Comment by forgingahead | Hacker News Reader

Comment by forgingahead | Hacker News Reader

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> But, for the sake of argument, if it leads people to suicide, eating disorders, or depression, while obesity is no longer technically the problem, you’ve just created another problem.

Part of the problem with discussions in many societies now is this false equivalency. Yes, some people might be driven to suicide due to shaming, but this is not the vast majority of people. However, NOT shaming people about their weight leads to a much larger portion of the population being fat and unhealthy, which has incredible downstream health and societal impacts.

So I disagree with your equivalency here - shame is a good social tool for the majority, and while we should certainly be on the lookout for the extreme minority who have mental health issues, we should not be throwing out good general social tools just because of a few edge cases.

The issue with this thought process is that its not possible to silo a shame culture around just the things you think should be shamed. Once you accept that the government encourages shaming people for things you think people should be shamed for you need to accept that other people have the power to get the government to shame you for things you dont think you should be shamed for too. For example in the US if the GOP came into power and shame policy was seen as acceptable theyd immediately institute a shame policy around abortions. Suddenly youre in a full blown thought police society

We had such a policy before in America, and the average person was better.

What about the converse example of yours, eg: if there is a shame policy around being pro-life and perhaps suggesting on some specific week criteria after which abortions should not be allowed?

What you're calling "thought police society" is basically another way of saying that "there are social norms in a particular society". This is true anywhere.

You may not like the social norms of a particular place and time, or think your rival political tribe is from the dark ages (I recommend going outside to touch grass if you're in a Western country and believe this), but the base point is that any group of people that has any sort of group cohesion has preferred social behaviours and disliked antisocial behaviours.

I dont think the government should be enforcing social norms. I prefer the US style of weak social norms where there are less consequences for breaking them.

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