Thread

1. bm3719 · 1790559215 · focus · HN ↗

   I think the effect is polycausal, but I think there's an important primary one that is often ignored: alienation crossing a threshold.

   In a tight-knit (below Dunbar's number) society, crime is largely non-existent by our standards, because the tribe and the individual are coextensive. One can't hurt the tribe without also hurting yourself, so while individual interests may not coalign, the overall goals do: the health of the people and therefore the self.

   As population increases, that coalignment becomes more nebulous, and the individual can more easily gain while hurting the other. This is partly why crime increased as the species civilized, created cities, and exploded the population. This, as an isolated factor, might've increased forever, and most dystopian fiction from the 20th century assumed it would.

   However, alienation then largely became complete, thanks to technology. This had the contrary effect, because the public surface became a smooth wall, removing much of the opportunity for anti-social behavior. The alienated man now lives in his bubble, without connectivity to the outside world of other individuals. Human emotion, as a pre-req for the anti-social behavior we classify most crime as, required an other, someone to direct it against. It's harder (though not impossible) to get angry at abstract social megastructures like corporations and governments, and even when you do, what are you going to do about it? You can't stab Google, you can at best post something unkind about them (on your Android phone) and the algorithm (your actual interface to the entity you may despise) ignores it. Most of us realize this and don't even bother getting angry. Thankfully, these same non-human entities provide the products we need for emotional regulation. Feeling lonely, bored, understimulated, sexually frustrated? There's a product that will safely mediate those desires and get you back into a metastable, yet ever more alienated, state.

   So great, we have less crime, sure, but it required the social neutering of the species.

   1. JumpCrisscross · 1790561094 · focus · HN ↗

      > In a tight-knit (below Dunbar's number) society, crime is largely non-existent by our standards, because the tribe and the individual are coextensive

      Source? Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature had lots of issues. But its core observation that one’s homicide hazard rate has almost monotonically fallen across human history would imply that small, ancient group were way more violent than our modern societies are.

      1. bm3719 · 1790564311 · focus · HN ↗

         In this context, simply killing other humans, or any violence, is not equivalent to crime. Crime is dependent upon a collective interpretation of any act, not necessarily whether it's objectively destructive. A tribe may decide to wage war upon neighbors, sacrifice virgins, or what have you, but they do so under the impression that it's perceived to be in their coaligned interest.

         This is relevant because the metric we're measuring now is exactly that: crime, not violence. WWIII could break out tomorrow, billions could die, and crime could still go down.

         1. watwut · 1790580512 · focus · HN ↗

            WWII involved a lot of crime - straightforwardly illegal acts. And I don't mean just "hiding jews" ethical crime (which was super rare), but crime crime like murder, stealing, frauds, rapes. Both by soldiers and civilians.

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