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Just don't imagine that HN is sitting on some moral high ground. Any time there is a story here that could be construed as possibly being negative towards Mr.

by skwirl 13y ago

Just don't imagine that HN is sitting on some moral high ground. Any time there is a story here that could be construed as possibly being negative towards Mr. Snowden, the top comments are overwhelmingly "Why is the media focused on Snowden and not the NSA scandal?" Whenever a story favorable to Mr. Snowden appears here, however, the comment threads are full of praise and much speculation over his personal future. I'm sure these are mostly disjoint groups of users and not evidence of hypocrisy, but clearly even many hackers have great interest in the personal story of Mr. Snowden. And who can blame them? Personal stories are easy to identify with and easy to understand. Now the story is about the stories, which is even further removed from the point at hand. And I am commenting about the story being about the stories, so I don't claim any moral high ground either. Just an observation, though.

saraid216 13y ago
> And who can blame them? Personal stories are easy to identify with and easy to understand. The problem with putting a human face on such a story is exactly the problem described, though. I call it "The Gallant Knight effect", though that is a made up term because I don't know the correct one. It's an anti-individualistic effect that occurs when people identify a particular person as exceptional and, in doing so, erase the individual faces of every other relevant actor. This is the same effect that centralizes so much power on the chief executive. It's similar to the Bystander Effect, but I'm talking about a systemic problem rather than a situational one[1]. By shunting responsibility, you also shunt agency. It's an excuse to carry on with your own life because someone else is doing the real work. Worse, it is an excuse to hide in the tavern, peering out the window, while the gunslingers are out on the street, which is what a decent percentage of HNers are doing by resorting to silver bullet security solutions. Putting someone in shiny armor and sending him out after the Grail means that the rest of us can continue to be serfs. That's not to say it'd be any different if Snowden hadn't disclosed himself, though: indeed, we'd probably be spending an inordinate amount of effort trying to figure out who it was. Someone would have guessed that it was Satoshi Nakamoto by now. [1] Clicking around Wikipedia, I notice stuff like "diffusion of responsibility", "social loafing" and "deindividuation" that I would also put down as close but not quite because they are limited to talking about groups smaller than, say, a million. [2] I talk about it more here: https://plus.google.com/113476531580617567600/posts/btX9T4ku3ax https://plus.google.com/113476531580617567600/posts/btX9T4ku... It's worth pointing out that this post predates the leaks.

by skwirl 13y ago

saraid216 13y ago

> And who can blame them? Personal stories are easy to identify with and easy to understand. The problem with putting a human face on such a story is exactly the problem described, though. I call it "The Gallant Knight effect", though that is a made up term because I don't know the correct one. It's an anti-individualistic effect that occurs when people identify a particular person as exceptional and, in doing so, erase the individual faces of every other relevant actor. This is the same effect that centralizes so much power on the chief executive. It's similar to the Bystander Effect, but I'm talking about a systemic problem rather than a situational one[1]. By shunting responsibility, you also shunt agency. It's an excuse to carry on with your own life because someone else is doing the real work. Worse, it is an excuse to hide in the tavern, peering out the window, while the gunslingers are out on the street, which is what a decent percentage of HNers are doing by resorting to silver bullet security solutions. Putting someone in shiny armor and sending him out after the Grail means that the rest of us can continue to be serfs. That's not to say it'd be any different if Snowden hadn't disclosed himself, though: indeed, we'd probably be spending an inordinate amount of effort trying to figure out who it was. Someone would have guessed that it was Satoshi Nakamoto by now. [1] Clicking around Wikipedia, I notice stuff like "diffusion of responsibility", "social loafing" and "deindividuation" that I would also put down as close but not quite because they are limited to talking about groups smaller than, say, a million. [2] I talk about it more here: https://plus.google.com/113476531580617567600/posts/btX9T4ku3ax https://plus.google.com/113476531580617567600/posts/btX9T4ku... It's worth pointing out that this post predates the leaks.