Slashdot Mirror

That's a good question. The best I see so far from a quick search is satisfaction survey results posted on the website with a lot of "very helpful" results ( https://bullies2buddies.com/do... ) and a decade-old pilot study that shows negligible results from a brief training ( https://www.psychologytoday.co... ). One confounding factor obvious from the pilot study is that kids undergoing the Bullies to Buddies training are less likely to report incidents -- meaning ideally the evaluation should be done other than by self-reports. I agree it would be good to have more recent and more extensive studies of the Bullies to Buddies program. You are right to point to AA as an example of a social movement not being backed by evidence and perhaps pushing out other better options for many people.

Ultimately, there are quite a few "knobs" one could theoretically tweak to reduce bullying in schools, including:
* educate the Victim (Bullies to Buddies or a different approach)
* educate the Bully (most bully training materials)
* educate the Bystander (also, most bully training materials)
* educate the Adults -- Teachers/Administrators/Parents
* general custom emotion coaching for every kid (like say done at the Albany Free School http://www.albanyfreeschool.or... ),
* make it possible for the victim to walk away (e.g. more alternative education options including freeschooling and homeschooling)
* make the environment more interesting and less stressful so kids have many other things to do than taunt each other
* change the nature of the schooling system and teaching so it does not itself model authotarianism/bullying e.g. John Taylor Gatto's writings like (http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=11375)
* de-emphasize competition and promote cooperation (like Alfie Kohn suggests https://www.alfiekohn.org/cont... ) or pursue other ways of reducing needless stress in school like eliminating homework ( https://www.alfiekohn.org/dwh/ ) and grades ( https://www.alfiekohn.org/arti... )
* improve nutrition for everyone ("Omega-3, junk food and the link between violence and what we eat (Research with British and US offenders suggests nutritional deficiencies may play a key role in aggressive behavior" https://www.theguardian.com/po... )
* reduce the stress on families by progressive economics (better-paying jobs, basic income, universal health insurance, bugger tax credits to families with children, and so on)
* other?

Maybe of interest: https://bullies2buddies.com/

From the website: "What the [Golden Rule] really means is, We should be nice to people even when they are mean to us. ... The [Golden Rule] is the therefore the ultimate empowerment. It is the solution to being a victim. A victim reacts. A victim's behavior is therefore controlled by the bully. But in order to not be a victim, we must act independently of the bully's actions. We treat them like friends even when they treat us like enemies. And that way we end up controlling them."

Essentially, from a cybernetic perspective, Bullies to Buddies treats bullying as a positive feedback cycle between bully's taunts and victim's responses/rewards and trains victims in how to reduce the amplification of that cycle -- including through the use of humor. Doesn't work in all situations (e.g. the bully is just crazy) but is intended for run-of-the-mill bullying.

Why train the victim and not the bully? Because the victim is more motivated to change.

Some of the instructional videos are quite amusing as Izzy Kalman demonstrates the escalating cycle and the alternative.

He also explains how these techniques can be beneficial in the workplace and in marriages.
https://bullies2buddies.com/re...

Maybe of interest: https://bullies2buddies.com/

From the website: "What the [Golden Rule] really means is, We should be nice to people even when they are mean to us. ... The [Golden Rule] is the therefore the ultimate empowerment. It is the solution to being a victim. A victim reacts. A victim's behavior is therefore controlled by the bully. But in order to not be a victim, we must act independently of the bully's actions. We treat them like friends even when they treat us like enemies. And that way we end up controlling them."

Essentially, from a cybernetic perspective, Bullies to Buddies treats bullying as a positive feedback cycle between bully's taunts and victim's responses/rewards and trains victims in how to reduce the amplification of that cycle -- including through the use of humor. Doesn't work in all situations (e.g. the bully is just crazy) but is intended for run-of-the-mill bullying.

Why train the victim and not the bully? Because the victim is more motivated to change.

Some of the instructional videos are quite amusing as Izzy Kalman demonstrates the escalating cycle and the alternative.

He also explains how these techniques can be beneficial in the workplace and in marriages.
https://bullies2buddies.com/re...

I especially liked the link to "empathy is a core engineering value" though: http://www.listbox.com/member/...

Linked from: https://www.joyent.com/blog/th...

And if so, should not empathy extend throughout all levels of a learning organization, including between managers and subordinates? Everyone is learning stuff all the time, including about cultural changes. Firing someone rather than trying to understand the situation and the individual's motives more first and whether change is needed or possible does not seem "empathic". Perhaps that is the kind of thing you tend to learn after many years of experience being a parent or other long-term caregiver (including a long-term manager or mentor) when you see someone learn and grow and change over a long time?

Plus, as other comments suggest here, there is an assumption in this blog post that may ignore the possibility the issue was about consolidating minor changes rather than having them as individual commits. If this issue was deemed by enough of the community to be important, maybe a more systematic patch would indeed be in order? One tiny change is not much work, but it may set a bad precedent?

Also, it is not empathic to coworkers and the rest of a company and community depending on someone to fire that person without notice without reasonable review or attempts at remediation for a less than egregious offense (contrast with, say, someone accused of physically assaulting a coworker). The issue there is proportion and risk/harm assessment.

So, the response of "we would have fired him" seems too extreme in multiple ways.

I am all for meaningful diversity in workgroups, like discussed in this book:
"The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies"
http://www.amazon.com/The-Diff...

However, the problem with some of these "politically correct" initiatives or statements which seem on the surface to be helpful to promote "diversity" is that they can actually make workspaces more stressful for *everyone*. Someone can bully with the rules (or their interpretation) just as much, or more, than with a fist... Here is a website by psychologist Izzy Kalman that explores some issues related to bullying and truly creating happy productive workplaces by *really* emphasizing empathy and forgiveness and growth and free speech:
http://bullies2buddies.com/

Just think about it -- does everyone at Joyent now need to be afraid of getting fired if they check the word "he" into the codebase, even by accident? Or maybe by saying "he" accidentally as a meeting? There are potential unintended consequences of creating a different sort of hostile workplace climate, like many US schools are finding out these days as a result of "zero tolerance" policies (like biting a cracker at lunch to make it shaped like a gun can get you in deep deep trouble).

For reference, here is what makes for happy productive creative workplaces in general (Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose):
"RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates people"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Anyway, these are all complex issues about language, sex, management, control, gender roles, cultural change, recruitment, productivity, norms, and more. They are tricky to talk about or write about without seeming uncaring or inept because of various assumptions people make about the context or the people involved -- and the fact that none of us are "perfect" (and that perfection can be in the eye of the beholder based on priorities). It is sad to see such great software get mired in them. But I guess they are p

AC wrote: "It's not as much a problem of trolls as it is a problem of people being incapable of simply filtering out stuff on the Internet, ..."

That is much the same message as Izzy Kalman has about how to deal with most bullies (who are driven by seeing the victim's reactions):
http://bullies2buddies.com/

See my other comment here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4214133&cid=44856279

It includes one testimonial about groups:
""A child was sent to me who had been teased by a whole group of children as a result of an incident at recess. I took him through the steps that I learned from Bullies to Buddies and within 15 minutes this child was able to go back to class and continue learning. The teacher was amazed at the transformation. I was able to teach the whole class the technique, which resulted in more time on task and more learning. The students got along better and the learning environment became more pleasant and enjoyable for everyone. Izzy is a master of making this learning fun and easy to teach.â -- Malda Burns, Rockdale Elementary School Counselor, Rockdale, Texas"

I don't know how long ago you deal with a bully that way, but these days you might be arrested and jailed for assault for intentionally giving someone a concussion in school. Times have changed. Also, maybe nobody messed with you, but did you lose out on other relationships that you will never know about based on people's perceptions of you? (Maybe not in many schools, but consider what the implications would be in the workplace...)

Also, as Izzy Kalman points out, fighting back can work, but only when you are absolutely sure you can defeat the bully. Also, what if that bully had a gun or knife, or a friend who did? Once you take a swing in response to bullying (whether verbal or physical), it could be seen as "self-defense" by the bully to seriously hurt you. These things are tough calls sometimes.

Yes, you stopped the bullying that time. But words leading to endless rounds of violence also are how gang wars and endless vendettas can get started. Other aspects:
http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/31/living/bullying-fight-back/index.html
"This type of "superior force" advice shows a lack of appreciation for the complexities of the bully-victim dynamics of today's world, where bullying often takes place in new arenas, such as on the Internet. Sure, if a victim fights back and flattens his bully, the bully tends to back off. But what if the bullies are hiding behind computer screens? What if the target is physically incapable of taking down the bully, which is more often the case?
The truth is that there are many bullying situations in which the victim cannot simply beat up the bully and end the problem. The very nature of bullying renders victims fearful, frozen and incapable of defending themselves. According to bullying researcher Dan Olweus, bullying is characterized by three factors: 1) It is repetitive (not a one-time event in the hall, but a regular ongoing problem). 2) It is unwanted (not two-way teasing where both parties are having fun, but instead a situation where someone is on the receiving end of taunts and aggression). 3) It takes place in the context of a power imbalance (a bigger kid against a smaller kid, or multiple kids against a single kid, or a kid with more social capital against a kid with less social capital).
When multiple kids are targeting one child, the situation can feel completely overwhelming. ..."

Nothing works for every situation. For example, Izzy Kalman says his approach requires the "bully" to be reasonable emotionally stable -- which is almost always the case, but not 100% of the time.

BTW, Izzy Kalman's approach does not work by reporting bullying. In fact, he generally discourages reporting as just something that will escalate the problem (except if the bully is extremely unstable or causing significant physical harm).

Here is the core of his approach:
http://bullies2buddies.com/how-to-stop-being-teased-and-bullied-

Izzy Kalman's approach is more complex than "blame the victim". In most cases, "bullying" emerges from an interaction of "bully" and "victim" (generally in the context of some community). In practice, "victims" have the most at stake in changing the situation and also are most able to intervene for themselves. While it is great to create caring communities where people respect each other in all ways, in practice humans have a certain back and forth of joking with and about each other and so on. Conventional anti-bullying campaigns run the risk of destroying communities and relationships out of some theory of how to fix them. They can actually make the problem worse (like encouraging tattling, where accusing someone of bullying can become a new form of bullying, etc.). According to the testimonials on his site, Izzy Kalman's approach works in practice, when most zero-tolerance and also tattle-promoting strategies don't work well. His approach works by breaking the feedback loop between bully and victim by the victim not responding in ways that gives the bully encouragement to continue. There are exceptions to this; Izzy Kalman suggests a few where his strategy does not work like where the bully is very emotionally unstable and violent, and then yes, you would need to bring in higher authorities including potentially law enforcement. But in general, Izzy points out that getting picked on now and then is part of community life; the issue is whether that escalates into bullying, and that mostly is under the "victim's" control -- as much as that might not sound "fair" in some ways.

Where I might fault Izzy Kalman is not talking about how poor nutrition from junk food (lack of omega 3s, artificial colors and flavors, lack of phytonutrients, lack of vitamin D, etc.) may be leading to more violence and other anti-social behavior in our society. Also, the spread of computers, while not necessarily causing violence directly itself, takes away from time spent learning to interact with other human beings. And there are probably other similar factors as well (economic stress, failing communities, two-wage-earner families or single parents, etc.). I'm also all for teaching emotion coaching and conflict resolution and all sorts of other things that some anti-bullying efforts due. Also, I'm all for alternatives to compulsory schooling, where conventional schooling forces random children to spend all day with each other whether they want to or not (so children can't avoid conflicts that are escalating). But, as much as one can make people saying intentionally hurtful things less frequent, I feel Izzy is on to something in breaking the positive feedback cycle where negative comments spin out of control as the victim responds in ways that encourage the bully to keep going.

Here is one example testimonial:
http://bullies2buddies.com/evidence-testimonials/does-bullies-to-buddies-work/
""Bullies to Buddies is the most effective anti-bullying program I have encountered in my 14 years as a school counselor. It gives victims the tools and strategies necessary to handle difficult situations, thus increasing their self esteem. Parents are thrilled and some of them are practicing the skills with their children. The teachers and aides feel relieved that they no long need to handle every tiny little tattle or situation. This saves an enormous amount of time in the classroom and children find that they have more time to play. The teachers not only used the strategies of Bullies to Buddiesâ in their classroom but also with their husbands, children and exes." -- Vickie Kolb, School Counselor, Brandon Valley School District, Brandon, South Dakota"

In the case for the original article, maybe if the "victim" had learned these skills of managing these situations, then things would not have escalated to the point where the "victim" was pretending to kill people using a phone? Maybe the bullying would have never got that bad if the vict

http://www.bullies2buddies.com/
http://bullies2buddies.com/resources/free-manuals/
"This manual will teach kids why they are being picked on and how to make it stop without anyone's help and without getting anyone in trouble!"

http://www.bullies2buddies.com/
http://bullies2buddies.com/resources/free-manuals/
"This manual will teach kids why they are being picked on and how to make it stop without anyone's help and without getting anyone in trouble!"

Well, in what remains of our democracy and its core value of freedom of speech, you're certainly entitled to your opinions and speculations. :-)
http://bullies2buddies.com/Essential-Articles-for-Home-Page/the-true-meaning-of-the-golden-rule-love-your-bullies.html

Is some fraction of what I write ill-informed BS? No doubt. I just don't know which part or I'd correct it. :-) Still, let me reiterate, as I said in the post you responded to, in thirty years these sorts of economic discussion will likely be moot. With the growth of robotics and AI, 3D printing, advanced nanotech materials, probably hot and/or cold fusion power, certainly dirt-cheap solar panels (down to $1.75 or so a watt deliver from Amazon at the moment from 3X times that ten years ago), continued breakthroughs in nutritionally-based medicine and related diagnostic sensing, and so on, the economic landscape will almost certainly be radically different in 30 years than today. Most paid human labor will be replaced by such innovations, and most human labor will have little conventional economic value. That is the core point of my post. That is why I advocate rethinking economics, including by having a "basic income" like Marshall Brain proposes or along other lines like expanding the gift economy, improving subsistence production via 3D printers and solar panels, or improving government planning so it is more participatory at all levels. So, we are only quibbling about how the economic lines squiggle a bit to the left or right on the way there, IMHO.

A focus on individual people or their follies tends to ignore the long-term trends we see playing out, like the above. The progressing "Did You Know" series is interesting to watch on that including changes with the internet:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9Wu2kWwSY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmwwrGV_aiE

Or stuff by Hans Rosling:
http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html

Or by me: :-)
http://www.pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html

Ignoring the ad hominems -- and the possibility you are just a psyops technician of the kind you claim elsewhere to despise :-) -- thanks for the challenge to get me to think more about this issue of floating exchange rates and currency manipulation. I have to agree that it is possible for countries to manipulate their currencies for an extended period of time to achieve certain national (or leadership-related) goals. China has been accused of that, probably with a lot of truth, like discussed here:
http://welkerswikinomics.com/blog/2010/11/23/exchange-rates-and-trade-a-delicate-balancing-act-currently-out-of-balance/

As discussed there, what are the key issues related to exchange rates and labor costs? Well, the cost of a product from China is essentially the cost of Chinese labor in China (plus costs from rent-seekers and raw materials that I'll ignore) times the conversion rate of Chinese currency to US currency (currently 0.16 USD per RMD according to one calculator I tried). You are implying that both Chinese wages and the currency conversion rate will hold fairly constant for 30 years. I am suggesting that both the Chinese wages and the conversion rate will likely significantly rise over the next thirty years and that this will happen in most other huma

http://bullies2buddies.com/
http://bullies2buddies.com/Free-Manuals/enjoy-our-free-resources.html
"How to Stop Being Teased and Bullied Without Really Trying.
This manual will teach kids why they are being picked on and how to make it stop without anyone's help and without getting anyone in trouble!"

It doesn't matter if kids are smarter, dumber, shorter, taller, fatter, thinner, darker, lighter, or whatever -- any noticeable difference (or even none at all except being on the other side of the room) is something someone else can try to make fun of. Most bullying situations can be handled by following Izzy Kalman's advice which teaches the vitim how to break a cycle of social behavior by just not responding in old ways that give the aggressor rewards, and he points out the few percent of bullying situations which can't. He suggests most current anti-bullying laws often just make the probem worse because they ignore the underlying social system dynamics. Serious violence rarely comes out of nowhere. There is a pattern of escalation, and Izzy Kalman's ideas, based on "The Golden Rule" and "Love Your Bullies" are ways out of that escalation.

See also this other author, Alfie Kohn, for a different vision of success than the competetive one celebrated by so many in the USA:
http://www.shareintl.org/archives/cooperation/co_nocontest.htm

http://bullies2buddies.com/
http://bullies2buddies.com/Free-Manuals/enjoy-our-free-resources.html
"How to Stop Being Teased and Bullied Without Really Trying.
This manual will teach kids why they are being picked on and how to make it stop without anyone's help and without getting anyone in trouble!"

It doesn't matter if kids are smarter, dumber, shorter, taller, fatter, thinner, darker, lighter, or whatever -- any noticeable difference (or even none at all except being on the other side of the room) is something someone else can try to make fun of. Most bullying situations can be handled by following Izzy Kalman's advice which teaches the vitim how to break a cycle of social behavior by just not responding in old ways that give the aggressor rewards, and he points out the few percent of bullying situations which can't. He suggests most current anti-bullying laws often just make the probem worse because they ignore the underlying social system dynamics. Serious violence rarely comes out of nowhere. There is a pattern of escalation, and Izzy Kalman's ideas, based on "The Golden Rule" and "Love Your Bullies" are ways out of that escalation.

See also this other author, Alfie Kohn, for a different vision of success than the competetive one celebrated by so many in the USA:
http://www.shareintl.org/archives/cooperation/co_nocontest.htm

http://bullies2buddies.com/ He's a school psychologist.

Izzy Kalman points out that behavior that is not rewarded tends to extinguish itself over time. Bullying victims participate in that cycle by their reactions. What sustains bullying as a social process is intermittent rewards for those who bully (seeing the rise they get out of their victims). That is why the grandparent's post is insightful. However, that is not to suggest your personal experience might be unusual either. I liked your "Yeah. No." comment in that sense.

Still, what is the ultimate alternative to encouraging freedom of speech in school (including accepting people will say unpleasant things for all sorts of reasons)? Is it turning school staff into judges and juries (as if they did not have enough difficulties already)? What happens when reporting "bullying" itself is taken as an offensive act by the one labelled now as a "bully", leading to further escalation of the problem? Will such a change towards less and less tolerance (as many other anti-bullying programs promote) even invite new forms of manipulation and misuses of the quasi-legal system as well? What happens when the bullies become those who can use the quasi-legal system to harass innocent victims by making them look like the "bullies"? Is that a place we want to go? For example, what it that tweet was made by someone else in such a way as to look like the now arrested teenager was the one who made it? Like maybe someone who had access to the teenagers phone for two minutes? How can the teenager prove otherwise? That is an example of the law of unintended consequences...

Izzy Kalman does point out that some very small percent of bullies do indeed need to be deal with legally by involving the police (when extreme violence is in the picture). That part also echoes your comment, though one can argue about percentages (as in 10%? 1%? or 0.1%? of the entire population of teenagers). Izzy Kalman mainly focuses on breaking the cycle of escalation that can lead to violence. As he points out, generally these issues start small. They key is to prevent them from escalating. That means breaking the feedback loop. In practice, that means educating the "victim" about better ways to respond to the situation. Focusing mainly on changing the behavior of the one labeled "bully" just does not work that well in practice according to Izzy Kalman.

However, I would agree that cooping up lots of people in a small space where they are compelled by law to be there every day, regardless of personal relationships with others in that small space, is a recipe for creating bad behavior, whatever the institution is called or whatever its supposed aims. One might even argue compulsory schooling models "bullying" itself -- forcing kids to do things they don't want to do for fairly arbitrary reasons (witness the recent slashdot discussion on whether algebra should be forced on everyone).

That's one reason why I prefer the idea of a "public library" to the idea of a "public school" -- where "public" means a completely different thing in the two terms. If someone is mean in a public library, you can generally avoid that person in that part of the library, go to the library at some other time when that person is not there, or just use a different library, or even bring your brother or mother or friend along, etc.. You don't have those choices in a public school where you must legally be in a certain room at a certain time of day most days. If you don't go along with the public school's authority, then ultimately you will be forced to go to an even more controlling institution where you don't get to go home nights and weekends. Unless you opt out of the public system in some formal way, like homeshooling/unschooling, tutors, special private schooling, etc.. But those options in practice so often seem beyond most families given our society's economics (even if more might manage them than think to try).

I am also reminded a bit of the fall of Rome, wh

Wow, thanks for the links. I'm going through those cut-scenes now from the game. There are echoes of Voyage From Yesteryear, but also some real differences. Two issues come up from having seen maybe four of the scenes so far.

The cabal on Island Zero could be considered "mentally ill" as far as still desiring financial/political obesity in a world of plenty for all, wishing to impose artificial scarcity on the rest of society to obtain control of people in it. Obviously something must be done if they are launching attacks on the rest of the planet. Still, you would hope an advanced civilization would have a better way to deal with mental illness than just blowing up the people on Island Zero, even if the result of the cabal's mental illness is aggression. See the Quaker story at the end here, for example, about how violence does not generally change how people see the world:
http://www.jhmuseum.org/storyCPScamp.htm

With that said comes a second point. In one of the cut-scenes it is said of the fundamentalist extremists that they had decided that if the world was not going to have any churches, it would not have any people.

As Albert Einstein said, religion is needed even for scientists, since our assumptions and preferences need to come from somewhere, even secular philosophies that are essentially religions, so I think it likely such future advanced civilizations would probably indeed have "churches" of many forms. See Einstein's comments on science and religion here:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm

Still, it is not unreasonable to suggest that future societies will still have conflicts about issues of aesthetics, ethics, preferences, assumptions, lifestyles, and so on. The big change might be how they decide to deal with them, given various options like moving to space habitats, or creating ocean habitats (like those islands) or cyberspace worlds for alternative cultures, and so on. Why were the fundamentalists not happy just running their islands the way they wanted to? Maybe that is explained somewhere?

Consider the case of the recent Muslim fundamentalist aggression against the USA like on 09/11 in 2001 (as opposed to the other 9/11 in Chile in 1973 where the USA helped overthrow a democratic government). While the explanations told in the USA is that the answer to "Why do they hate us?" regarding a bunch of Muslim Fundamentalist young men is "Because we are free", in reality the answer that can't be talked about in the mainstream media is more like "Because we fund their oppressors, and they want to be free to to live as they see fit". Obviously, there are also other factors, but that is an essential part of the social dynamic of the current terrorism by some Muslim extremists in reaction to decades of previous US interventions. See also a point on time perspective by Zimbardo for other aspects since obviously there are other layers of complexity:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3oIiH7BLmg

So, it's not clear that you get militaristic behavior out of many people, even fundamentalists of some sort, without severe prior provocation in some ways. That can be true even if that provocation might be in ways most people are not paying attention to (like supporting repressive dictators). So, there is a historical context to the game that I can wonder about. See also points made here by "Izzy" Kalman:
http://bullies2buddies.com/component/content/article/60-student-manual/161-how-to-stop-being-teased-and-bullied-without-really-trying-intro

Including his point that physical violence rarely happens in schools without an escalating series of verbal aggression over a lo

Other ways to deal with bullies:
    http://www.bullies2buddies.com/How-to-Stop-Being-Teased-and-Bullied-Without-Really-Trying

Here is why the current approach pushed in schools just makes more:
    http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/psychological-solution-bullying/201011/rational-alternative-the-national-school-anti-bullying-p

Maybe what made the USA strong decades ago was a progressive tax rate that went past 90%? :-)
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_tax
    http://www.capitalismhitsthefan.com/

I'm glad you found something that worked for you.

But ultimately, is the solution to bullying to create a all-pervasive police state where no one ever says something someone else might potentially find offensive without immediately being labelled and disciplined? Because that is the way public schools in general are heading with conventional anti-bullying approaches based on similar stuff to what you are talking about ("telling is not tattling", etc.) however well it might work sometimes for some individuals.

It's actually quite true that beating up bullies or getting someone else to do it for you (physically, verbally, socially) like a parent or principal may make them stop, but the appeal to authority is fraught with its own issues (a police state, and then what happens when the police are not there, or if the police themselves become bullies?).

Again, no one is suggesting a child suffer significant physical injury, and Izzy Kalman says his techniques only work when the kids doing the bullying are reasonably emotionally stable without a history of serious violence. Also, yes, other approaches may indeed sometimes work.

But see also:
http://www.bullies2buddies.com/sites/default/files/'10-B2BFinalManusciptForSubmission.pdf
"A meta-analysis by Smith, Schneider, Smith, & Ananiadou (2004) concluded that the majority of whole-school programs yielded nonsignificant outcomes on measures of self-reported victimization and bullying. ... Children who are victims of bullying typically believe that teacher intervention will be effective in countering bullying behavior, and such intervention is a component of most bullying prevention programs. However, research suggests that teachers underidentify bullying behavior, and that, when students report bullying events to teachers, bullying may increase (Smith & Shu, 2000). Although teacher intervention has been shown to reduce bullying in some studies, such intervention must be timely and consistent, and requires close supervision of students. Moreover, teachersâ(TM) attitudes about bullying have been shown to influence their willingness to intervene, as well as the skill with which they do so (Kochendorfer-Ladd, & Pelletier, 2008). Thus, it is not always possible â" and, in some instances, may not be advisable â" to rely on teacher intervention as a means of managing the problem of bullying. [Exactly what you say happened when you asked a teacher for help...]"

Izzy Kalman's approach goes beyond telling kids to "ignore it". He teaches active strategies to respond to events, and also new ways to think about situations. His work is truly applied psychology in action.

Ultimately, beyond the value of asking others for help when you needed it, which is indeed an admirable quality, did you have a chance to learn those other strategies as well? When you asked for help, what kind of help was given?

If a kid breaks a leg, and asks for help, to use your example, do parents respond by putting the kid and all their friends in a straight jacket in a padded room so that it can never happen again?

Well, what is the difference these days in classrooms and our larger society where there is now a move towards "zero tolerance" for "different" and "zero tolerance" for any off-hand or inappropriate comment, where such a thing results in immediate discipline, arrest, or job loss? Is that the kind of society we really want to have? Have we not just shifted around the problem somewhere else, and maybe made it worse overall?

Izzy Kalman says what is going on with stuff labelled bullying is for the most part issues of "dominance" and they are part of how humans interact, for good or bad. Example:
"Study links teenage bullying to social status"
http://articles.latimes.com/201

http://www.bullies2buddies.com/How-to-Stop-Being-Teased-and-Bullied-Without-Really-Trying

Thanks for posting this. The following rant is directed more towards the author than you. :-)

I just read the articles in this series, and I have to say most of it truely is terrible advice. It takes the mindset of blaming the victim. It puts the onus on the victim to resolve the issue, when time after time, we see that the victim has less control over the situation than any outsider that chooses to get involved. And then it gives the classic advice (paraphrasing) "stop getting upset and you'll stop being teased/bullied."

Oh really? Stop getting upset? Is anyone who ever went through being bullied seriously able to simply shut off your emotions when you're being tripped, pushed, insulted, laughed at, teased, hit and threatened every single fucking day? Its scary, its frustrating, and it makes you feel like a failure. You were abused yesterday, you were abused today, and you KNOW you're going to be abused tomorrow. But then we should just be able to shrug it off, right? Would you advice the same to victims of child abuse from adults, too?

You know what advice I would give?

I'm sorry you're being bullied. Its not your fault. There is nothing you did or didn't do that caused this person to target you. They wanted to bully someone, and unfortunately your number came up. There are many of us out there that were bullied, and even if you think things are completely hopeless, it does get better. There are some things I am going to be honest about that may help, so keep reading.

When an adult treats a child the way your bully treats you, adults call it child abuse. Unfortunately, many adults still don't see children bullying other children as child abuse. But some adults do see it as child abuse. Some adults want to help you and will if you ask them. The important thing is that if you ask for help from an adult and they don't help you, it doesn't mean no one can. It means they don't know how or are unwilling to help you. Ask a different adult. And keep asking for help as long as you can. Its very hard to ask for help. Its even scarier than being bullied. But there is help out there. If talking to your teachers or your parents doesn't help, talk to the principal. Talk to the police. Talk to anyone that will listen.

It is ok if you are too afraid to ask for help. Being bullied is very scary. Try to ask for help when you can, but if you never ask for help, just remember that the bullying does end. Sometimes bullies grow up and stop being bullies. Sometimes you move away or go to a different school where the bully can't get to you. But the bullying always, ALWAYS ends. Keep that in mind and don't give up hope.

As an aside, it seems like there are a ton of resources out there now for LGBT bullying, but so much less for any other kind. That's rather disappointing. I was hoping to find a site I could link to for a helpline, but all the ones I could find were LGBT.

http://www.bullies2buddies.com/How-to-Stop-Being-Teased-and-Bullied-Without-Really-Trying

While I can't disagree that the approach you outlined that I quote can sometimes work for a time, it can lead to future conflicts, either sneak attacks or arms races. Here is a different way to deal with day-to-day bullies (although Izzy Kalman admits it won't work well with someone who is emotionally unstable or has a history of violence): http://www.bullies2buddies.com/How-to-Stop-Being-Teased-and-Bullied-Without-Really-Trying

Here Izzy Kalman explains why attempts to legislate and end to bullying instead of teaching kids to handle the problem in the way he outlines is counterproductive (I have a comment there, too):

Yes, that's an inherent flaw in life. The problem is that school bullies have ego goals, and if you don't satisfy their ego goals they go away. When the goals become purely monetary (I don't care that I look like an asshole, I've got all your money, lol), or large scale economic (france takes over Africa and steals all their diamonds and trees and oil), nobody is going to go away because they're being ignored.

When you have something someone else wants, and they come to get it, the way to get rid of them is to give it to them or kick their ass. Deal with civil people civilly; obviously not everyone wants to rob from your store, but if you have someone robbing you every week, the police are going to show up with guns for a reason (it's crazy, but I've seen people shoot back at the police). Recall Germany (WW1 WW2) and Japan, both expansionist at times in their history, along with the USSR under Stalin.

Defense to me means the ability to repel an invasion. The ability to "bomb a country back" doesn't count much as defense; I hate the morale thing and I think "strategic bombing" (attacking civilian targets to reduce morale and force a political end to the war) is counterproductive (people see you as a monster if you blow up schools and hospitals). What I want is highly efficient cruise missiles with HUGE chemical loads and an awesome satellite imaging system: I want to point at every missile silo in the country that just bombed us and make them operationally defunct in one hour. Now they have no weapons, they have to send ground troops here; ever try to send ground troops to Switzerland? It should happen like that. If they want to fly planes, it'll be a long flight: we can bomb aircraft carriers too. And then your planes get engaged by OUR aircraft carriers and jet fighters.

MAD is easy. Big ass atomic bomb. Nuclear war is the worst invention humans have ever conceived. But we don't need a military of massive amounts of tanks; we need a military of strategic defense, of systems that allow us to detect a missile launch anywhere and figure out where it's going and where it came from. We need a military war machine that's targeted at first preventing the enemy from doing damage to us (missile defense shields, navy and airforce capabilities that keep them from approaching our borders, etc) and second allow us to precision-cripple their long range military offensive capabilities (forcing them to actually send their navy and airforce at us, which we have both ground-based missile silos with advanced targetting capabilities and sea-based battle ships and combat submarines for the purpose of repelling).

It takes surprisingly little. It takes a hell of a lot to invade. When they come to your door, though, they're right there. I don't need a massive amount of long-range destructive capabilities to fight a war against an invader; I just need to stop their missiles and put a bunch of ships and aircraft carriers and planes around me, and a few missile silos across the country for long range support (long enough to knock out ships engaging our navy by launching missiles from the coast).

I think our military right now is more tuned to a giant iron sledgehammer that we can threaten the world with. I want a well-honed K

"The way to end a fight is to hit the other guy back until he stops wanting to be hit; level of force and end goal (knock-out, kill) depends on the attack you're receiving and its severity (idiot bar fight, person trying to kill you ... are they strong or weak?"

Thanks for the reply on this link and the additional insights to Go (which I have only played a few times). I had a boss/coworker at IBM Research who was a Go player, and told me a lot about it (including the chess/go distinction in outlook), but he would not teach me to play it as he said it might destroy my productivity by taking up all my time (as he said it had to someone else he had taught it to). :-) But, it intrigued me enough to get a set and play a little with my wife and to read more about it. So, I really appreciate all the first hand info.

While I can't disagree that the approach you outlined that I quote can sometimes work for a time, it can lead to future conflicts, either sneak attacks or arms races. Here is a different way to deal with day-to-day bullies (although Izzy Kalman admits it won't work well with someone who is emotionally unstable or has a history of violence):
http://www.bullies2buddies.com/How-to-Stop-Being-Teased-and-Bullied-Without-Really-Trying

Here Izzy Kalman explains why attempts to legislate and end to bullying instead of teaching kids to handle the problem in the way he outlines is counterproductive (I have a comment there, too):
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/psychological-solution-bullying/201011/rational-alternative-the-national-school-anti-bullying-p

Still, Izzy Kalman's techniques assume the rule of law, but war, even with "laws of war", usually involves times when the rule of law is essentially suspended or being renegotiated.

Still, in general, all wars come to an end and a peace is negotiated, as people decide the cost of war exceeds the cost of the peace (or when everyone is dead). Again, I suggest that you still assume in what you learn from Go that the other player is not going to smash the board to the ground and you are not both going to be killed by robots in that case. Unfortunately, that crazy situation I suggest is more and more the norm as our technology continues to grow in capacity. That is why Albert Einstein said essentially that with the harnessing of the power of the atom, everything has changed but our way of thinking. Also, it is more in the news these days that then president George Bush was pushing with war with Iraq for personal reasons even before 9/11. So, even the "leader of the free world" can have emotional problems that lead to launching a war which potentially (thankfully not) could have been met with a plague in that case (the poor man's WMD) as Hussein realized he could not win and maybe decided to take everyone with him. GW decided to play with fire, it's a miracle the USA only got burned to the tune of a couple trillion dollars and not mass casualtes in the tens of millions (even though blowback from Iraq may well in the future still cause mass casualties in the USA as those in Iraq who have seen their families destroyed by US actions may decide in the future to follow a vindictive course with WMDs).And of course no doubt many people have died in the USA from the want of money to go into wellness or transporation safety and infrastructure and so on -- but a little old lady not getting good care in a nursing home starved for funds is not normally called a casualty of war, even if there may be a connection.

When, as in the original article, we talk about whether to invest in "defense" or invest in "science", we make a choice about how we want to shape the future. Personally, I am all for investing in "defense", but to me, "defense" means mutual

On your last point, a lot of psychopathology may emerge out of the social systems we have constructed around ourselves:
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005506.html
http://www.bullies2buddies.com/Columbine-Explained-The-Solution

Change the systems and motivations, and the behaviors may change...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

... is to make them into friends: http://www.bullies2buddies.com/How-to-Stop-Being-Teased-and-Bullied-Without-Really-Trying

See also my related essay:
    http://www.pdfernhout.net/on-dealing-with-social-hurricanes.html#On_dealing_with_the_social_hurricane_of_the_CIA

http://www.bullies2buddies.com/