
Stop Leaning In. Put Down Your IPhone. And HELP ME. - crashoverdrive
http://kirstensamazing.com/stop-leaning-in-put-down-your-iphones-and-help-me/
======
m0nty
A few weeks ago, I was pedalling to work in the rain when I saw something
which briefly made me well up with rage: a car parked diagonally across the
cycle lane, driver clearly on the phone - a new level of "f*ck you" from a
motorist to cyclists. But then I saw the skid-marks leading across the verge
from the road, and I realised this was a bit more serious. I stopped and
tapped on the window. She was very distraught, nearly hysterical. It was a
single-vehicle accident caused by sliding out of control on the very water-
logged roundabout. The thing she kept saying over and over was "nobody stopped
to help! They all just keep on driving past!"

So I phoned the police and stayed with her for the next 20 minutes, until the
police showed up. I was getting soaked in the rain and making myself late, but
felt I owed it to her to stay put and make sure she came through it all OK. As
I remounted my bike and rode away, it occurred to me that she didn't at any
point thank me, and since then has made no attempt to contact me even though
we discussed where I work (just across the road from her) as part of the
small-talk. So in her own way, she was doing the same thing as the other
drivers who had so upset her, albeit inadvertently. I probably wouldn't have
stopped either, except she was literally blocking my path.

So it's easy to marvel at how disassociated we all are. A different thing
entirely to do anything meaningful about it, even on a purely personal level.
There's not much to be gained from interacting with strangers, even less when
there's a risk of being dragged into someone else's potentially violent
confrontation. This is not a problem with phones, it's a problem with
excessively large communities where we will probably never run into each other
again. So why take the risk?

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> "As I remounted my bike and rode away, it occurred to me that she didn't at
any point thank me..." >> "There's not much to be gained from interacting with
strangers..."

Good on you for stopping to help but why do you feel like you should have to
gain something by helping someone else? The woman you helped was still
probably quite shocked and dealing with police to thank you and it's highly
likely that in such a situation information like where you worked completely
went over her head.

I think this is one of the reasons people have stopped helping others - they
expect something in return. If I helped someone the only thing I'd expect in
return would be that if the person I helped is ever in a situation where they
can provide help to someone else, they'll remember the time they were helped
by a stranger and take action.

Side point

>> "There's not much to be gained from interacting with strangers, even less
when there's a risk of being dragged into someone else's potentially violent
confrontation."

The second part of this statement interests me. Is fear of something (that is
highly unlikely to occur) a reason people don't get involved? It made me think
of Michael Moore's conclusion in Bowling for Columbine that America's love of
guns is based on fear that they will be attacked, mugged, home invaded etc.
This may also be a reason people don't get involved in situation they can't
control even though it's highly unlikely they are in any danger.

~~~
m0nty
> If I helped someone the only thing I'd expect in return would be that if the
> person I helped is ever in a situation where they can provide help to
> someone else, they'll remember the time they were helped by a stranger and
> take action.

You say that as if it's a minor thing ("the only thing I'd expect") but you
might be expecting someone to risk their life, get accused of rape by an
unstable person, put themselves in danger of injury or lawsuit. It's not a
trivial matter. I personally wasn't expecting anything from this person I
helped, I was just pointing out that she ended up being no different from the
other drivers around her - just less fortunate.

As Anderkent says, on a basic level, we're all expecting "something in
return". We help other people, maybe they'll help us one day. But this
instinct is tuned to small communities (in which we evolved) where "paying it
forward" like this is very likely to occur in a short space of time. You help
me carry my kill home, you can have some of the meat. You help me get my
harvest in, I'll help you raise that barn. But in large communities (several
million strong, in some cases) these opportunities will be limited so we are
more reluctant to get involved. We might not be consciously weighing profit
and loss, but on a subconscious or instinctive level, we are.

~~~
wozniacki

      You say that as if it's a minor thing ("the only thing 
      I'd expect") but you might be expecting someone to risk
      their life, get accused of rape by an unstable person,
      put themselves in danger of injury or lawsuit. It's 
      not a trivial matter.
    

Strongly seconded.

This happens more often than one would think.

I do not want to alarm anyone but it is not entirely out of the bounds of
reason to expect law enforcement to NOT acknowledge your good Samaritanism or
worse, punish you for it.

"Good Samaritan Backfire or How I Ended Up in Solitary After Calling 911 for
Help"

Discussed previously here on HN :

How I Ended Up In Solitary After Calling 911 For Help

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7233730](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7233730)

Direct link to blog :

[https://medium.com/human-parts/9f53ef6a1c10](https://medium.com/human-
parts/9f53ef6a1c10)

~~~
hollerith
That guy did not leave after the police arrived and _told him_ to leave
(according to his own account, at the URL you give).

~~~
metastew
But does that even justify the police brutality though? He didn't want to
leave without his friend (who was supporting the girl while she was getting up
when the police pulled him off).

No, the police is definitely in the wrong here.

------
justjimmy
Wow, this piece cuts close to home.

I currently live in Taiwan and just yesterday there was a subway stabbing - a
20s male started stabbing people on the subway. Naturally, reactions was slow
as most people was playing their phones or getting some shut eye. He managed
to kill 4 people, get off the subway and intimidate more people, before
finally brought down by a 62 elder man.

Everyone can be armchair quarterbacks, shake their heads in disappointment,
raise their fits in anger, but when you are in a situation such as the above,
or witness a knife attack - you are stunned. Taipei is one of the safest city
in Asia. Most of us don't see scenes such as this except on TV, and most of us
don't know how to react. It's fight/intervene or flight/stay out of it.

I've taken defence classes, including Krav Maga and they all emphasize that
knives are the most deadly weapon in the world due to its ease of access and
the damage it can do.

Sorry it happened to the OP but I don't think society has 'become' anything.
There's no proof that people are more willing to jump between a knife wielding
maniac and a victim before the iPhone age.

~~~
toyg
I think the main difference is that the overall level of violence in society
has gone down so much that people simply _don 't know how to react_ anymore.
In the past, violence was much more present in everyday life: wars were more
common, criminal activity was more common, law enforcement was lax or even
non-existent, so people had to literally fight on the streets day by day just
to survive. Women wouldn't go out alone even in daylight, most men were
supposed to carry some sort of weapon as soon as they stepped out of walled
towns (and often even while inside) and so on. After WWII, there were so many
veterans around that you wouldn't dare starting sh*t for fear that somebody
would kick your ass in 5 minutes.

Nowadays, people like me wouldn't know the first thing about hitting someone
or defending themselves. My childhood home was in what we'd consider "a bad
area" of a Southern European city (mafia and all that) but even there it took
very little care to stay out of trouble. I don't think I've ever been in a
physical confrontation with anyone after my 18th birthday; I wouldn't know how
to use a knife or a gun, nor how to protect myself from it. Law enforcement
and cultural pressure are now so efficient that they can usually limit violent
activity to specific areas, so as long as I stay away from those, I'm very
likely to be safe. (Every city has different attitudes and problems, of
course, but that's more or less true for most of them)

If a random stranger started knifing people in my subway carriage, I'd
probably freeze too - I'm a family man, not a goddamn soldier or street-
fighter. Same for witnessing something like what OP describes.

------
hobbes
Give her the phone! GIVE HER THE PHONE!!

edit: OK, I'm being downvoted. That's fine. But, why put your irreplaceable
life in mortal danger for the sake of keeping hold of replaceable consumer
electronics? That's the disconnect I'm finding hard to process.

~~~
icebraining
Does it matter? What do you intend to gain from that discussion?

~~~
gametheoretic
Yes, the audience's ability to relate to the protagonist matters.

Intend? In the trivial sense, you can guess; in the broad, unknowable.

------
jellicle
Let's evaluate for real, the cost-benefit of intervening physically against a
knife-wielding crazy person:

\-- Minimum: you'll miss the day of work, have an arrest on your record which
you'll have to disclose forever and which may cost you your career, may make
it impossible to enter foreign countries, and so on.

\-- Probable: you'll miss many days of work due to police/legal complications.
Significant chance of losing your job. Significant chance of grievous personal
injury. Significant chance of assault charges which will cost you (minimum)
tens of thousands of dollars to defend against (more likely >$100,000).

\-- Possible: Killed by knife. Killed by cop. Jailed for assault. Jailed for
murder (if attacker ends up dead, you're going to be charged for sure).
Newspaper columnist heaps scorn on your actions.

\-- Benefits, maximum: a newspaper mentions your name in a good way. Victim
says "thank you".

Yes, everyone is wondering if someone else will intervene. But also,
individually, the calculus for intervening is just terrible. Highly likely
consequences include months in the hospital, months in jail, cost of hundreds
of thousands of dollars. The joke about a knife fight is that the winner is in
the hospital, the loser in the morgue. Which one of those two will you be?

~~~
VonGallifrey
I feel like I miss something here. Why would you be arrested for Helping? I
can see that you would have a risk of getting hurt or killed by the attacker,
but why would you be arrested or killed by the Police?

~~~
jellicle
The people involved are not wearing "Good Guy" and "Bad Guy" badges! How
exactly are the police going to magically know who is "right" and who is
"wrong"?

When the police come to sort out an altercation in progress, everyone involved
is going to get tackled, rolled face down, have a cop kneel on your neck with
his entire body weight, have your arms wrenched behind your back, and placed
in handcuffs. That is the _best_ , _least physical_ outcome possible.

------
afarrell
I hope I would have kicked the woman in the head or wrestled her to the
ground. As a male, I suspect I wouldn't have.

I could have just called the police, but that doesn't really help in an
immediate situation of one person trying to stab someone. So this situation
calls for either: 1) Subduing the attacker by pinning them. 2) Doing enough
damage to the attacker that they can't move. If they are on top of the victim,
they _maybe_ are in a good position for me to run up and corner-kick their
head and end things with a quick concussion. I can't tell from the prose.
Otherwise, it would be better to just restrain her and pin her to the ground.

So I'm either a man pinning screaming woman to the ground in a public place or
a man who is viscously beating a woman in public.

No thanks, "Real Men" don't hit girls. [http://goodmenproject.com/featured-
content/brand-what-do-you...](http://goodmenproject.com/featured-
content/brand-what-do-you-do-when-a-girl-hits-you/)

Especially not in public where "defend the woman being attacked" is a fantasy
for a whole bunch of people.

~~~
venus
Exactly my reaction.

> I'm [..] a man pinning screaming woman to the ground in a public place

I can just imagine how this goes down. You grab the perpetrator, wrestle her
to the ground violently. You have to lean deeply over her to restrain both her
hands. The victim runs away. The woman you're holding starts to scream and
shout that you're assaulting her. The police arrive.

You are fucked with a capital F.

> a man [..] beating a woman in public

... the victim runs away. The police arrive. The police tell the other guys in
the holding cell that you're a woman-beater.

You get the picture.

------
wvh
As someone who has been attacked and/or robbed several times in cities like
Brussels, two things I'm sad to have learned:

1) Your reality changes. At any point, in every street, someone/some gang can
step up and change your situation to something vastly different than the
reality the other people around you are in at that moment.

2) Nobody cares. People don't want to get involved. They are not aware of the
situation, or even when they are, they are not in it themselves. As a woman
you might have the luck of a knight in shiny armour nearby who feels obliged
to step up and help, but as a fit male, all bets are off. Few want to get
between "men fighting" – to them you are a perpetrator, not a victim.

The loneliness and absurdity of such situations are hard to get over. Years
later I'm still more aware of my environment whenever I'm out, and I always
check for exits and whom not to turn my back to. It has also made me more
likely to reach out and help others in such situations, partly because I can
relate, and partly because I'm more aware that something doesn't feel quite
right.

You must learn to accept that if you have belongings, you might lose them. Or
alternatively, be willing to pointlessly fight like hell with a random
stranger for little or no benefit. The second option might cost a hell of a
lot more overall, even when you "win".

------
pjc50
It's not a mobile phone thing; I got punched in the face on a commuter train
20 years ago and none of the crowd got involved then either.

It's partly bystander effect ("I'll leave it to someone else to intervene")
and partly a very real fear of the intervention going wrong. Maybe you get
stabbed. Maybe the police get involved and _you_ end up with an assault
conviction and consequent expulsion from the middle class. Maybe the scene
isn't all it seems (setup for robbery, or domestic where both parties turn on
the intervenor).

Commuting and the mass-population city kind of relies on us forming the habit
of studiously ignoring one another, and it's a hard habit to shake in an
emergency.

~~~
Cthulhu_
There have been quite a few stories where people that intervened were
themselves charged with assaults. There's been burglars breaking into houses
whose owners were charged with invasion of privacy for having security cameras
in their own house.

Taking justice in your own hand - helping people out in a violent situation -
is frowned upon and discouraged. Perhaps even moreso in the US, where it's
much more likely that people carry guns and people - bystanders or those
directly involved - get killed.

But as I'm sure is mentioned elsewhere, the main causes of inaction are the
exceptionality of the situation (despite what the media wants you to believe)
and a group mentality (nobody's doing anything, so why should I?
Alternatively, maybe the group is seeing something I haven't, could be
dangerous)

~~~
josephlord
> There's been burglars breaking into houses whose owners were charged with
> invasion of privacy for having security cameras in their own house.

I don't normally do this but extraordinary claims need evidence. Citation?

------
pjbrunet
Why people might not want to get involved? Every situation is unique but 1.
How do they know these two women don't know each other? 2. How many people
actually saw the knife? Not everyone has 20/20 vision either. 3. Sounds like
both of these women were arrested. Hypothetical hero could have been arrested
too. 4. If you're going to intervene in a dangerous situation, you could be
sued. 5. There could be a more dangerous accomplice nearby to make sure she
gets the job done. 6. What if the woman with the knife is in a gang? Will the
gang retaliate tomorrow? 7. Maybe she has a gun in another pocket? 8. How many
people in the crowd know how to defend against a knife attack? 9. Maybe I
watched too many Zatoichi episodes but "no good deed goes unpunished." ;-)

I was in a similar situation once and just gave up my phone and mug money. I
was somewhat prepared because I was warned it would happen. Maybe this book
saved my life [http://www.roughguides.com/shop/rough-guide-new-york-
city/](http://www.roughguides.com/shop/rough-guide-new-york-city/) As I was
pulled into a dark alley, a young woman walked by like it was completely
normal to see someone mugged. Then I packed my things and left NY and never
looked back.

------
TheZenPsycho
this is a well known phenomenon called the "bystander effect"

wikipedia entry here:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect)

long story short, what's going on in people's minds when they don't help is
that, probably someone else will step in, and playing hero will probably just
get in the way.

which, isn't that helpful if 100% of the bystanders are thinking that. It's
somebody else's problem.

there's a simple remedy- Don't scream "help! anyone! help!" scream "Hey you,
burly looking dude. Help! yes you!" ' This is what psychologists say. until
the evidence comes in, I'm skeptical that it would work. but it's better than
repeating these stories again and again.

~~~
jeroen94704
It may be partly "somebody else will fix this", but also largely "is this
really what it seems"? It could be a genuine robbery, or a piece of improv
street theatre, or a sociology experiment. And since nobody else is
responding, maybe they see something I don't.

As an aside, apparently she pretty much did what you suggest (which is the
standard advice to deal with the bystander effect) in that she asked one
particular bystander to help her, but even that didn't work.

~~~
blueskin_
>It could be a genuine robbery, or a piece of improv street theatre, or a
sociology experiment.

If so, irresponsible experiment/theatre, and they have only themselves to
blame if someone did get tripped/punched/rugby tackled/hit with martial arts
moves/arrested. The fact that nobody did any of those is the main problem - if
someone did, many people would have felt more confident too, both at not being
caught up in police issues around it, but also via a safety in numbers
instinct.

------
venus
I wish this wasn't the case, but as a man, _there is no way I am getting
involved in a fight between two strange women_. No way. There is no upside for
me and unlimited downside, in fact that downside is virtually guaranteed.

This is the way things are in 2014.

~~~
Tehnix
I have friend that once intervened between two drunk women fighting on the
bus. What he got out of it was that both turned on him, and threw stuff at
him. Nobody else on the bus turned to help him, but he managed to get the
women off the bus though (after they attacked him). As a man stepping into a
fight between women, you have limited options when things go wrong.

The common rule is that men don't hit women, so if they start attacking you
(which, hypocritically is perfectly okay), you can only hope to defend
yourself. Was it a man though, you could fight back, but that still means
you've just put yourself in danger by trying to help.

------
Tehnix
I don't really intend to risk my life going up against a knife-wielding crazy
person, just so you'd be able to keep your phone. I would probably call the
police though, which was also my reaction last a bigger fight happened near
me.

For me to risk my life for you, I would have to know you somewhat well, and
then I would _very_ likely intervene.

It's not only the bystander effect, but also the quite rational question "do I
want to risk my own life for the sake of this woman I don't know, in this
situation I know very little about?"

Once, my friend intervened in two drunk girls fighting each other. He was
calm, but instead they just turned against him.

It's simply a game of pros and cons, and I can very much follow the community
thing that Anderkent mentions in another thread.

------
netcan
I think there's several things going on here.

One is diffusion of responsibility or bystander effects, which I think she's
hinting at. In a crowd an individual is less likely to take action. I think
this has a lot to do with our social instincts. Being in a crowd of strangers
is a new thing. We aren't built for it.

On our own, we make decisions for ourselves. That's easy. A group is supposed
to be a family or troop or somesuch. These will usually have a leader. Someone
responsible for deciding that this is a mugging, that we're on the victim's
side and that we are going to join the fight. I'm not sure it has to be a
literal leader, but there needs to be a pre-established decision making
process and the individual needs to know where they stand in it.

A second issue is that this is not really a question of "willingness to help"
in the intellectual sense. It's a question of instinct.

A third is that in a city (or in modern life in general) we are surrounded by
other people's problems. The homeless person we step over, the domestic
violence sounds we don't call the cops on, the volunteer help line where we
don't volunteer at and the charity we don't contribute to.

This is complicated. I think it's more about living in cities, nations and the
global village than it is about iphones.

~~~
Theodores
Skill set comes into it to.

If you have a dog with an injured paw then different people will willingly
help you (dog lovers) than those people that will willingly help you find a
lost cat (cat lovers). Same with directions, some random tourist might not be
as willing to help you with directions as a native, the tourist could probably
get the maps out on their phone, but they will not feel as if that is the
thing to do. However, if you were lost in their home town then they might walk
you to where you needed to go.

As a cyclist I often help other cyclists with flat tyres etc. and you try
stopping me from helping out. I spent a decade working in the cycle trade so,
for me, fixing someone else's bike is merely an opportunity to keep my skills
fresh. I cannot say that first aid is my thing, however, I am sure that
someone else will keep the patient warm until the authorities arrive, so I
auto-delegate myself to warning traffic and collecting debris from the road in
such circumstances. Because I don't do cars, I am unlikely to offer to bump
start someone's car or help them back in if they have locked their keys
inside. However, others that have those skills will take up the opportunity to
help.

When it comes to violent confrontational circumstances, there was a time when
I would have a go, however, after getting my head kicked in by four muggers I
no longer feel inclined to get involved. However, I do have friends that have
been doormen and they will leap to the opportunity to do a little bit of
enforcing - it is in their skill set.

Most people are willing and able to help out if they can and if they have
confidence in their usefulness in a given situation. The problem is that when
there is some rare and outrageous act of violence going on that there are very
few people around who have 'enforcing' in their skill set. Hence the apparent
'bystander effect'.

~~~
netcan
Interesting point and this loops back around (in my mind) to the beginning. 6
triangles into a half dead thread, the only thing to do is quote Douglas
Adams:

" _..we don 't have to go very far back in our history until we find that all
the information that reached us was relevant to us and therefore anything that
happened, any news, whether it was about something that's actually happened to
us, in the next house, or in the next village, within the boundary or within
our horizon, it happened in our world and if we reacted to it the world
reacted back. It was all relevant to us, so for example, if somebody had a
terrible accident we could crowd round and really help. Nowadays, because of
the plethora of one-to-many communication we have, if a plane crashes in India
we may get terribly anxious about it but our anxiety doesn't have any impact.
We're not very well able to distinguish between a terrible emergency that's
happened to somebody a world away and something that's happened to someone
round the corner. We can't really distinguish between them any more, which is
why we get terribly upset by something that has happened to somebody in a soap
opera that comes out of Hollywood and maybe less concerned when it's happened
to our sister. We've all become twisted and disconnected and it's not
surprising that we feel very stressed and alienated in the world because the
world impacts on us but we don't impact the world._"

Why do we even have an expectation that someone in the street will help us any
more than we have an expectation that someone in a different country would
help us.

The majority of us have, right now, the ability to help someone with similarly
urgent problems. Medical or nutritional. There are still people campaign out
after their house got blown away in the Philipines earthquake.

Thinking about this as "not my area" is an anonymous mentality. Like saying _"
I support education projects. I don't know anything about refugee projects."_
She is asking " _Why didn 't you behave like my friends and neighbors_"

We could help them without endangering ourselves. If I was one the the
bystanders who didn't help this person, I would feel ashamed. Is this
sentiment a vestige?

------
endgame
You can make it less likely that you'll fall victim to the bystander effect by
precaching better responses - the heroic imagination. I first read about it
here: [http://www.artofmanliness.com/2010/03/14/developing-the-
hero...](http://www.artofmanliness.com/2010/03/14/developing-the-heroic-
imagination-the-5-traits-of-heroes/) which links to
[http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_banality_of...](http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_banality_of_heroism)

------
owenwil
Hacker News already took down Kirsten's site. Wordpress really doesn't handle
load very well.

Luckily, Google's cache has a copy already:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:m0OtEZT...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:m0OtEZT3zDYJ:kirstensamazing.com/stop-
leaning-in-put-down-your-iphones-and-help-me/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=nz)

------
IanDrake
Wow, scary stuff. I've been there with crazy people, alone, at night, at a
T-stop in Boston. One thing you can do, is put your keys in your hand, and
make a fist with the keys pointed outward from your knuckles. That will make
punches way more effective and one good punch could blind your assailant,
which is exactly what you want to do.

Another thing to consider is getting a gun or at least supporting gun rights.
Not a lot of unarmed people are going to help you against a crazy person with
a knife. If someone was caring a gun, they could have helped. If she were
caring, then she could have put an end to this nightmare herself.

There's a saying in the gun rights community, "The second you need a cop,
they're always minutes away." All the cops I know agree with that statement.
It's not a reflection on them, just that they can't be everywhere all the
time.

I hope her injuries (both physical and mental) heal quickly.

~~~
kagebe
> If someone was caring a gun, they could have helped. If she were caring,
> then she could have put an end to this nightmare herself.

No, that is not how it would work out in most (if not all) cases. Especially
not in such a public place. And especially not if the gun was contained in
something, e.g. her purse.

Even if that person were a great shot, in a (even moderately) close combat
fight with a knife-wielder, she would most likely not be able to pull/unlock
the gun before being stabbed, or miss and/or hit others or just be plain too
scared/untrained to keep that much control.

Even if it worked, there would be the question of ethics and legality of
wounding/killing another person to save her possessions. The legality may not
be an issue in (many states in) the US, but even there not always a clear case
and most likely will have some legal procedure.

If she were able to use the gun for intimidation and get the assailant to run
away, that might work, but the attacker is obviously beyond quite some normal
mental restrictions when threatening to kill her in a public place and might
not easily be deterred.

Guns are the perfect tool for killing people when you know you want/plan to
kill people. They are effective in wounding too, if you're able to hit where
it doesn't kill. They are mostly useless in not getting wounded/killed by
someone who wants to wound/kill you.

~~~
IanDrake
Typically people who don't own a gun don't have any training with guns. These
same people also think that people who do have guns don't have any training as
well.

In fact, most people who own guns are well trained. I can also assure you that
even under stress you can hit a human sized target from 15 feet very easily.

Most of the state laws about even brandishing a fire arm have to do with
_inescapable_ life threatening harm, meaning you can't just run away. In the
blogger's case she couldn't run due to an injury, but based on her description
she would have had time to properly use a gun in defense and it would have
been legal for her to do so in my state of MA.

I was trained by a former police detective and told in a knife situation, if
you couldn't escape, draw your weapon, yell _stop or I will shoot_ , then
shoot if they're within 15 feet and move toward you at all.

>Even if it worked, there would be the question of ethics

Ethics? Someone threatens to kill you, has a deadly weapon, and is coming at
you and you think there's still an ethical issue? Sure, they're crazy and
sure, you could choose to let them kill you because you pity them, but I doubt
that makes you ethically superior.

~~~
kagebe
> but based on her description she would have had time to properly use a gun
> in defense

I quote the article: "She pulled the knife out further and pushed it into my
blue purse" Into the purse that would have contained the gun. I think she
would have been stabbed before she could have reached inside.

No one intend on robbing you up close and personal is going to pull out his
knife from 15 feet away or announce to you from that distance, especially in
such a public situation, that he's going to rob you. He wants to threaten you
with a knife, not with his voice.

And this is what I mean with "training": the reflexes to pull your gun
instinctively when seeing a flash of a weapon in pretty much any situation, in
this case: With your headphones on and watching some movement on your phone,
as she was doing.

Maybe most gun owners are well trained enough to hit moving people at some
distance, but I would argue, that nearly none of them are well trained enough
to hit somebody who is moving within arms reach and will try to hit you with a
knife/grab your arm/etc.. Most martial arts practitioners will say that they
are not well trained enough to evade/fight somebody untrained but handling a
knife.

> you think there's still an ethical issue?

I will argue ethics whenever the outcome is death, especially when there are
bystanders and even more when the other option is to lose some possessions.

------
ThePhysicist
Bystander effect aside, this is really shocking if it's true. I once got
robbed in broad daylight at a bus station in La Paz (Bolivia), with dozens of
people standing nearby and watching everything happen, but then again this was
in a developing country.

I think part of the explanation is that such situations occur pretty rarely in
the developed world, so people do not know what's the appropriate reaction:
Fight back and risk getting attacked as well, scream for help, just call the
police? It probably can be compared to first-aid situations, where most people
seem to get completely paralyzed and are unable to help the injured person.
Maybe governments should offer seminars where people learn to react properly
in such situations, just like in the first-aid seminars that you're required
to attend when you get your driving license.

~~~
simoncion
USian here.

Where do you live that you're required to take a first-aid class before you
get your driver's license? That sounds like a freaking fantastic idea!

~~~
karl42
I don't know where he's from, but here in Germany you are required to do so.

~~~
kaybe
I'm also a big fan of the law that requires you to help in an accident and
protects you from charges as long as you don't do anything obviously stupid.

------
jaksmit
one other challenge may be that in San Francisco there's so many crazy
homeless people, you never know what could happen. I saw a homeless guy fall
over in front of a bus last week and waited a few seconds, no body did
something; I was just about to go other to help pick the guy up, but good job
I didn't - as he was just crazy - got up and started trashing all the
trashcans around him etc.

~~~
davb
This really shocked me when I visited SF last year. We have issues with
homelessness, drug abuse and lack of support in some of Scotland's bigger
cities, but SF was on a whole other level.

We seen people throw themselves in front of cars then demand cash from the
driver, destroy restrooms in fast food joints, and just sit the street talking
incoherently to themselves. We were there for less than a week.

I wondered if perhaps while we've not been great at reducing homelessness
here, we have better support for those with acute mental illness.

I know every large city has its problems, and I absolutely loved visiting SF
(I'd go back in a heartbeat), but seeing this just made me sad.

~~~
lectrick
Agreed 100%. Love SF but the crazy homeless person situation there is off the
charts relative to everywhere else I've been.

------
mareofnight
I'm curious - does anyone else have a mental habit of trying to notice
bystander effect situations and taking it as your job to handle them if you're
able?

I've had this habit for about a year. So far, called the police too late to do
anything about it twice (once because my phone was dead, once from a
combination of negligence and not knowing the right number to call), and once
called the emergency number for a guy who fainted in public (but ran off
before help could arrive). In the last case, a handful of other bystanders
also stopped to help the guy, so bystander effect mysteriously didn't work
that day. So I haven't been terribly helpful to anyone, but I was surprised
how often I saw problems once I was looking for it.

(I don't think I would have been terribly helpful in this situation, though -
I don't know how to break up a fight without being hurt, and probably wouldn't
have thought of some of the better ideas like trying to single out a strong-
looking person in the crowd and get them to help.)

------
lazyjones
I attribute this to living under an authoritarian government that supposedly
takes care of dangers to society. We're just bystanders and taught not to
meddle because the police will take care of it.

I've lived in different countries and have seen different reactions where
people are used to feeling responsible for their peers because they know the
government doesn't care, is not efficient, or otherwise limited.

Of course, some people will also be reluctant to get stabbed for a complete
stranger.

------
blueskin_
It's the bystander effect - this is why you always ask specific people to
help. Myself, I like to think I'd have helped if I was there, but I know how
easy that is to say, even if I am certainly someone who _should_. Many people
who were there probably feel terrible that they didn't, but sometimes in an
emergency, people who haven't thought about what they'd do will freeze up.

------
treyfitty
Is it just me or does she seem to have a sense of entitlement? All throughout
the article, she seems to tell herself, one way or another, "clearly this
can't happen to me. I'm important. Too important."

~~~
lectrick
Do people with a normal amount of self-esteem look "entitled" to those who
don't possess that?

~~~
treyfitty
... That's the essence of the word "entitled." Their "normal" amount of self-
esteem isn't normal at all.

------
chrismonsanto
Is this title taking a shot at Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In? If so, I'm not sure
what the connection between the two is. Anyone care to explain/correct me?

~~~
tomp
I understand this that the society, media, politicians, everyone is busy
focusing on the "social media justice warrior" issues, but we're turning a
blind eye towards the _real_ problems in the world (people dying, getting
mugged, starving, ...)

------
bsg75
> Is this how disconnected from the real world we’ve become?

This _is_ an example of the real world. Its nothing new, nor likely to change.
History is full of "bad things" happening to people, on a large and small
scale, that happened because others did nothing to stop it.

My comment does not mean that people should not help others who are in need,
but suggesting this is something new - possibly due to changes in technology -
reinforces the (wrong) idea that people think the world is a safe place.

------
aaron695
Normal human reactions.

OP also didn't react as hindsight tells us the answer. Hand it over. Why did
they value something crappy like money over their life, are they so
superficial? (Probably not)

We've been told a million times just to hand it over, but OP still didn't.

Concentrate on the long term issues, there are more and they are solvable
through logic, like solving homelessness.

Don't worry so much about how people react in unexpected situations. Worry
more about peoples long term decision making, that scares me.

~~~
crashoverdrive
You are correct, in hindsight, I would have handed it over, halfway through
fighting it over, while bleeding I contemplated handing it over? What stopped
me from doing so in the beginning?

I had the largest presentation of my life that night for a public audience of
200 people and letting my company and CTO down. I couldn't imagine losing all
of my things and not being able to do so. Yes it was a very selfish driver at
the time, but my brain couldn't move beyond that thought.

------
6d0debc071
I wonder how much of this is that people don't know what to do. If we were
listing the qualities that would encourage someone to help what would they be?

1) Believe that your intervention will do good/be effective.

2) Have a personal relationship with the victim.

3) Be thinking of the victim as a person rather than a piece of the scenery.

4) Perceive the risk to self (legal/physical) to be low.

5) Don't believe someone else will do it.

6) Don't believe that it's a setup where the 'victim' will turn on you.

I'm not saying those are the things that matter, they're just the things that
came to mind.

And how many of them typically apply?

This was a knife attack, and that probably takes care of 1 and 4. I've seen
untrained people fighting in the street, and it's the equivalent of a monkey
slinging shit. Add to that that a knife is less to do with careful application
of skill - it's more constant. It's entirely possible, if people had
intervened, we'd be talking about multiple people seriously injured, perhaps
scarred for life, or killed.

2 doesn't apply, 3 could go either way, 5 might be the case - there were a lot
of people there. 6, happens, but again might go either way.

...

And there's a thought - _did they see the knife?_ or did they just see two
people having a domestic and screaming at each other? I imagine that might
decrease the chances of anything happening.

------
instanttaylor
I was in a _slightly_ similar situation the other day. I'm a male (white),
walking to boxing class when about 0.75 blocks away, I see some kid getting
attacked by... wait for it... 4 other kids. All women. All African-American.

There was a group of about 12-15 high school age girls and 10 of them were
just watching 3 or 4 of them gang up on 1 of them.

WTF do I do here? I had the same thought process as many people in this
thread. I could get involved, but realistically, there's absolutely no way I'm
going to go try to break up a fight with that many people in it, let alone
teenage girls.

I watched for about 5 seconds before I started to get my phone out to call the
cops (which I also felt bad about b/c... wtf are they going to do... something
needs to happen now).

Luckily for the kid, she managed to get away and they stopped pursuing her.
But man, the feeling of helplessness sucked pretty hard.

------
peterwwillis
> I know San Francisco is a tight-knit community, and we like to think that
> we’d jump to help one another.

Really? Have you SEEN the homeless population there? Who the fuck is helping
_them_?

> But what the hell was that? I’ve read all the psychology books. I know the
> typical explanations.

....then why are you asking? It's bystander effect, plain and simple. If
you're expecting San Franciscans to go against human nature just because they
write code, sorry, ain't gonna happen.

Get some pepper spray and some self defense classes and learn to fight dirty.
Don't blame other people for not saving you; they have no obligation to.

> Is this how disconnected from the real world we’ve become?

It's how disconnected _the author_ has become. I'm glad she's now got
perspective on how the real world works. (I'm also glad she came out of that
safe and sound; sounds like a really scary fucked up situation)

------
bsaul
I was so certain this was absolutely impossible in the US. This is quite
common in France, where a girl was raped in the train wagon and nobody did a
ything. We have a law that makes it illegal NOT to help the other person if
there's a danger. Yet noone moves.

I tried an experiment once quite recently on a train trip, to try and ask some
young hysterical girl to calm herself down ( she was basically insulting
everybody). What happend was this : seing that someone did something made the
other passengers decided to act and speak their mind as well. The problem is
that some guy decided to go physical on her and hit her on the face. I had to
ask for help stopping him this time.

My conclusion was that :

1/ it only takes one person to make all the other personn move as well.

2/ you have to be really carefull because depending on the level of anger of
the crowd, things can get extremely violent.

------
joshstrange
I expect to gather quite a few downvotes for this viewpoint but here it goes.

There is no way I would have intervened. I am a male and I can't see my
involvement in the situation working out for me at all. Now you might say I'm
wrong for putting my self-preservation above that on Kristen's but this isn't
just about preventing physical harm to myself. In fact if I knew that I would
only be cut (non-fatal) then I wouldn't have this stance. Instead I am worried
about the ramifications of "attacking" a women in public like this.

We have seen countless times in the media where someone coming to the aid of
someone in danger (not in an attack situation) has been sued for helping (just
google "rescuer sued"). So if trying to help someone alone can get you screwed
just think about what can happen when there are two people involved. What
assurances do I have that I won't inadvertently hurt Kristen in the process
and that she won't decide to sue me? Or that the attacker in this situation
won't sue me for "attacking her" while trying to prevent her from stabbing
Kristen (google "attacker sues victim")? I'll tell you: NONE. For all we know
the attacker will sue Kristen for throwing hot coffee on her, this story isn't
over yet.

Let's examine an example:

I intervene, I kick the attacker in the head to get her off Kristen. Let's
ignore for now the chance that a bystander only see's me kick this women in
the head and assumes it was unprovoked and then attacks me. Then Kristen gets
up, shakily thanks me and the disappears into the crowd. I am left standing
over the body of a women that I just physically assaulted. A bystander had
pulled out their phone to film what was happening but only caught me kicking
the women. If I leave the scene then there is a chance I will be hunted down
and if I stay at the very least I am going to spend the rest of the day at the
police station. The attacker stuffers brain damage from the kick and the
family sues me for all I'm worth and I spend the rest of my life paying off
the debt while waking up daily to the thought of "No good deed...".

I understand this is a worst case outcome but there is no way in hell I am
going to risk my life AND if I survive the remainder of my life over a $600
phone and the contents of her bag, it simply is not worth it. I'd cover those
costs with my first meeting with an attorney. If the attacker was actually
stabbing Kristen then it would be a different story but that's not what
happened. I've talked to people trained in various martial arts and the vast
majority of them say that if they were mugged they would hand over their
belongings. Mind you these are people trained to fight (whereas I can assure
you I have no such training) but they know their lives are not worth their
possessions.

TL;DR: A phone and purse are not worth the victims or a potential rescuers
life (both immediate and long term)

~~~
rrss1122
You're assuming too much when you assume that a bystander will attack you. So
many people saw the random attacker assault Kristen, no one did a thing about
it. You will be the 1 in 100 that would do something about it, chances are
there will be no one else.

~~~
joshstrange
I know this is 2 days old and I don't want to beat a dead horse but check out
this video:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3PgH86OyEM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3PgH86OyEM)

I know it is Man -> Women and Women -> Man but I think it neatly illustrates
my point. And I think we can assume:

* 2 women fighting -> Public doesn't care

* women fighting man -> Public doesn't care

* man fighting women -> Public cares and will get involved

------
sreyaNotfilc
[https://twitter.com/ericallie/status/466682232166293504](https://twitter.com/ericallie/status/466682232166293504)

Posted this in her reply... 'Nuff said...

------
ArjenM
I never witnessed a robbery or violence where innocent people where getting
hurt (likely due to my someone scary look?), but it's not because of phones.
It's because people are in their routines, if you would walk the same road for
10 years and suddenly someone put a hole in the middle, you'd fall in.

Plus people are sheep, if not a single person is crazy enough to start and
help someone else, then most of the time nobody will.

~~~
fallinghawks
And after one person steps in, others will follow. One can see it (sometimes
to comedic effect) in videos of robbers having the tables turned on them.

It's just getting that first person.

------
ccvannorman
"Actually, this happens all time here in Brazil. But our problem right now is
exactly because people are beating thieves near to death. A good solution is
one that would fix both cases."

Just in case some of you here were losing faith in bystanders worldwide. ;-]

------
littletimo
Not only a SF problem... [http://edition.cnn.com/2014/05/21/world/asia/taiwan-
train-st...](http://edition.cnn.com/2014/05/21/world/asia/taiwan-train-
stabbing)

------
rusabd
well, it the same when you pick the goat from the herd for slaughter. It
screams a lot, but the herd does not care. Well behaved, docile, bred to be
ignorant of each over.. Just like typical civilized man.

------
simonebrunozzi
Reminds me of Kitty Genovese. We humans are really weird sometimes.

~~~
afarrell
Multiple people called the police when Kitty Genovese was crying for help.
They didn't have 911 at the time though, so the police handled it poorly.

------
fallinghawks
What's bugging me are the trolling comments about how she doesn't deserve help
because she's a feminist. I suppose this is to be expected these days, though.

------
ChrisArchitect
hard to believe this is true, I'm in Toronto and some of the dark corners of
US society are alien....but it's just sad. And I shouldn't have spent too much
time reading the comments on here about hypothetical not-helping scenarios
etc. sigh. Tough situation/sad.

~~~
CocaKoala
I mean, this is an aspect of human nature that's been pretty well documented
for decades, at least. It might make you uncomfortable, but it's also not some
unusual, hard-to-believe example of how "the dark corners of US society are
alien".

------
hollerith
Did this incident happen in San Francisco?

------
_cipher_
Welcome to 'murica. Where no-one gives trully a shit about anyone. ;)

~~~
lectrick
This is NOT a 'murica story. If you look elsewhere in the thread, there are
links to this sort of thing happening around the world.

It is a "bystander intervention" and "diffusion of responsibility" human-
psychology problem. Both of those are Googleable terms and both have practical
solutions in how to bypass them; unfortunately, typically only people who've
taken some Psych coursework are aware of them.

Compounding this is the fact that there are MANY crazy homeless people in San
Francisco, so you tend to automatically filter unusual behavior out.

------
hirre
Next time, yell: "She's got a bomb!"

~~~
crashoverdrive
"FREE KITTENS!"

------
gametheoretic
The feminists say to flip the genders.

------
dan_bk
Get a government that cares about their people (mental health care for
everybody who needs it & a solid social security net) and these kind of
stories should become very rare.

~~~
IanDrake
I down voted this because most mentally ill people I know don't want "care".
They don't want pills and they don't want to be normal.

It's our bill of rights that prevents us from forcing help on these people
and, while it's sad for them, I rather like our strict policy on NOT being
able to just call someone crazy and force them into an institution.

------
huehue
So this is what happens when you ban weapons.

~~~
blueskin_
No, if the crackhead had a gun, there wouldn't be a blog post, just another
murder.

~~~
huehue
If somebody shot the crackhead instead of just staring there wouldn't even be
a blog post. Problem solved.

These kind of people are going to carry weapons no matter what, and I for one
don't want to be again in a situation where I'm unable to defend myself or
somebody else.

I really understand the arguments behind prohibition and could agree with
them, but the integrity of my loved ones comes first.

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> "If somebody shot the crackhead instead of just staring there wouldn't even
be a blog post. Problem solved."

So you could hand over your phone and wallet to this mentally unstable person
and everyone could walk away.

OR

You could shoot them, they die, and you've killed someone because you didn't
want to lose $600.

If you choose the latter I really hope you don't own a gun. You're irrational
and the reason they should be prohibited.

