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Comment by wl | Hacker News Reader

The risk of a confrontation escalating makes dealing with such things myself a very unattractive option, especially if it's a stranger. I've had a simple, polite request to turn down the thumping music at 1 AM end with me blocking punches, retreating to my unit, and calling the cops. Better to leave it to people who do such things professionally.

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> Better to leave it to people who do such things professionally.

I empathize, esp if you're of the generation (like me) where we've grown accustom to distance in time and space via async messaging.

Having said that, I would respectfully push back: negotiating everyday conflicts of life with others (who are most often strangers) is NOT something we should allow to be overly professionalized. Yes, it's true that some extroverts find this easier, and that's a privilege we don't all have. But we can't pass this to landlords and tenant associations and governments to do, while we stay at a fully-intermediated distance. We need to learn and grow in how we relate to one another, ESPECIALLY now that the distance of the internet is working against us and causing our social muscles to atrophe.

Anyhow, I'm not trying to be argumentative -- I almost feel like I'm pleading here. It will be really bad if we "specialize" in this way. Losing our ability to navigate everyday conflicts with one another, and deferring it to higher powers, that's the worst sort of "vendor lock-in" I could ever imagine for a society.

Fwiw, I am a collectivist who values institutions, so I don't share this from a hyper-individualist perspective that distrusts these actors <3

I agree. I think it's good to ask a neighbor if they seem the type to be amenable to it, otherwise better ask them if they've seen a cat wandering around.

I had a neighbor who was an out-of-work hot-head who shouted at everyone and had his own posse of low-lifes. The guy BBQed right next to the wooden fence (in violation of fire codes) using absurd amounts of lighter fluid and charcoal that seeped into my unit directly above. I tried asking them to move it but they just ignored me. I tried a second time and then him and his posse surrounded me, mean mugged me, and tried to start a fight. I asked the property management to do something, they tried, and they took out their bad experiences on me passive-aggressively. I finally got out of there because it was a horrible situation.

Ah shit, that sounds like a fuckin rotten experience. Sorry you had to go through it.

i always wonder, when I have fantastically social failures like that: how could i tune the knobs to make this go better with this specific type of person, who sees me in this way... like if I did this 10 more times with 10 more hot-heads, I wonder what I'd learn about what he responds better to. I'm sure there are parts of who I am that I can't talk around, but still. And not that I have the nerve to keep putting myself in that situation...!

Anyhow, makes me curious from a distance, but to be clear, I'm not judging that there's anything else you could've done :)

The only way I think would've been to be another village tough or a low-life posse supplicant. The dude was out-of-work, drinking, smoking, and not doing anything and taking out his angsty frustrations in life on everyone else, including his kid, his wife, the mailman, the apt manager, and anyone else that walked by who wasn't a part of their gang.

That's why you introduce yourself to all of your neighbors to your unit when you move in. I tend to bring them some food or something when I do it. That way they're not a "stranger" and their first context of your face isn't you complaining at 1am. You should consider it next time you move somewhere.

If you wouldn't come back with a gun yourself to resolve the issue, it's a dick move to call someone else (a cop) to come over with a gun.

If you're making phone calls for armed response because someone is playing music, the problem might be with you.

I'm pretty sure they called the cops on their neighbor because they were getting assaulted ("having to block punches"), not because of the music.

It depends on the context. If someone lives in multi unit housing and repeatedly blasts music or does it at odd hours in the middle of the night, I would assume the probability of them being anti social and not conforming to expected behavior to be very high, such that I might feel more comfortable with police dealing with them.

If it’s a once in a while thing where they’re celebrating or whatnot and it sounds like they’re unintentionally disturbing others, then it’s probably worth talking to them.

Saying "be prepared to pull a gun, or don't ask your neighbor for anything" seems like a false dichotomy. Isn't that the very reason societies develop laws and governments? To not have people using violence to get their way? Instead agree to follow a code, and standards, and to not adjudicate transgressions of those codes with individual-on-individual violence?

I didn't say anything about pulling a gun, just that if you aren't willing to arm yourself and re-engage, it is a dick move to call someone else armed to come over and do it for you.

It has nothing to do with violence. The correct move is obviously to not re-engage, personally or by proxy.

> Isn't that the very reason societies develop laws and governments? To not have people using violence to get their way?

Quite the opposite. Laws are enforced exclusively via threat of violence, and the only thing that distinguishes the government from any other leadership organization is a claim to legitimate use of violence.

This is one of the most insane comments I've seen on hacker news. Police are there to enforce the law. The only reason they have guns is to defend themselves or the lives of others. If I ask you to turn down your music at night, and you refuse, it's not legal for me to enforce noise ordinances myself, so I call the people who do such things for a living.

> Police are there to enforce the law.

When I see statements like this I wonder if we experienced the same 2020.

I still haven't seen what your suggested course of action is?

Alright, let's say I have a neighbor playing loud music at 2am. I walk down, ask nicely if they'd turn it down. They ignore me. What then? What am I supposed to do from that point?

You seem to feel your options are escalate to violence (or the implied threat of same) by calling the cops, or just deal with the loud music.

I personally am with Asimov: violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. It has little to do with whether you employ the violence/threat yourself, or call a man with a gun over to do it for you.

The correct course of action in almost all circumstances is "do nothing".

There are some good reasons to escalate a situation. I'm not of the belief that a noise disturbance is one of them.

You start by saying "you feel your options are limited to X or Y" and then go on to say "X is the last refuge of the incompetent, do nothing" implying there is some other option besides Y when you do nothing?

So your real response is: when confronted with someone who refuses to engage with you on the level of a decent human being, just take it. This doesn't seem like the way civilization works to me.

You've edited in a nice little tidbit about "well sometimes you've got to escalate" but failed to provide where that delineation is for you. Loud music isn't it. What about gunshots? What about children screaming loudly? What about someone breaking in to your neighbor's? When is it OK to escalate?

I didn't say to do nothing, or to just take it.

Correct. You simply avoided answering the question, which implies you'd 'do nothing, and take it'

> There are some good reasons to escalate a situation. I'm not of the belief that a noise disturbance is one of them.

This mislocates the point of escalation. The first point of escalation occurs when you arrive and the resident doesn't say the words "I'm sorry about that" followed immediately by turning the music down. The second more serious point of escalation (if there happens to be one) occurs when the police arrive and the same thing happens. In both cases the epicenter of escalation is within the person who won't turn their music down when lawfully required.

Everyone else has behaved reasonably and within the law and so can't meaningfully be said to have escalated the situation.

No, having armed people show up to force them to turn down the music (by first threatening violence with their armed presence, and then applying actual violence if that doesn't work) is the point of escalation. Armed law enforcement is not a reasonable response to loud music, full stop.

I've actually written about this very issue before:

https://sneak.berlin/20200628/the-problem-with-police-in-ame...

I actually do think people should take your point seriously, even as I disagree with your conclusions. When you make a law you are always doing it with the implied violence you highlight. The law itself is an escalation, in a sense. If someone refuses to follow the law, then society has to ask itself what it's willing to do about it. If nothing, then the law is meaningless. To make the law is to decide that you're willing to enforce consequences for violating the law. And furthermore (and probably much more important, in the long run) you're willing to enforce even harsher punishments on those who refuse to accept sanctions for violating the law.

A society should be careful not to have too many laws; on an individual level one should understand clearly what it means to want something to be illegal (and what it means to refuse to obey the law, should you find yourself in a situation where you might be tempted to do that).

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