[HN Gopher] Challenging 'rule breakers' - children will confront...
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       Challenging 'rule breakers' - children will confront their peers
        
       Author : rustoo
       Score  : 71 points
       Date   : 2021-12-28 14:05 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.plymouth.ac.uk)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.plymouth.ac.uk)
        
       | supernova87a wrote:
       | I don't recall exactly right now, but I remember an article that
       | had a 2x2 description of people who are vocal vs. internalized
       | and rule-abiding vs. rulebreaker-tolerating.. or something like
       | that.
       | 
       | It did help me accept (or at least understand) a little bit more
       | some people I observe who just live their lives like "it's all
       | good" or "if the person does that, they must need it really bad".
       | 
       | I never really understood that kind of mentality, for 2 reasons.
       | 
       | 1) When someone breaks the rules, and goes unchecked, it just
       | encourages them to do it more and reinforces their belief that
       | the bad behavior is acceptable. And there is something to the
       | notion that seeing people break the rules degrades respect for
       | the rules in general.
       | 
       | 2) Every time someone breaks the rules, it's a tax on those who
       | follow the rules. Why am I inconveniencing myself by following
       | rules when others just go ahead and break them? Or in another way
       | of saying it, especially when rules are only partially enforced,
       | the people who follow the rules are made suckers. Better to not
       | have the rule at all.
       | 
       | I guess this became a bit more frustrating to me over time (or
       | maybe because of age) as I understand rules better and have an
       | opinion on their validity (especially the history of them), to
       | see people giving up on the idea of enforcing rules or standards
       | at the request of people who break the rules, or people who just
       | have sympathy for them.
       | 
       | Well then, why did we create the rules in the first place? Just
       | toss the rules out, and let everyone go free-for-all, so that the
       | rule-abiding people aren't paying a tax while others go "scot-
       | free". So easy, isn't it, for people coming later to forget all
       | the work that it took to experience and solve for these problems
       | that we can just toss them out now.
       | 
       | There was the example of the MIT admissions director who had
       | faked her PhD the whole time (or say, how some people get
       | meaningless paper PhDs from no-name schools to increase their
       | government job pay), and one of my grad school colleagues
       | (toiling away for his PhD!) said, "You would go out of your way
       | to report that? What harm has it done you?". I was incredulous.
       | 
       | Maybe I'm getting more conservative in my old age.
        
         | sporkland wrote:
         | I believe it was pg's, The Four Quadrants of Conformism:
         | http://www.paulgraham.com/conformism.html
         | 
         | I still think about it quite a bit.
         | 
         | I think some rules are valid for a point in time and become
         | invalid over time (e.g. some of the old Jewish rules around
         | food probably made more sense before modern food mgmt
         | standards).
         | 
         | And pg's point is people / kids follow rules without
         | understanding them for the most part. Or they don't follow the
         | rules for the most part. And a lot of progress comes from the
         | scofflaws who aren't wedded to the current rule set and reject
         | the nonsensical ones.
         | 
         | At some point democracy and not having a blood line king/queen
         | was against the rules. I'm glad some people decided to look
         | past those rules.
        
           | supernova87a wrote:
           | Ah yes, that was it, thanks!
        
           | WalterBright wrote:
           | 1. novice follows the rules because he's told to
           | 
           | 2. master follows the rules because he understands the rules
           | 
           | 3. guru breaks the rules because his knowledge transcends
           | them
           | 
           | Doing these out of order doesn't work very well.
        
         | Scarblac wrote:
         | I think I'm like that, and it feels very related to the
         | "robustness principle" in programming
         | (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_principle). "Be
         | conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept."
         | 
         | And to the idea that I can change what's in my power - my
         | actions. I have to accept the things I can't change, like the
         | actions of strangers.
         | 
         | And I'm not a judge, I don't like judging people. Who knows,
         | they may have a good reason. Walk a mile in their shoes, and so
         | on.
         | 
         | If there are enough people who think like me, the rules will
         | still mostly hold. And if not, perhaps it wasn't a good rule.
        
         | kelseyfrog wrote:
         | I guess, not really? But this results in justifying any
         | existing rule and that conclusion is incompatible with my
         | existing world view so I end up viewing it as an artifact of
         | rhetoric rather than a result of logic.
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | orgels_revenge wrote:
         | As someone who can tolerate just about anything - take it back
         | to the start: we were thrust into this life without our
         | consent. Life is inherently an inconvenience from this
         | perspective. So what if a roommate doesn't do dishes, if people
         | cheat, break rules, etc? I didn't even ask to be here in the
         | first place. I am quiet, happy, unbothered, when I adopt this
         | view. But not unambitious, lazy, etc. Quite the contrary. It
         | just seems like complaining about rule-breakers is worse than
         | rule-breaking itself.
        
       | hirundo wrote:
       | I saw the new James Bond movie last night and hated the ending.
       | Not so much because it wasn't appropriate, as because they broke
       | the rule. And not so much the rule, as the Prime Directive. My
       | reaction felt like a kind of disgust. At the rule breakers. The
       | same kind I'd feel at a cheater in a game.
       | 
       | But of course there's no sense in which I'd been cheated. This
       | kind of surprise is meat and potatoes to almost any fiction. I
       | think that's not despite this kind of inborn reaction, but to
       | leverage it. This particular movie just had a lot of leverage to
       | work with.
        
         | zomglings wrote:
         | What rule? I didn't watch the movie nor do I know much about
         | James Bond beyond watching a few of the films over the past few
         | decades.
        
           | dmurray wrote:
           | Spoiler (obviously) but trying not to give away too much, I'm
           | sure the rule in question is that the hero is meant to live
           | happily ever after.
        
             | aidenn0 wrote:
             | Except that never applied to Bond; any time he seemed to be
             | about to have some semblance of a normal life terrible
             | stuff happens to him and/or his loved one(s).
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | fnord77 wrote:
           | an event happens that terminates the series for good.
           | 
           | though I bet in 4 years the producers will change their mind
           | and retcon the series back to life.
        
             | conductr wrote:
             | Current Hollywood would just start remaking them. No
             | time/budget for new scripts.
        
             | herbstein wrote:
             | The movie ended with "James Bond will return". There's not
             | even an implied end of the series. They pretty proudly
             | showed off that it was continuing.
        
       | yosito wrote:
       | So, kids are tattle tales? Did we need a study to tell us this?
        
         | the_only_law wrote:
         | Eventually we would see a [citation needed] below the claim.
        
         | dragonwriter wrote:
         | > So, kids are tattle tales?
         | 
         | No, tattle tales _report_ rule breaking to third-party
         | authorities. This is about direct intervention with the rule-
         | breaker.
         | 
         | > Did we need a study to tell us this?
         | 
         | If we want to quantify and see how it varies across, say, the
         | urban/rural divide (as this does with challenging), then, yes,
         | certainly, but it's not this study.
        
           | aidenn0 wrote:
           | In my experience kids are tattle tales when they have had
           | their power to intervene directly significantly curtailed. I
           | remember a kid asking me to tell my daughter to stop doing
           | some behavior (she was a few years younger than him). I asked
           | him if he had already asked her to stop and he looked at me
           | like I was from mars.
           | 
           | At least where I live, many kids have been taught in many
           | ways that direct intervention is something that will get them
           | in trouble, and tattle-tales are at least partly a result of
           | that.
           | 
           | This is also IMO why girls are more likely to tattle-tale.
           | Girls, on average, get in way more trouble for instigating
           | physical violence than boys, so they have had one method of
           | direct intervention more strongly curtailed.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | dqpb wrote:
       | Correcting 'mistakes' - children help their peers.
        
         | Supermancho wrote:
         | > We assumed that, because everyone knows everyone else in
         | small scale communities, direct interventions would be less
         | common, as people could rely on more indirect ways such as
         | reputation to ensure compliance with rules. But we actually
         | found the opposite to be true.
         | 
         | Sigh. This is the kind of bad assumption I would expect from a
         | 1st year college student.
         | 
         | In rural communities, the risk of someone making mistakes is
         | more impactful (and therefor more serious). Rural life is a lot
         | simpler in some ways, as well. In an urban center, there are
         | countless ways to solve problems and discoveries to be made
         | with the materials at hand. Urban mistakes or inefficiencies
         | are well tolerated, as they may simply be a previously unknown
         | solution/technique with their own cost/benefit profile.
        
       | andi999 wrote:
       | The article doesn't sustain what the headline is indicating.
        
       | hanoz wrote:
       | The scenario descibed in the article isn't children challenging a
       | non conformist for stepping out of line, or using a non standard
       | technique, the children are correcting, perhaps helping, someone
       | who appears to be getting something completely and utterly wrong.
        
         | newsclues wrote:
         | Children teach others. They are learning through the teaching
         | process.
        
           | conductr wrote:
           | Exactly. They're mimicking how they were taught. My 3yo is
           | all about "let me show you" because that's exactly what we
           | say when we teach him something/how to use a new toy. When a
           | guest comes over, it's his turn to show off his new toy and
           | teach them how to use it.
        
           | hanoz wrote:
           | Indeed. The lead author expresses surprise that rural
           | children are more likely to intervene. That's exactly what
           | I'd expect.
        
       | TameAntelope wrote:
       | Eh, the study calls "rule breakers" the children who seemingly
       | make mistakes applying a set of rules to a puzzle.
       | 
       | These aren't kids acting out in class and being put back in line
       | by their peers, it's two kids doing some pair programming.
       | 
       | Am I "confronting" my coworker when I suggest a different way to
       | loop than the one they implemented?
       | 
       | Nothing wrong with the study, just saying the word "challenging"
       | is not used here in the layperson sense, that is
       | confrontationally.
        
         | slibhb wrote:
         | I don't think your criticism is valid. Children often play
         | games that have rules. Comparing candyland or soccer or "block
         | game we inevented for this experiment" to different ways of
         | programming a loop misses the point.
        
         | V-2 wrote:
         | A valid point, although it's probably the article, not the
         | study itself. The actual title is "Children across societies
         | enforce conventional norms but in culturally variable ways". I
         | say "probably", because I haven't looked into the paper -
         | perhaps it does use this terminology after all (but I doubt
         | it).
        
         | sandworm101 wrote:
         | In modern schools, most any deviation from prescribed behavior
         | is considered "rule breaking". A kid playing a game they way
         | they want to play it, rather than the way they were taught to
         | play it, is a disruptive kid that needs correction by peers or
         | authority figures.
        
           | WalterBright wrote:
           | When Flight Simulator came out, my first thought was to see
           | what would happen when you crashed the airplane. People would
           | actually get upset as I would try to crash it. These were
           | adults! They'd get so into the game they were afraid of
           | crashing the imaginary airplane.
           | 
           | (It was a bit disappointing, it would only freeze the screen
           | and draw a crack across it!)
        
             | paulryanrogers wrote:
             | Surely by 2021 there is the equivalent of Burnout for
             | aviation games?
        
           | mherdeg wrote:
           | I've seen this!
           | 
           | When the toddler plays an iPad game he likes to start by
           | "failing" (choosing the wrong option, deliberately crashing a
           | toy car, doing nothing at all) and watching what happens. It
           | looks to me like he's basically experimenting - trying things
           | and watching what happens. I generally just let him try and
           | fail (and discuss what happened with him) and after about 1-2
           | minutes he tries the "right" thing because it helps him make
           | progress - or hits the "X" and quits if he can't figure it
           | out.
           | 
           | But some folks who watch him do this get pretty mad -- "no,
           | kid, you're supposed to click on the blue one! No, don't
           | crash the car, go down there! You have to push something!".
           | This is an interesting philosophy, and while it's not one I
           | share I'm not gonna intervene because he needs to get used to
           | hearing this from people sometimes.
        
             | pbhjpbhj wrote:
             | A toddler probably gets as much 'reward' from the Skinner
             | box like iPad games on failure as on success. It makes a
             | noise, flashes an interesting image.
             | 
             | The reason to 'succeed' an older child is to satisfy the
             | conditions and progress in the game, a toddler maybe gets
             | equal reward (at first) because they don't see why driving
             | further is success.
             | 
             | Once the novelty of the first set of sounds and images is
             | exhausted then interaction products new images and so
             | greater 'reward'.
             | 
             | Doesn't seem useful behaviourally?
        
               | mlyle wrote:
               | Being able to control the game and progress on demand is
               | still mastery, even if the spectacular failure is
               | interesting to explore first.
               | 
               | I blow up plenty of things in Kerbal Space Program in
               | interesting ways before deciding to buckle down and get
               | more science.
               | 
               | Playing around with the "wrong" geometrical proof instead
               | of taking the straightforward and known-to-myself
               | approach isn't harming me, either.
               | 
               | Young kids like exploring the whole state space-- not
               | just the ones we're likely to label as success or useful.
               | Then at some point later they get afraid to fail--
               | especially to be _seen_ failing. It 's a mixed bag:
               | motivation to push "forward" is useful, but fear of
               | failure prevents deeper understanding or full effort
               | sometimes.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | sharikous wrote:
             | Thinking "meta" this same behavior (adults intervening in
             | how children play games) is analogous to the phenomenon
             | described by the article, that is children correcting their
             | peers.
        
             | wccrawford wrote:
             | I have this problem, and it takes concerted effort for me
             | not to "fix" those situations. Even though I know they're
             | better off if they figure it out themselves, my desire to
             | "help" people is very hard to overcome. I use quotes around
             | those words because I know that what I'm doing is not
             | actually those things in many cases, and they'd actually be
             | better off if I waited for them to ask for help.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | swayvil wrote:
             | It's like that with Lego.
             | 
             | Some people grab the bricks, mess around, create and
             | destroy chaotically, explore.
             | 
             | But then there's this whole other culture. They create the
             | thing described by the directions, step by step.
        
               | dylan604 wrote:
               | I was a combo of both. I would build the thing one time
               | when it was brand new. It was a good way of learning how
               | some pieces could be combined and be used in designs.
               | After that, all the pieces got placed into big buckets
               | for later assembly into whatever. I've never had a lego
               | "build" last longer than a few days.
        
               | brnt wrote:
               | I think I treated Lego instruction books a bit as my
               | bible. Thou shalt built this, at least once. Most of my
               | creativity was in composition: I would built a city out
               | of all those more or less built-to-instruction sets, and
               | would overhaul said city every few months or so. Road
               | plates would have sidewalks, roads with directions, that
               | I would type and print on a computer, rail, preferable
               | with a higher bridge somewhere every time. Once the whole
               | city was built up and complete (no space left empty), I'd
               | take it all away and compose a new city.
        
               | mlyle wrote:
               | Man, we do both in my house.
               | 
               | When I was a kid, I mostly had pile-of-legos and not
               | sets. I did very little following of the directions.
               | 
               | My kids *love* just messing around with piles of LEGO
               | (and even Duplo) and making their own creations: mostly
               | weapons. And they also love working on the 3000 piece
               | crazy-complicated sets, presorting everything and
               | figuring out where to put each piece step by step.
               | 
               | There's a whole lot of creative, unstructured play (not
               | really heading towards mastery of sculpting or design),
               | and a whole lot of concentrating replicating a model.
               | It'd be kind of neat if they'd decide to do something
               | inbetween.
        
             | hosh wrote:
             | My 1 yr old does this all the time when exploring the
             | world. I have had to tell my 17-year old stepchild who
             | easily gets down on failures, that my role as a parent
             | isn't to protect my children from failure, but to protect
             | them from catastrophic failure (ones that cannot be easily
             | recoverable from).
             | 
             | Myself, it isn't something I learned until I was an adult,
             | encountering "growth mindset" and practicing martial arts.
             | Failures are the foundation of growth and anti-fragility,
             | and works better if you can un-identify with it.
        
           | hosh wrote:
           | Which is a contrast to say, watching what Daniel Tiger's
           | Neighborhood teaches 2-4 year olds about conflict resolution,
           | taking turns, and finding ways to play together.
        
           | OtomotO wrote:
           | You're talking about US modern schools, right? (Genuine
           | question)
        
             | rootusrootus wrote:
             | Not my school in the US.
             | 
             | Cynical me thinks there is no actual underlying experience
             | driving the observation.
        
               | adamrezich wrote:
               | this was my _entire_ experience in  "computer" classes
               | K-12 in the 90s-00s. never once were we encouraged to
               | play around or try new things. we were taught to follow
               | instructions to the letter to use computers to complete
               | arbitrary tasks exactly as prescribed. the closest thing
               | to letting us "color outside the lines" was letting us
               | literally pick the color and bgcolor attributes for the
               | HTML4 web pages we made for some assignments in "Web
               | Development" class... in 2008. (of course about half of
               | our graduating class had all already taught themselves
               | rudimentary CSS to style their MySpace profiles a few
               | years prior!) around 2004(!!) we spent a couple weeks
               | learning HyperCard (in the Classic Mac emulator OSX used
               | to ship with), and while I immediately recognized the
               | possibilities for making games and interactive stories
               | and all kinds of neat stuff using this then-ancient
               | software, nope, just shut up and make this slide
               | presentation about snakes or whatever like the assignment
               | tells you to. I've posted about this here in the past but
               | looking back I have this vague feeling that, at least in
               | these computer classes, the teachers like barely had a
               | grasp on how to do anything with computer outside of
               | specifically prescribed tasks of the assignments they had
               | us do, and were sort of _scared_ of anyone like me who
               | wanted to eff around and see what all we could do with
               | the technology. part of me has always wanted to be a
               | public school computer class teacher just so I can
               | instill some of the sense of discovery and creativity
               | that access to these powerful machines grant us, that I
               | was never given in school growing up.
        
               | WalterBright wrote:
               | In my last year of high school in the 70s, the school
               | acquired a Business Basic 4 computer to do some of the
               | administration work. They also created a computer class
               | for the students, where we punched out programs on punch
               | cards, and the teacher would batch run them overnight.
               | 
               | The teacher did not allow any students near that
               | computer, as he was sure we were going to hack it and
               | wreck everything.
               | 
               | (Yes, hacking was a thing even in the 70s!)
        
               | rootusrootus wrote:
               | In a computer class in the 90s, it would actually have
               | made some sense. Schools have never had good IT staff,
               | and it was easy to screw things up accidentally. Hell, in
               | '94 I was in USAF tech school and watched a guy answer
               | yes to the "WARNING: This will remove all data on non-
               | removable disk drive C:" prompt not 30 seconds after the
               | teacher explicitly said that getting that message meant
               | you had mistyped. Allegedly an adult, and actually a
               | pretty smart guy, but still managed to render that
               | particular workstation unusable for a while.
               | 
               | Today, the school uses disposable VMs which are built on
               | demand and nothing the student does can render them
               | inoperable. And Chromebooks that are similarly
               | unkillable. Different world now than 25 years ago, for
               | sure. My kids' school gives the students wide latitude to
               | screw up.
        
               | adamrezich wrote:
               | reasonably fair assessment, but the problem with
               | Chromebooks is that they're basically glorified
               | smartphones as opposed to desktop PCs, in that they're
               | consumption devices as opposed to creative devices. sure
               | you can get various chrome extensions (presumably not on
               | these school Chromebooks though) that let you get part of
               | the way there--I passed my first semester of CS using
               | only a Chromebook with the Secure Shell extension to
               | remote into my linux box at home--but by and large the
               | era of everyone having the untapped creative power of a
               | cheap commercial desktop PC in their home is kind of over
               | now, and in my opinion we largely squandered that
               | wonderful time by not encouraging more young people to
               | play around with them creatively.
        
               | mlyle wrote:
               | It was a pretty common feature of the schools I grew up
               | in.
               | 
               | My second-earliest school memory was being asked to sit
               | on my nametag in Kindergarten (the standard time out). We
               | were doing an activity where we were supposed to circle
               | whether something made a short or long O sound, and were
               | listening to an audio tape with headphones. The words
               | were printed on the worksheet, though, so I went ahead
               | and circled all the correct ones and then sat quietly
               | doing nothing. When the aide noticed she sent me to the
               | tag on the carpet and then everyone forgot about me
               | because I was so quiet. I would guess I was there for
               | quite some time, but my 5 year old notion of time was
               | wacked.
               | 
               | I have many more memories of similar things: being
               | punished for doing math problems in different ways, or
               | completing work early, mutually agreeing to play a board
               | game by different rules during "free time", or responding
               | to an essay prompt in an unexpected way.
               | 
               | I am now a teacher at a pretty good independent school
               | which my 3 sons attend. Faculty tries really hard to
               | avoid doing this. It _is_ aggravating and difficult when
               | you have 20 kids and a subset go off in a completely
               | different direction than you were hoping to reach with
               | the activity. I can totally understand that with larger
               | classes like most public schools have, a worse behavior
               | baseline, etc, how one would be tempted to leap to
               | chastisement.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | fnord77 wrote:
       | > The children were each taught to play a block sorting game -
       | with half taught to sort the blocks by colour, and half taught to
       | sort them by shape. They were then put into pairs, with one
       | playing the game and the other observing.
       | 
       | At an early stage of development, could this sort of study
       | introduce some sort of neurosis or pathology into these
       | children's behaviors?
       | 
       | My "this might not be harmless" radar is pinging
        
       | thro1 wrote:
       | It's: _challenging_ the kids _with_ rule breaking (that 's normal
       | kids, not _rule breakers_ ).
       | 
       | About true, _challenging rule breaker_ see the movie:  "System
       | Crasher" (2019).
        
         | thro1 wrote:
         | Downvoted ? - the title is clickbait: nor the kids are
         | challenging (hard cases), nor challenging others (only
         | confronting, maybe to help), neither they are challenged at any
         | point to do that - but if they do, they are not _rule breakers_
         | but  'rule _breakers_ ' - _keepers_ and conformists to what
         | they been taught (the only rule breaking are the researchers,
         | their challenge is to mess with kids, not being challenged
         | self).
        
       | conductr wrote:
       | I like how the comments are full of people challenging the rule
       | breaking author/title/study
        
       | carom wrote:
       | Tangentially related, I've looked for research in the past on
       | what compels people to report rule breakers. I find it super
       | interesting that people want to get other people in trouble over
       | (often) things that don't negatively affect them, but instead are
       | just "the rules".
        
         | ckqyt wrote:
         | If someone has no real talents apart from following and
         | enforcing arbitrary rules, he/she can rise in the social
         | hierarchy by virtue signaling and reporting others. We see this
         | in many open source projects now.
        
         | bob1029 wrote:
         | It's probably some form of crab bucket mentality. Many follow
         | their paleolithic urges when it comes to watching others
         | succeed.
         | 
         | I'll be the first to admit that it takes a little bit of
         | conscious effort for me to look at another person leaving me in
         | the dust and thinking "wow that's awesome. good for them".
         | 
         | Attempting to reframe my own comparative lack of success in
         | terms of "they must have broken the rules or something" is a
         | thing I reserve for competitive video gaming where the
         | likelihood of an actual cheater is very high and the
         | consequences of being wrong in my accusation are zero. Even if
         | I totally delude myself into thinking everyone is using an
         | aimbot and it has nothing to do with my shitty aim and I wind
         | up the worst gamer on earth, I still have the rest of my life
         | to work with.
         | 
         | In my personal experience, when you make your whole existence
         | about winners breaking the rules and you being a relative loser
         | because you follow all the rules, you turn into a monster.
        
         | itronitron wrote:
         | >> what compels people to report rule breakers
         | 
         | they still believe there will be consequences to the rule
         | breakers as a result of reporting them...
        
         | tux3 wrote:
         | I suspect it stems from a feeling of fairness: I have to follow
         | the rules, so how come you get away with doing whatever you
         | want? That's intuitively not fair.
         | 
         | Now I don't agree with that from a consequentialist point of
         | view, but I could understand the feeling.
        
         | javajosh wrote:
         | For some kids this just means they trust that the rules are
         | there for a very good reason, and so are intrinsically good to
         | follow. As a parent one hopes that your kids come to see your
         | rules in that light, rather than as a tool to exercise power or
         | maximize personal convenience, or any number of abuses.
         | 
         | The tricky rules are the very non-obvious ones, like those
         | involving seat belts. Insurance against very infrequent events
         | are difficult to motivate, and require a sophisticated
         | understanding of risk to not seem arbitrary. (And given the
         | number of baby-boomers who managed to survive childhood despite
         | being thrown into a large back-seat with no seat-belts at all
         | tells me that these rules might not be as wise as we think!)
         | 
         |  _Reporting_ rule-breakers is, of course, slightly different
         | because now rule-breaking is not intrinsically bad, but
         | extrinsically good to the person doing the turning in. (The
         | motivation must be power and indirect punishment, and not
         | compassion, because otherwise you 'd talk to the rule-breaker
         | first.) This is a favorite weapon that siblings naturally wield
         | against each other at a very young age. That is the perversity
         | of it rules, is that a human's first innocent instinct is to
         | abuse them to harm a sibling. Ain't that something?
        
         | swayvil wrote:
         | In a society with rules and such, if you're in a battle for
         | social dominance, the rules are your best weapon.
         | 
         | You just need to find a way to create a narrative painting your
         | opponent as a rule-breaker. Evidence needs to be interpreted
         | appropriately, etc.
         | 
         | "If you're in a battle for social dominance" is key, of course.
         | 
         | Consider the present popularity of "victimhood".
        
         | _jal wrote:
         | > 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 wrote:
           | > 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.
        
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