>As far as I can make sense of it, he enjoyed the thrill of feeling superior to others: Evading the law, exploiting people who viewed as stupid, and enriching himself in the process.

I sadly see this pattern of thinking far more often than I want to in my fellow eastern Europeans.

That's just what 40 years of communism does to a society.

If communism is the cause, then why would this same mentality be such a massive problem in America?

> If communism is the cause, then why would this same mentality be such a massive problem in America?

By communism I don't think people talk about the philosophical basis of an idealized society, but the totalitarian regime that oppresses a society and keeps the working class constantly in survival mode under the risk of losing it all.

Well, that answers the America question.

Then they should be rallying against totalitarianism and authoritarian policies, not broad and vague ideas of "communism" that most people cant agree on the definition of. All it does is let people and politicians weasel around them using authoritarian policies because they aren't communist.

> Then they should be rallying against totalitarianism and authoritarian policies, not broad and vague ideas of "communism" that most people cant agree on the definition of.

You're nitpicking on semantics. Communism is the poster child of totalitarian regimes that oppress their citizens to extreme levels. When you talk about communism, people think of gulags, forced labor, murdering political opponents,and even force-admittong rivals to psychiatric hospitals.

Are you sure that's the route you want to go down? Going by the statistics, democracy has killed more people - in the USA, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc - than commuinsm has. If we go down that route. Which I don't think we should.

This mentality is a huge problem in America. We have insane amounts of corruption and just flat out crime. The corruption just rarely gets prosecuted in a courtroom

Let's not generalize, even if you feel like you can say that because you're a member of a group you're generalizing. It's unfair to most of the people in any group being generalized.

Stereotypes exist for a reason. It's exhausting having to address this concern trolling every single time they're mentioned. Nobody thinks everyone in the group conforms to the stereotype. And they certainly don't need your white knighting.

It isn't "concern trolling" or "white knighting" to call out racism or bigotry, and expect some decency in the discussion. If it is "exhausting" for you to be propagating unfair stereotypes, perhaps stop your bad behavior?

Your comment assumes, a priori, that the stereotypes are in fact "unfair". I don't know enough about cybercrime rates per capita amongst Eastern Europeans vs. other populations to be able to say if it is actually an unfair stereotype, but it is an indisputable fact (supported by virtually every jurisdiction that tracks crime rates by things like national origin, ethnicity, etc.) that there are population level differences in crime rates.

I don't think a person saying Eastern European are observed doing something more than expected is inherently racist. It is a claim he either does or doesn't have evidence for.

If he made the claim with insufficient evidence or made the claim in contradiction of the evidence, then it becomes racist, but I don't think making the observation and doing the calculation is the racist part. It is a simple chi-squared goodness-of-fit test.

I’m eastern-ish european, is it even racist to say that tech talent in the region is through the roof but for various accidents of history, the best opportunities available to talented people are in cybercrime (both sides)?

Not everyone has a hundred tech unicorns in their back yard. I think my country (Slovenia) produced one in its entire history so far and even that was mostly in the US

Now I'm confused whether my observing patterns of behaviour and recurring beliefs clustered among people from my own part of the world are in fact racism or bigotry. Am I being indecent? Am I self-hating? Are others tolerhating? I only wish some white night would unambiguously tut-tut me or else give me a pass.

You're perhaps being parochial. If you lived in some other part of the world, are you sure you wouldn't observe something similar?

I've lived in four countries on three continents, from third world to first world, and human behavior is pretty constant across all of them.

It's racism when it's (a) racially motivated, (b) not a correct fact.

In this case the person is itself a member of the group, and the statement they made isn't even a generalization to the group at large - just an observation about certain common tendencies seen in it.

"observation about certain common tendencies" is literally what generalization is.

Racist remarks against your own people is worse, because not only does it perpetuate discrimination against a group by advancing a narrative about the group ("should we hire from this subgroup prone to x?"), it gives the bigots yet another vector ("even they themselves say it about their subgroup, so it must be true!")

We're on an international forum. Making "observations" like what the original commenter did can only decrease employment opportunities for an already geographically disadvantaged talent. Why do that?

>"observation about certain common tendencies" is literally what generalization is

I know. Are you maybe confused? I qualified it that it's not generalization "to the group at large". Not that it's not any kind of generalization at all.

>Racist remarks against your own people is worse, because not only does it perpetuate discrimination against a group by advancing a narrative about the group ("should we hire from this subgroup prone to x?"), it gives the bigots yet another vector ("even they themselves say it about their subgroup, so it must be true!")

Oh, come on. ranger_danger put it perfectly "There can be other valid perspectives than your own. Not everyone is going to agree with your specific definition of what's racism or bigotry or whatever, and not only is that OK, but it's expected, and we shouldn't try to change other people's minds unless they asked for our opinion.".

There can be other valid perspectives than your own. Not everyone is going to agree with your specific definition of what's racism or bigotry or whatever, and not only is that OK, but it's expected, and we shouldn't try to change other people's minds unless they asked for our opinion. There was especially no need to inject this discussion into the middle of an unrelated thread.

Trying to tell people their way of thinking is incorrect just because they disagree with you, is not only childish, but such dogmatic thinking is going to alienate you from a large part of society if you cannot learn to get along with people without constantly trying to correct everyone who you think is "wrong."

IQ tests are basically the ability to spot patterns.

It really tells you something about US culture, when spotting patterns is now seen as racist or bigoted.

Patterns also can save your life. They are a built-in defense mechanism and many women are taught to ignore them.

Re-read my comment as it is written and note that my observation does not generalize.

Generalization is a tool, not something inherently bad or evil.

Generalizing doesn't mean everybody or even most in the group. It means it's a common behavior in the group relative to other groups.

sounds like Markus Braun & Jan Marsalek / Wirecard, the fraudsters :-D

Sounds like Breaking Bad

His stupidity was to let you see him. Let that sink in.

> he enjoyed the thrill of feeling superior to others [...] He got caught through a mistake that was really dumb in retrospect.

It seems to be common occurrence. I still can't get over that one hacker who dumped stolen data on forum, to sell it/prove his capabilities, in form of tar.gz archive, that accidentally included his entire home directory