
An Unknown Man - chris_overseas
https://newrepublic.com/article/138068/last-unknown-man
======
ddoran
This brought to mind the case of Peter Bergmann (an alias). He went to the
Northwest of Ireland and took his life by walking into the sea. Before he did
so, he made strenuous efforts to ensure his real identity would never be
discovered. [cf
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Bergmann_Case](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Bergmann_Case)].
I also recommend a short Irish documentary called The Last Days of Peter
Bergmann [[https://vimeo.com/166977498](https://vimeo.com/166977498)]

~~~
ljf
Also
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamam_Shud_case](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamam_Shud_case)
is a hugely interesting case.

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webwanderings
Good read. Author certainly knows how to write long form.

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winteriscoming
Stories like these always remind me about Satoshi Nakamoto, who too, in this
digital age has managed to remain unknown and at the same time very
prominently be part of the technical community in the early days of bitcoin.

~~~
Artoemius
Fortunately, it's still possible to retain anonymity online. I wonder for how
long.

~~~
welly
But once you're out there, is it possible to go back into hiding?

~~~
SticksAndBreaks
It is as long as the state/ IPs do not have identity on every connection. It
can even then be subverted, if somebody lets another user piggyback on that
connection.

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jpatokal
One more mildly famous unknown man:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamam_Shud_case](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamam_Shud_case)

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douche
This really is a great piece. Hard to believe that someone could just drop out
of the world like that, without anybody noticing for that many years.

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sanatgersappa
There's also the Mystery Man from Taured -
[http://weekinweird.com/2014/05/20/man-without-country-
myster...](http://weekinweird.com/2014/05/20/man-without-country-mystery-man-
taured/)

------
teh_klev
Quite an interesting read, it kind of reminds me of this story which I bumped
into the other day:

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-e8c6cbab-
da44-4a3c-8...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-e8c6cbab-
da44-4a3c-8f9b-c4fccd53dd24)

------
wyager
> It’s hard to imagine that he would have been trusted to the degree he was,
> or extended the same aid, if he had been a woman or an immigrant or a person
> of color.

They just had to throw this irrelevant bit of virtue signaling in, didn't
they? Ironically, support for homeless/transient women is _vastly_ superior to
that available for men.

~~~
zorpner
It's a delightful irony that once people learn the term "virtue signal", they
only ever use it to do it.

~~~
wyager
In what way was I virtue signaling? I'm complaining about something the author
said, not extolling myself or dropping irrelevant moralisms. If anything, I
expected a more negative reaction from the average HN commenter.

Tell me, how would _you_ go about pointing out that someone is engaging in
irrelevant virtue signaling without doing it yourself, by whatever definition
you're using?

~~~
jholman
First of all, you weren't complaining about what they said (or wrote, but
whatever). You were complaining about the motives you imputed to their choice
to say that thing. I mean, fair enough. I don't agree with you that it was
principally virtue-signalling, but it might well have had an aspect of such.
In general, I tend to assume that nearly all journalism, at least that where
the journalist selects the topic and the tone, is largely virtue-signalling.

With respect to the factuality of the author's claim, I do _entirely agree
with you_ that women are more trusted than men, whether indigent or not, in
the sense of "trust" that means "we'll let her stay at our house", and also
likelier to be lent aid. They are not, I think, as likely to be _believed_ ,
which is a sense of "trust", but probably not what the author meant. Mind you,
I think the author is correct that a white person is more trusted (in both
senses) than an immigrant or a non-white person, especially in America,
especially in the American South. Then again, what do I know.

You say that you expected the comment to go over badly with "the average HN
commenter". Of course, there is no "average HN commenter", but anyway, so
what? Virtue-signalling that appeals to the mean (uniformly-weighted) opinion
of society is low-value and ineffective, both game-theoretically and in
practice. (Because it is cheap to do, most people do it at a general
background level, thus it is a weak signal, and thus only children try very
hard at it. But some consider it rude to allocate zero effort to it. Shrug.)
Effective virtue-signalling, such as perhaps yours, is that which demonstrates
one's bona fides to an in-group by visibly sacrificing something else. A
typical sacrifice includes some reputational standing with another group.
Game-theoretically, and practically, that's a much more convincing virtue
signal.

But you say you didn't intend to signal your virtue. What, then, was the
purpose of your top-level comment? I mean, just as you question the author's
motives, it seems natural to wonder about yours. When you did it, it seemed
like a hijack of the topic, to complain about a minutia of the article. Not
very useful, you know? I know this mostly speaks to my lack of imagination,
but I just can't see a reason to say what you said, other than to position
yourself as being in opposition to the author's foolishness. And worse than
foolishness, the author's not just wrong, they're "virtue-signalling", which
is to say they're conducting themselves in a way that appears to be about
something other than reputation, in order to gain repuation! Attention, do not
let this work on you! Actually, that seems like a high-probability explanation
of your behaviour, but only a medium-probability explanation of the author's
behaviour. (Alternate high-probability explanation of the author's behaviour:
the author is just a trite writer, fond of copying others' ideas.)

Anyway, the point of this whole comment is to ask "WHY are you complaining?"
So, to answer your question about "how would you go about pointing out X
without virtue-signalling"... often the answer is "you don't point it out".

And yes, let me save you a little trouble: like your commenting behaviour,
surely virtue-signalling is a factor in my commenting behaviour. At some point
after you are introduced to the idea of virtue-signalling, you get around to
noticing that most (public) behaviour has some aspect of it. So it's mostly
not worth bringing up, as in this case. All in all, personally I think your
comment would have been much better if you'd left off the first sentence and
the word "ironically". Especially if your goal was not virtue-signalling.

That reminds me: Could you help me to understand what sense of "ironic" you
were using when you said that it's "ironic" that "support for
homeless/transient women is vastly superior to that available for men"?

~~~
wyager
Thank you, that is a more in-depth and useful definition of virtue signaling
than I was working with before.

> You were complaining about the motives you imputed to their choice to say
> that thing.

I was complaining about the content, as you can tell from the fact that I
immediately said "this is wrong" after making fun of their (presumed)
motivation for making the false claim.

> WHY are you complaining?

A sense of civic obligation to object to misinformation.

> Could you help me to understand what sense of "ironic" you were using

The irony is that the truth is precisely opposite to the author's claim.

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Unbeliever69
Gripping story.

~~~
Ericson2314
All the more so when my phone died 2/3 through.

