5 ms·

The Intimacy of Crowds

71 points by mr_golyadkin 12y ago

twic 12y ago
> Thousands took to the streets of London and other English towns in the UK’s worst outbreak of civil unrest in a generation. When police finally restored order after some six days of violence and vandalism, everyone from the Prime Minister David Cameron to newspaper columnists of every political persuasion denounced the mindless madness, incredulous that a single killing, horrific as it was, could spark the conflagration at hand. The most popular theory was that rioters had surrendered their self-awareness and rationality to the mentality of the crowd. The most popular theory? This is the first time i've ever heard of it. The most popular theory i heard was that a lot of people realised that they could loot some shops without getting caught. The more people who joined in the looting, the thinner the police were stretched, and the safer it was to join in.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- vxNsr 12y ago
  In general this seems to be the reason for most riots in commercial areas, as people realize that the police can't do their job they're more likely to join in and steal more, plus they might rationalize that most of this stuff is insured anyway so the only people losing money are the Insurance company devils.
- e40 12y ago
  I believe it is subverted anger and perceived injustice that causes these types of riots. I don't think people think "hey, I can get some free stuff", but I do think they have the "man, this pisses me off" in mind when they leave for the gathering. Look at the Watts riots in the 60's. I think everyone, at this vantage point in time, believes that was caused by the deplorable conditions there and the state of civil rights for blacks, and not because people wanted stuff for free. The 2007 financial crisis had far ranging effects, and some of them take a while to percolate down and cause problems. My city is next door to a poorer one, and the first thing I thought of was, eventually, the crime in my neighborhood would go up. It took 3 years, but it happened.
  - twic 12y ago
    I think injustice fed into these riots, but more indirectly. I don't think people were driven to rioting by anger at injustice ("man, this pisses me off"). But i do think that injustice had eroded restraints on their behaviour, because they no longer felt part of the society which owned the shops ("screw the rich guys who own this place"). Which was ironic, because the shops looted were almost all in the rioters' neighbourhoods, and many of them will have been owned, outright or as franchises, by local people. I don't know much about the Watts riots, but my impression is that they were quite different. There, most of the participants were attacking the police or any white people they came across, rather than looting their own neighbourhood. The Broadwater Farm and poll tax riots in London were the same - battles between the authorities and people angry at the authorities. The 2011 riots were quite different.
synctext 12y ago
This is a well studied field. For instance, relevant scientific literature: "How social influence can undermine the wisdom of crowd effect" http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/05/10/1008636108 http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/05/10/1008636108
elinchrome 12y ago
It reminds me of the G20 protests in Toronto, where there was a crowd of protesters and a crowd of police. According to this theory, the police did all of the abuses of power because of their society. Creepy!
barrkel 12y ago
The crowds I've got caught up in made me lose much of my inhibitions and sense of self. The things I did, I would not have done alone through rational action. I think the article overplays its hand.
personlurking 12y ago
"Drury explains that a crisis, even a minor one such as a train breaking down in a tunnel, creates a ‘psychological crowd’ out of what was previously an aggregate of strangers. You suddenly share a common fate and your sphere of interest ramps up from the personal to the group." ___ I wonder how this fits into a scene [1] that happened last week in Sao Paulo when bus drivers started striking and the metro became overcrowded. It wasn't due to a crisis, per se, and the metro didn't break down but sensibility surely went out the window. My own assessment of the video below is that no one saw themselves as part of a crowd/group, but as individuals. 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXycKeyDKXk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXycKeyDKXk (btw, I shared this as an 'aside' on HN a few days ago)
solarexplorer 12y ago
A very nice book on the topic is Elias Canetti's Crowds and Power (Masse und Macht). Canetti won the Nobel Prize in Literate and writes very well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowds_and_Power http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowds_and_Power http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masse_und_Macht http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masse_und_Macht
sp332 12y ago
There's a gender element too. Women have been found to be more aggressive than men in crowds. http://psp.sagepub.com/content/20/1/34.abstract http://psp.sagepub.com/content/20/1/34.abstract
- gohrt 12y ago
  Incorrect: Women have been found to be as aggressive than men in crowds: > men aggressed more than women in the individuated condition, but this difference was eliminated in the deindividuated condition.
  - sp332 12y ago
    Oh, sorry about that. I was either thinking about a different paper, or I misremembered this one.
  - qnaal 12y ago
    but would groups of mostly women be as aggressive as groups of mostly men? scientists get on this shit or I will come to your house and burn your degrees
gumby 12y ago
Sadly it's not just the sciences that are grossly misunderstood by the public (and this misunderstanding exploited by politicians). I find this quotation in the article the most interesting: "‘What the rioters appeared to be seeking was fuller participation in the social order and the material benefits enjoyed by the majority of American citizens,’ it concluded. ‘Rather than rejecting the American system, they were anxious to obtain a place for themselves in it.’" We see this time and again: demonstration and revolt come from those who have something to gain (or lose), not from the truly wretched. From the French revolution to the 60s in Europe and the USA, to Korea in the 80s/90s to Venezuela today. Yet my kid was still told in school this year that the French revolution was the peasants rising up. It's not like that theory is believed by any academics but still it hasn't filtered down to school. Likewise, as this article describes it, the idea of "the madness of crowds" is well established in the popular mind, even though it's thoroughly discredited by academic research. Yet policy is made based on crazy beliefs. I am still a fan of democracy, but when the kids are fed a rasher of discredited bullshit in high school it's hard to see how it can function.
- gohrt 12y ago
  Years ago I heard/read a quotation (that I cannot find a source for now) to the effect of: "Revolution is the upper and middle classes trading places"
qnaal 12y ago
I'll borrow this... straw man? to make a simpler point: > social psychologist Gustave Le Bon, tried to explain crowd behaviour as a paralysis of the brain; hypnotised by the group, the individual becomes the slave of unconscious impulses. ‘He is no longer himself, but has become an automaton who has ceased to be guided by his will,’ he wrote in 1895. ‘Isolated, he may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd, he is a barbarian… a grain of sand amid other grains of sand, which the wind stirs up at will.’ One could just as easily say that individual behavior is paralysis of the brain, hypnotized by the culture. If someone is more 'cultivated' as an individual, it's simply because he's had much more practice in that form- a group of people who act as one is not only possible, and quite impressive, but it takes work- willpower and practice. This kind of article, making all kinds of guesses based on little bits of psychology research, and presenting them as facts... This is supposed to be an illuminated tech community, so I'll say it straight: When psychology meets up with the other sciences in the form of ai research, bs like this will finally be recognized as grossly oversimplistic garbage. I give the article a C-minus: trying to sound knowledgeable without promoting much useful information.

71 points by mr_golyadkin 12y ago

twic 12y ago

> Thousands took to the streets of London and other English towns in the UK’s worst outbreak of civil unrest in a generation. When police finally restored order after some six days of violence and vandalism, everyone from the Prime Minister David Cameron to newspaper columnists of every political persuasion denounced the mindless madness, incredulous that a single killing, horrific as it was, could spark the conflagration at hand. The most popular theory was that rioters had surrendered their self-awareness and rationality to the mentality of the crowd. The most popular theory? This is the first time i've ever heard of it. The most popular theory i heard was that a lot of people realised that they could loot some shops without getting caught. The more people who joined in the looting, the thinner the police were stretched, and the safer it was to join in.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
vxNsr 12y ago
In general this seems to be the reason for most riots in commercial areas, as people realize that the police can't do their job they're more likely to join in and steal more, plus they might rationalize that most of this stuff is insured anyway so the only people losing money are the Insurance company devils.
e40 12y ago
I believe it is subverted anger and perceived injustice that causes these types of riots. I don't think people think "hey, I can get some free stuff", but I do think they have the "man, this pisses me off" in mind when they leave for the gathering. Look at the Watts riots in the 60's. I think everyone, at this vantage point in time, believes that was caused by the deplorable conditions there and the state of civil rights for blacks, and not because people wanted stuff for free. The 2007 financial crisis had far ranging effects, and some of them take a while to percolate down and cause problems. My city is next door to a poorer one, and the first thing I thought of was, eventually, the crime in my neighborhood would go up. It took 3 years, but it happened.
- twic 12y ago
  I think injustice fed into these riots, but more indirectly. I don't think people were driven to rioting by anger at injustice ("man, this pisses me off"). But i do think that injustice had eroded restraints on their behaviour, because they no longer felt part of the society which owned the shops ("screw the rich guys who own this place"). Which was ironic, because the shops looted were almost all in the rioters' neighbourhoods, and many of them will have been owned, outright or as franchises, by local people. I don't know much about the Watts riots, but my impression is that they were quite different. There, most of the participants were attacking the police or any white people they came across, rather than looting their own neighbourhood. The Broadwater Farm and poll tax riots in London were the same - battles between the authorities and people angry at the authorities. The 2011 riots were quite different.

synctext 12y ago

This is a well studied field. For instance, relevant scientific literature: "How social influence can undermine the wisdom of crowd effect" http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/05/10/1008636108 http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/05/10/1008636108

elinchrome 12y ago

It reminds me of the G20 protests in Toronto, where there was a crowd of protesters and a crowd of police. According to this theory, the police did all of the abuses of power because of their society. Creepy!

barrkel 12y ago

The crowds I've got caught up in made me lose much of my inhibitions and sense of self. The things I did, I would not have done alone through rational action. I think the article overplays its hand.

personlurking 12y ago

"Drury explains that a crisis, even a minor one such as a train breaking down in a tunnel, creates a ‘psychological crowd’ out of what was previously an aggregate of strangers. You suddenly share a common fate and your sphere of interest ramps up from the personal to the group." ___ I wonder how this fits into a scene [1] that happened last week in Sao Paulo when bus drivers started striking and the metro became overcrowded. It wasn't due to a crisis, per se, and the metro didn't break down but sensibility surely went out the window. My own assessment of the video below is that no one saw themselves as part of a crowd/group, but as individuals. 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXycKeyDKXk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXycKeyDKXk (btw, I shared this as an 'aside' on HN a few days ago)

solarexplorer 12y ago

A very nice book on the topic is Elias Canetti's Crowds and Power (Masse und Macht). Canetti won the Nobel Prize in Literate and writes very well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowds_and_Power http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowds_and_Power http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masse_und_Macht http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masse_und_Macht

sp332 12y ago

There's a gender element too. Women have been found to be more aggressive than men in crowds. http://psp.sagepub.com/content/20/1/34.abstract http://psp.sagepub.com/content/20/1/34.abstract

gohrt 12y ago
Incorrect: Women have been found to be as aggressive than men in crowds: > men aggressed more than women in the individuated condition, but this difference was eliminated in the deindividuated condition.
- sp332 12y ago
  Oh, sorry about that. I was either thinking about a different paper, or I misremembered this one.
- qnaal 12y ago
  but would groups of mostly women be as aggressive as groups of mostly men? scientists get on this shit or I will come to your house and burn your degrees

gumby 12y ago

Sadly it's not just the sciences that are grossly misunderstood by the public (and this misunderstanding exploited by politicians). I find this quotation in the article the most interesting: "‘What the rioters appeared to be seeking was fuller participation in the social order and the material benefits enjoyed by the majority of American citizens,’ it concluded. ‘Rather than rejecting the American system, they were anxious to obtain a place for themselves in it.’" We see this time and again: demonstration and revolt come from those who have something to gain (or lose), not from the truly wretched. From the French revolution to the 60s in Europe and the USA, to Korea in the 80s/90s to Venezuela today. Yet my kid was still told in school this year that the French revolution was the peasants rising up. It's not like that theory is believed by any academics but still it hasn't filtered down to school. Likewise, as this article describes it, the idea of "the madness of crowds" is well established in the popular mind, even though it's thoroughly discredited by academic research. Yet policy is made based on crazy beliefs. I am still a fan of democracy, but when the kids are fed a rasher of discredited bullshit in high school it's hard to see how it can function.

gohrt 12y ago
Years ago I heard/read a quotation (that I cannot find a source for now) to the effect of: "Revolution is the upper and middle classes trading places"

qnaal 12y ago

I'll borrow this... straw man? to make a simpler point: > social psychologist Gustave Le Bon, tried to explain crowd behaviour as a paralysis of the brain; hypnotised by the group, the individual becomes the slave of unconscious impulses. ‘He is no longer himself, but has become an automaton who has ceased to be guided by his will,’ he wrote in 1895. ‘Isolated, he may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd, he is a barbarian… a grain of sand amid other grains of sand, which the wind stirs up at will.’ One could just as easily say that individual behavior is paralysis of the brain, hypnotized by the culture. If someone is more 'cultivated' as an individual, it's simply because he's had much more practice in that form- a group of people who act as one is not only possible, and quite impressive, but it takes work- willpower and practice. This kind of article, making all kinds of guesses based on little bits of psychology research, and presenting them as facts... This is supposed to be an illuminated tech community, so I'll say it straight: When psychology meets up with the other sciences in the form of ai research, bs like this will finally be recognized as grossly oversimplistic garbage. I give the article a C-minus: trying to sound knowledgeable without promoting much useful information.