It seems clear from general societal trends and the specific informative example of the clergy abuse scandal that the durable rate of offending in the general population is around 5%, and that the distribution follows a long tail, i.e. most violence and also most sexual violence is perpetrated by only a tiny subset, with the vast majority of offenders being only incidental.

So, I would expect that in any population examined, you'd see about <1% or so of a really significant core of unrepentant, repeat offenders committing a large majority of the reprehensible acts, and I would expect to see this durably despite any level of intervention or harm mitigation.

Where intervention really matters is in the ~4% who transgress on an incidental basis, and small changes in culture and education can make a large difference there.

We just need to set clear standards that establish what is or is not acceptable, educate people about how to avoid being an abuser, and have significant consequences for that abuse. Part of that is pretty simple openness, discussion, and recognition of the problem; and part of it requires creating systems that can protect and evaluate reports of abuse without endangering the victim, which is a more difficult task.

Ehh, I think it is the opposite. The un-repenting abusers who engage in repeated abuse, are only getting away because the people around them are letting it happen.

An abusers might be able to get away with something unnoticed a couple times, but sooner or later word gets around, and it becomes an open secret that this person is an abuser.

And if everyone around them knows that this person is an abusers then they need to start doing something about it, and everyone needs to stop enabling the serial abuser.

Obviously education doesn't work on the abuser, but it works on everyone around them, so that they know what to look for, and can stop them before things get out of hand.

With Weinstein, he was a successful serial abuser because he had both carrot and stick. His power meant he had leverage on everyone around him who might speak out, and his money and connections meant that he could buy silence if that didn't work.

I believe that this happens on a smaller scale with other serial abusers, they seek out situations where they have leverage so it's harder for someone to speak out.

IMO, this kind of pressure only works when a) it's coming from their boss, or b) they're the kind to be motivated by morals.

And, again IMO, if they're motivated by morals, they aren't serial abusers; the reasoning being that once informed that they're crossing the line that isn't acceptable, they stop.

But given the ~1% rate of sociopaths in society at large, I have no problems believing there's a large overlap in the Venn diagram between sociopaths, those in power, and serial abusers.

Oh, don't get me wrong, enabling serial abusers is a huge problem. But nothing we do is going to change the behavior of those specific individuals - it has to be about enabling easier reporting and better follow up. It's a classic bimodal system where you need accountability and support to find and exclude egregious offenders, and systemic engagement and education to prevent first offenses.

I know it is very difficult for victims of such aggravated harassment to name "the guy", but it has to be done. If this man had gone up and punched her in the face, he would have been lead out in cuffs and everyone would know who he is. Why is it any different with people that grope someone? Yes with things that are more on the fringe of what some people would consider harassment, perhaps the person should be informed that this makes someone uncomfortable and not put on blast, but something as blatant as groping someone should be treated no different than physical assault.

When more people come forward with this just as they would if they were assaulted, the "Weinsteins" will be not able to operate.

It's really not that simple. Part of the violence that abusers use to abuse is the fact that they are inherently protected by the way that reporting affects victims.

We need to change the structures around reporting abuse before we can expect more victims to report abuse. It's really that simple - when you can't trust HR, your coworkers, the public at large or the police not to provide cover or justification for abuse, it's very difficult to report.

Who is "the guy"?

Initially i wondered as well.

However, the author ended up reporting him, so i guess it's a moot point.

... As long as the guy has learned something or changed his behavior, i mean.

The article suggests he didn't learn or change. Also, why is that your halting criteria? Why not some jail time?

Why does that matter?

What, really?

Weinstein had anecdotes floating around by word of mouth for decades. Maybe if some of those had been collected anonymously in a public forum, action would have been taken sooner.

Not just w.o.m. anecdotes, multiple police investigations that went nowhere

http://www.google.com/search?q=harvey+weinstein+abuse&dcr=0&...

Does not help fix anything by keeping the person anonymous

The author describes outing him at a later occasion.

That means the person is not kept anonymous, his name is simply not included in this article.

Now, I think that omitting his name makes the article better, because it removes a distraction.

On the whole i think that whether or not his name should be mentioned depends on whether or not his behavior has changed -- with some bias in favor of not mentioning him, because... well people should be allowed to learn and improve themselves?

Amazing how many times this post has gotten flagged. #methinksthebrosprotesttoomuch

We've turned off the flags, but we all need to take extra care to comment civilly and substantively so that we have a chance to discuss the actual issue. Users often flag stories like this because they're anticipating flamewars and not at all because they disagree with the content of the article.

I think it's a bit uncool to "turn off the flags" here. I flagged this specifically because I am tired of the incessant flamewar that will surely happen in here.

When moderators do this we compensate by giving the thread specific attention to attempt to prevent such flamewars as best we can.

> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Ideological or political battle or talking points. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

This post seems off topic to me. There are a lot of these stories floating around (sadly). They're all over the news.

I also think your suggestion is silly if meant to be taken seriously.

I must be a shit hacker, as I certainly found the post interesting. It discusses human behavior in the context of hackers gathering together, and strategies on improving those behaviors. How can you possibly get more on-topic?

Really? I describe a specific way YC could use their unique access to a proprietary dataset to gain a competitive advantage in the tech venture capital marketplace. One literally couldn't be more on-topic for HN.

It amazes me that articles like this get flagged so quickly. At risk of going too meta, it makes me curious how flagging/vouching gets weighted.

So far it has been flagged and unflagged 3 times! We are back to flagged.

That's a very old story with a good, old solution: The girl/woman carries a hat pin, quite sharp, about 6 inches long, has ready access to it, and is willing and able to use it.

Thinking about how a friend of mine was assaulted at work by her boss, who was a very powerful person at her place of work, I wonder how it would have played out if she had stabbed him instead of punching him in the face. I don't think he would have been deterred by a hat pin, no more than he was deterred by the threat of ruining his career by assaulting his employee. (It is clear this was not his first rodeo)

In the stabbing scenario, he probably would have filed charges, and the police would have taken his side when he claimed she was an unhinged employee.

If he was close enough for her to stab him deeply with a six inch hat pin, then that is evidence that he was too close, and the obvious reason was that he was attacking her.

Typically a six inch hat pin stab will be more effective than a woman's punch in the face.

According to Mom, the hat pin solution is what was common and effective. I'm sure they thought of alternatives.

The attacker would be reluctant to take a hat pin stabbing to the police because the woman might file charges of the attack.

Of course, now a woman can carry a voice recorder of some kind where she screams "No. Stop". Then if the police get involved, she wins. If she gets fired, then with the recording she has a wrongful termination suit.

I'd much prefer the offender being afraid of complete societal ostracization.

Well, one way to pull this off is to have 2+ woman agree that he has attacked them. Then chase this up the management chain to the BoD, to HR, or if he owns the company, to some lawyers. There are a lot of lawyers looking for work, now including a lot of women.

Get the guy on record as an attacker, and then he will have to be really dumb to do it again, even dumber than to do it the first time, which was pretty dumb.