate from prison. Its really logical too, you put all the crime-graduates in a place together and you think they wont become friends and partners in crime?
    - master-lincoln 2y ago
      > Its really logical too, you put all the crime-graduates in a place together and you think they wont become friends and partners in crime? Maybe, but the question was a different one: are group dynamics in a gang in a prison the same as in a gang outside the prison?
    - aetherson 2y ago
      Street gangs are really fascinating, and aren't, like, "well-oiled crime machines" in general. Economically, you have to understand some of the function of a street gang as we currently understand them: it is to be able to provide retail drug sales without either elaborate vetting of clients (which many potential clients will be unable to comply with), and without having the police be able to trivially shut it down. The thing that makes this work is the use of juveniles to take the money/hand off the drugs. The police can easily find and arrest them, but they don't suffer prison sentences or unsealed criminal records as a result. Adults monitor the process but do not handle the drugs or money out in the open, so it is non-trivial to arrest them. As a result, gangs have to be attractive to juveniles (almost exclusively boys), and function in a lot of ways as a social group and/or a somewhat violent community sports team (the sport in question being "having fistfights with other gangs"). Adult criminals who lead the gang push towards more serious violence with economic goals (eg: seizing the most valuable territory) and less social activities, the teenagers who are in the gang push towards more recreational violence and more social activities. Depending on what the size of the economic opportunity is in the area, you get more or less professional-seeming gangs. So for example you see all this kind of D&D-like creation of iconography and myths in street gangs, strange coded symbols that they use in graffiti and superstitious beliefs (Bloods avoiding the use of the letter "c" in their words because it evokes their rivals the Crips), that I, at least, felt an undeniable resonance with in terms of my own adolescence. This doesn't serve an economic rationale and I think that adult gang leaders mostly are annoyed with it as a distraction, but reflects the interests and proclivities of the rank-and-file members. You also need most of the teenagers to age out of the gang and leave (the gang can't absorb lots of adult members), which means being somewhat relaxed about entry and exit to the gang. Absent an economic rationale for the gang, like prior to the rise of organized drug sales, my understanding is that teenage-dominated gangs were in general just social circles for malcontent teenage males, who largely did, like, vandalism and antisocial pranks, not Real Big Serious Crime. Prison gangs, lacking the juvenile component, seem to me to be seriously different, though I've never read much about them.
Gibbon1 2y ago
I remember as a kid listening to adults talk about gender relations and thinking, you guys are talking about cattle and dogs.
ninetyninenine 2y ago
[flagged]
- wavefunction 2y ago
  bunch of submissive in the sheets CEOs? as long as we're operating on feelings and emotions here the whole thing is dimwitted bullshit psychological theory
- astahlx 2y ago
  Lions? Females rule the groups there. See https://www.reddit.com/r/AskBiology/s/M1VsH34t5Y https://www.reddit.com/r/AskBiology/s/M1VsH34t5Y
  - ninetyninenine 2y ago
    That articles says females do the hunting and getting food for the male while males only handle territory. That’s equivalent to the male on the couch watching TV with a shotgun on his lap defending his territory and the females going hunting (aka kitchen) to make the husband a sandwich. Joking aside the males are the leaders. How do I know? They kill the kids on arrival and the females can’t do fuck shit.
    - nosianu 2y ago
      > That articles says females do the hunting and getting food for the male while males only handle territory.That articles says females do the hunting and getting food for the male while males only handle territory.* That's a myth. Male lions do hunt. When hunting alone and not as "heavy support" for the females, they use different strategies than the females, and do it in a different environment. I read an article from a researcher about that in particular, can't remember any context to find it quickly though. There are many (scientific and casual) articles like that though: - https://singita.com/archive/wildlife/wildlife-mythbusters-tall-tales-african-bush/ https://singita.com/archive/wildlife/wildlife-mythbusters-ta... - https://medium.com/@shelldonwells/do-male-lions-hunt-e9f5ea508c5f https://medium.com/@shelldonwells/do-male-lions-hunt-e9f5ea5...
fhe 2y ago
another analogy would be: aliens abducting a bunch of humans and recreating the Stanford Prison Experiment and write up on human society based on that, which ends-up reshaping alien culture.
- d0mine 2y ago
  The results are likely to be different (aliens won't try to bias the same way original researchers did).
  - ninalanyon 2y ago
    Why not? Evolutionary pressure is likely to be the same elsewhere, why should we think that it will have different consequences?
    - pineaux 2y ago
      Dont you love Assembly-theory? Evolution is everywhere
- zdw 2y ago
  I would buy this sci-fi book.
  - enragedcacti 2y ago
    The Mercy of Gods by James S.A. Corey is surprisingly close in concept. It's Book 1 of a trilogy by the authors of The Expanse.
reasonableout 2y ago
When I was younger I made a switch from IT to teaching at elementary. One of the teachers that guided me, hinted to watch series about a dog trainer to see how he takes the lead, what happens between those. Although I respect that man, that really didn't resonate with me, realizing that I wouldn't want to learn that way; so I don't want to teach that way. This article explains a lot better how I feel about this than I was able to 15 years ago.
- pmontra 2y ago
  If I may ask, how did you teach back then and how are you teaching now (maybe in the same way)?
  - ANewFormation 2y ago
    I'm also curious. When I first taught some younger kids I went in thinking they were like little people... that did not work well. When I instead started to treat them as glorified chimps, everything went better for them and for me. In the meantime I'm still somehow expecting that my children will behave like little people... Haha, humans really suck at learning, even from our own experiences.
    - bombcar 2y ago
      The key is to realize that they act and react like little chimps, but they are growing into people. It's a really hard balancing act but with the chimp framework in place, the human development can flourish.
    - TremendousJudge 2y ago
      I have no idea how to treat chimps, let alone glorified chimps. What does this mean in practical terms?
      - iteria 2y ago
        I have a child and I'll be honest it was only when she was like 5 that I'd say that she was more complex than a dog. Small children cannot be reasoned with, only bribed and given sufficient motivation or demotivation via a carefully balanced set of prizes and punishments. After that she could be reasoned with, but had reduced ability to keep to her intention long term due to lack of experience and inability to imagine outcomes, so a lot of teaching an early elementary schooler involves setting up experiments to demonstrate the wisdom or lack of wisdom in particular actions. At least in my parenting. I imagine this is what is meant.

by Terr_ 2y ago

HPsquared 2y ago

Maybe not all households, but some. And schools bear more than a passing resemblance to prisons.

bestouff 2y ago
Depends on the country.
- bigiain 2y ago
  Yeah. Most countries manage to keep automatic weapons out of prisons.
  - worik 2y ago
    ...and schools
    - bigiain 2y ago
      (that was the joke...)
eleveriven 2y ago
Yet it interesting how much of what we consider "human nature" is just us reacting to the cages we put ourselves in?
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > interesting how much of what we consider "human nature" is just us reacting to the cages we put ourselves in? Or that we aren't dogs. Chimpanzees do have an alpha male who commonly achieves his role through violence.
  - eleveriven 2y ago
    But their (Chimpanzees') social dynamics aren’t solely based on violence
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > their (Chimpanzees') social dynamics aren’t solely based on violence Correct. A book on Chimpanzees was connected to human nature by a reviewer in the Chicago Tribune, a 1999 Time article and the obviously totally-scientific pick-up book The Game [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_and_beta_male https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_and_beta_male
  - psychoslave 2y ago
    Humans can also exhibit behaviors closer to those of Bonobos. https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11128 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11128
  - red-iron-pine 2y ago
    not solely through violence. alpha chimps are often big, but not necessarily the biggest. best way I've heard it explained: the alpha chimp usually does the most grooming of other chimps of any of the males in the troop. they're out there making deals and building relationships. tough guys can try to overpower those so the top chimp also gotta be tough enough to stand up, but it's as much about relationships as it is about muscles
ninalanyon 2y ago
> schools bear more than a passing resemblance to prisons. The qualifier some needs to be applied to that too. None of the schools I have any personal knowledge of in the UK or Norway bear (or bore in the case of my own childhood) the slightest resemblance to a prison. Well, there was one. I accompanied a colleague in the US when he picked up his daughter at the end of the school day, I was astonished to find that he had to present himself at a reception desk that was guarding locked doors that were the only way in and out.
- graemep 2y ago
  I think you are taking it too literally. It is not about having bars and armed guards, it is about having a strong fixed hierarchy, fixed routines, rules far stricter than society outside, punishments such as being put in isolation etc. A lot of this applies to some other highly disciplined environments such as the military too, but it is not the norm for most of us (and the military volunteer to be there). The physical and security aspects of a school in the UK are not like a prison, but the social and discipline aspects are. More so at some schools than others and I think people who have only had contact with better schools do not realise how bad the bad ones can be.
  - _yb2s 2y ago
    > I think people who have only had contact with better schools do not realise how bad the bad ones can be I grew up in a poor rural area and my wife an upper class coastal community, both in the USA. It’s amazing to compare and contrast our public school experiences. I was just trying to survive a situation that was both psychologically and physically abusive, with public humiliation rituals, solitary confinement, and gangs of bullies that cornered and robbed people and violently punished social non conformity- I still feel terror remembering it decades later. Even the lessons were nonsense propaganda- science classes literally focused on creationism, history class on “states rights,” etc. She was in a playful relaxing environment that included regular upper class leisure activities like sailing, skiing, and horseback riding, and had well equipped science labs with teachers that were passionate about science.
qrsjutsu 2y ago
[dead]
RobotToaster 2y ago
> And schools bear more than a passing resemblance to prisons. and some workplaces. Arguably many cities more resemble "captivity" than a natural environment.
b3lvedere 2y ago
Everywhere where you are unhappy and/or uncomfortable is a prison for yourself. It could be a football stadion where some weird guy has made you the mocking target.

ada1981 2y ago

Genius concept.

jojobas 2y ago

Gangs in prison represent gangs out of prison though.

skyyler 2y ago
I don't think that's true, actually. Do you have any evidence that suggests prison gangs are similar to street gangs?
- pineaux 2y ago
  I think they are, but causality is the other way around. A lot of gang originate from prison. Its really logical too, you put all the crime-graduates in a place together and you think they wont become friends and partners in crime?
  - master-lincoln 2y ago
    > Its really logical too, you put all the crime-graduates in a place together and you think they wont become friends and partners in crime? Maybe, but the question was a different one: are group dynamics in a gang in a prison the same as in a gang outside the prison?
  - aetherson 2y ago
    Street gangs are really fascinating, and aren't, like, "well-oiled crime machines" in general. Economically, you have to understand some of the function of a street gang as we currently understand them: it is to be able to provide retail drug sales without either elaborate vetting of clients (which many potential clients will be unable to comply with), and without having the police be able to trivially shut it down. The thing that makes this work is the use of juveniles to take the money/hand off the drugs. The police can easily find and arrest them, but they don't suffer prison sentences or unsealed criminal records as a result. Adults monitor the process but do not handle the drugs or money out in the open, so it is non-trivial to arrest them. As a result, gangs have to be attractive to juveniles (almost exclusively boys), and function in a lot of ways as a social group and/or a somewhat violent community sports team (the sport in question being "having fistfights with other gangs"). Adult criminals who lead the gang push towards more serious violence with economic goals (eg: seizing the most valuable territory) and less social activities, the teenagers who are in the gang push towards more recreational violence and more social activities. Depending on what the size of the economic opportunity is in the area, you get more or less professional-seeming gangs. So for example you see all this kind of D&D-like creation of iconography and myths in street gangs, strange coded symbols that they use in graffiti and superstitious beliefs (Bloods avoiding the use of the letter "c" in their words because it evokes their rivals the Crips), that I, at least, felt an undeniable resonance with in terms of my own adolescence. This doesn't serve an economic rationale and I think that adult gang leaders mostly are annoyed with it as a distraction, but reflects the interests and proclivities of the rank-and-file members. You also need most of the teenagers to age out of the gang and leave (the gang can't absorb lots of adult members), which means being somewhat relaxed about entry and exit to the gang. Absent an economic rationale for the gang, like prior to the rise of organized drug sales, my understanding is that teenage-dominated gangs were in general just social circles for malcontent teenage males, who largely did, like, vandalism and antisocial pranks, not Real Big Serious Crime. Prison gangs, lacking the juvenile component, seem to me to be seriously different, though I've never read much about them.

Gibbon1 2y ago

I remember as a kid listening to adults talk about gender relations and thinking, you guys are talking about cattle and dogs.

ninetyninenine 2y ago

[flagged]

wavefunction 2y ago
bunch of submissive in the sheets CEOs? as long as we're operating on feelings and emotions here the whole thing is dimwitted bullshit psychological theory
astahlx 2y ago
Lions? Females rule the groups there. See https://www.reddit.com/r/AskBiology/s/M1VsH34t5Y https://www.reddit.com/r/AskBiology/s/M1VsH34t5Y
- ninetyninenine 2y ago
  That articles says females do the hunting and getting food for the male while males only handle territory. That’s equivalent to the male on the couch watching TV with a shotgun on his lap defending his territory and the females going hunting (aka kitchen) to make the husband a sandwich. Joking aside the males are the leaders. How do I know? They kill the kids on arrival and the females can’t do fuck shit.
  - nosianu 2y ago
    > That articles says females do the hunting and getting food for the male while males only handle territory.That articles says females do the hunting and getting food for the male while males only handle territory.* That's a myth. Male lions do hunt. When hunting alone and not as "heavy support" for the females, they use different strategies than the females, and do it in a different environment. I read an article from a researcher about that in particular, can't remember any context to find it quickly though. There are many (scientific and casual) articles like that though: - https://singita.com/archive/wildlife/wildlife-mythbusters-tall-tales-african-bush/ https://singita.com/archive/wildlife/wildlife-mythbusters-ta... - https://medium.com/@shelldonwells/do-male-lions-hunt-e9f5ea508c5f https://medium.com/@shelldonwells/do-male-lions-hunt-e9f5ea5...

fhe 2y ago

another analogy would be: aliens abducting a bunch of humans and recreating the Stanford Prison Experiment and write up on human society based on that, which ends-up reshaping alien culture.

d0mine 2y ago
The results are likely to be different (aliens won't try to bias the same way original researchers did).
- ninalanyon 2y ago
  Why not? Evolutionary pressure is likely to be the same elsewhere, why should we think that it will have different consequences?
  - pineaux 2y ago
    Dont you love Assembly-theory? Evolution is everywhere
zdw 2y ago
I would buy this sci-fi book.
- enragedcacti 2y ago
  The Mercy of Gods by James S.A. Corey is surprisingly close in concept. It's Book 1 of a trilogy by the authors of The Expanse.

reasonableout 2y ago

When I was younger I made a switch from IT to teaching at elementary. One of the teachers that guided me, hinted to watch series about a dog trainer to see how he takes the lead, what happens between those. Although I respect that man, that really didn't resonate with me, realizing that I wouldn't want to learn that way; so I don't want to teach that way. This article explains a lot better how I feel about this than I was able to 15 years ago.

pmontra 2y ago
If I may ask, how did you teach back then and how are you teaching now (maybe in the same way)?
- ANewFormation 2y ago
  I'm also curious. When I first taught some younger kids I went in thinking they were like little people... that did not work well. When I instead started to treat them as glorified chimps, everything went better for them and for me. In the meantime I'm still somehow expecting that my children will behave like little people... Haha, humans really suck at learning, even from our own experiences.
  - bombcar 2y ago
    The key is to realize that they act and react like little chimps, but they are growing into people. It's a really hard balancing act but with the chimp framework in place, the human development can flourish.
  - TremendousJudge 2y ago
    I have no idea how to treat chimps, let alone glorified chimps. What does this mean in practical terms?
    - iteria 2y ago
      I have a child and I'll be honest it was only when she was like 5 that I'd say that she was more complex than a dog. Small children cannot be reasoned with, only bribed and given sufficient motivation or demotivation via a carefully balanced set of prizes and punishments. After that she could be reasoned with, but had reduced ability to keep to her intention long term due to lack of experience and inability to imagine outcomes, so a lot of teaching an early elementary schooler involves setting up experiments to demonstrate the wisdom or lack of wisdom in particular actions. At least in my parenting. I imagine this is what is meant.