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Mob Rule on China's Internet
Alien54 writes to mention an International Herald Tribune article about the growing phenomenon in China known as internet hunting; Using the web to track down individuals who have violated social more or broken the law. From the article: "In recent cases, people have scrutinized husbands suspected of cheating on their wives, fraud on Internet auction sites, the secret lives of celebrities and unsolved crimes. One case that drew a huge following involved the poisoning of a Tsinghua University student - an event that dates to 1994, but was revived by curious strangers after word spread on the Internet that the only suspect in the case had been questioned and released. Even a recent scandal involving a top Chinese computer scientist dismissed for copying an American processor design came to light in part because of Internet hunting, with scores of online commentators raising questions about the project and putting pressure on the scientist's sponsors to look into allegations about intellectual property theft."
Mob metality at it's worst. This type of thing goes too far where we are letting the mob dictate morality
>When did the Mob started ruling China?
Cultural Revolution. This has some faint echoes.
... vigilantism is a bad idea.
You hear calls for vigilante activity a lot, on the net and in the real world. And it's got lots of emotional appeal. But it always turns into mob rule, with absolutely no mechanism for protecting the innocent.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Troll Subject not even supported by the story. Slashdot is learning too much from the mass media.
How is that "mob" ruling anything? The people in the public investigated publicly known events. Then they used the usual power organized people have to pressure people who listen to them. Where's the "rule"? Where, indeed, is the "mob"?
That story is interesting mainly in the power regular people are accruing in China, a Communist tyranny that favors totalitarianism. I guess if you're a Chinese Communist powermonger, the Internet and people using its open society represent "mob rule', because tyrants see the world only in the simplest, most polarized power structures.
Maybe Alien54 and the IHT are learning more from Xin Hua, China's official propaganda publisher, and quoting the best lessons from the New York Times.
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make install -not war
If history has taught us anything, it's that it's the individual, not their religion religion (or lack there of), who ultimately chooses to do good or bad. If they happen to be religious and also a bad person, they will use their religion to justify their actions. (Like what happened with The Crusades for Christians, or more recently 9/11 for Muslims.) Religion has never been something that makes someone moral or immoral. The majority of people in the U.S. say that they are Christian, but that hardly means that they are more moral that the people of China who are mostly non-religious.
A morally good member of a particular faith that will choose to get the good out of it and those with poor morality would get the worst out of their religion. In the end, it makes no difference.
Religion may help to keep selfish behaviour in check. But, I cannot see religion as an antidote for mob mentality. In fact, we can see many notorious mobs in history are linked closely to fringe religious group. I think the root of the mob mentality is the belief that "I know the truth" (or even "I am the truth") and try to impose that upon the other. Mutual respect and acceptance to difference may probably the key....
There is a segment of the population for whom religion creates an anchor to which they can attach significance to their actions, and thus gain a moral compass. This seems particularly the case with the less educated, at least in my dealings with the various religious groups I come in contact with. (The more academic "religious" people I meet, if you query them actually have their own moral compass with which their religion happens to be compatible with. The less academic are more apt to point to "the book" as the rational for a moral choice.
That doesn't mean that it would make much difference in the large however: the most frustrating aspect of religion is the number of people who use it as sheep's clothing while being wolves in their day to day lives. Worse, many of the atrocities that have been committed historically were motivated by religious groups fear at things they did not agree with.
I don't think religion is the panacea that you are looking for.
Sig under construction since 1998.
You say that as if we here on Slashdot have never lynched a spammer.
Speaking of which, is Ralsky still getting the junkmail he deserves, or has he moved recently?