Hacker News Reader

I sympathise with the thought process, but more laws/rules can't/won't fix it. Many (most?) jurisdictions in the western world and elsewhere already have laws against workplace harassment, and the possibility of civil action against any conduct that leads to severe emotional distress. And schools have rules against it. But it still happens - determined/clever bullies will always find a way to make their mark in some kind of way.

Better to help people learn how stand up to bullies, and for companies to make it a priority to be emotionally healthy places and become an example of how to do that most effectively so others can follow (this is one of my great hopes for any companies I build).

I can understand your concerns regarding the difficulty of enforcing of these anti-bullying policies.

What are some resources you would recommend to help learn how to stand up to bullies?

I am also rather skeptical that companies will prioritize providing emotionally healthy places. Bullies can be people in a higher position (seniority, ranking, etc) than their victims, and companies are incentivized to rule in favor of the bullies.

Robert Greene’s books/videos/interviews are probably a good option.

They were inspired by his own experience of being bullied/exploited as a writer in Hollywood.

They are criticized for being harmful explanations of how to behave in manipulative and damaging ways: his response is that he doesn’t like that this is the way people behave - he’s suffered from it as much as anyone else - he is just writing about what he’s observed in human nature and society so people can learn how to not be victim to it.

South Korea enacted a policy in which records of bullying are reflected on college entrance

that is an extremely bad idea. this means that mistakes you make as a child, will affect you for the rest of your life.

we need to keep in mind that bullies aren't just mean spirited kids that will never amount to anything good, but they are often themselves victims of a rough situation at home and use bullying as a way to share the pain they are experiencing.

> Given the reports of bullying's adverse effects of a society's productivity, I'm almost wondering if we should apply legal penalties to bullies and mitigate such externalities.

A beautiful idea which will not work, any more than resort to adult authority ever does in such cases. Three reasons:

Shallowly, first, the authority is not absolute and cannot be. There will always be opportunities for a bully to bully; trying to forbid this only makes it more appealing. A sufficiently interested bully won't let themself be avoided, and they find the appearance of vulnerability interesting because they're out for a good time and not a fight.

Shallowly and secondly, bullies rarely act like they do for the sake of pure sadism. There is usually some prior damage back of it. Heaping punishment on top thus tends to make them worse and not better, because they blame their own victims and treat them worse in consequence.

Deeply, bullying leaves a longlasting mark on people who have been made to feel helpless. Resorting to someone else to protect you does not ameliorate this. Learning to defend yourself does, because in doing it you discover that you don't need to resort to outside authority.

A bully puts you in fear. You learn you can take yourself out of it. It usually doesn't take long, and requires consistency much more than the ability to take a punch; once someone gets the idea you're guaranteed to give them a fight rather than the good time they want, they desist. Most childhood bullies can't fight for shit anyway, or at least most of mine couldn't.

> I would love to avoid bullies for the rest of my life. What kind of workplaces are least likely to have them?

Those where there's no access to money or power worth having. As far as I can tell, those are the primary incentives in adult life to which people respond with bullying behavior that has to be taken seriously.

That said, it looks like the situation in South Korea may be far worse than what I've seen. If it's as apparently universally described, I'd tend to think of it as a cultural pathology. (That's not American condescension, I promise. If anything, given the state of America these days, it's half professional opinion and half commiseration...)

> Shallowly, first, the authority is not absolute and cannot be. There will always be opportunities for a bully to bully; trying to forbid this only makes it more appealing. A sufficiently interested bully won't let themself be avoided, and they find the appearance of vulnerability interesting because they're out for a good time and not a fight.

As someone bullied in high school, I would counter this by saying "how about we start by punishing adults that openly participate in the bullying?". Surely that isn't so much to ask? Because this was a definite problem. Sudden unexplainable extremely pedantic test corrections, teachers shouting at you when you get bullied. Teachers treating the bullied kid as a problem instead of the bullying, and, although that was often so badly done it almost helped, teachers attempting to bully you directly.

I learned to do tests absolutely correctly, leave absolutely no opportunity for the teacher to deduct points. A SINGLE spelling error in a verb in a history test? -20%. Use of "advanced" mathematics in a physics exam? -50% (I used a derivative because of a book on physics I got from the library, and the physics teacher (of 10th grade, in US terms) did not understand derivatives, or what they have to do with physics. After all, due to state legislation, we have a physics teacher that had a "license" (master's degree) in history ... and a history teacher that had a license in physics. Technically they could switch, but their tenure would reset to zero if they did, with consequences for pay and apparently if the school had to shrink they'd get fired sooner. Both chose against doing this). Asking physics questions in history class definitely led to bullying.

But can we start by actually punishing abuse of adult authority for bullying, and give some opportunity for kids to prove such bullying.

Well, I can't speak to any of that, for the reason with which I ended my prior comment: it is much worse than anything I've seen.

Had I sooner recognized the context in which I made that prior comment, I likely would not have; I only left it up after the edit for the sake of possible benefit to others familiar with the context in which I wrote it.

In retrospect, I lack confidence in that decision, but it's far too late to delete the comment now.

I will say that, given the opportunity in adult life to observe firsthand such behavior as you describe, I suspect I would incline in response to much the same methods which served me well in youth.