Becoming an adult means having an intellectual grasp of ethics, and being able (if one is raised well) to think thought one’s actions.
Even without any feedback from others? Or are you OK with a specific kind of feedback? What kind would it be? Is explicitly telling a person what you expect of them OK? If so, when does it become not OK?
Yes, even without feedback, though its always helpful to have other people to think with. As to when telling someone what to do is okay and not, I can’t imagine there’s any general rule, but I also expect we’re all familiar with the kinds of situations when you can do then and when not.
As to when telling someone what to do is okay and not, [...] I also expect we’re all familiar with the kinds of situations when you can do then and when not.
Just to be clear: if a hundred randomly-selected humans are presented with an identical list describing, in full detail, a hundred cases where person A tells person B what to do, and those humans are asked to classify those cases into acceptable, unacceptable, and borderline, your expectation is that most or all of those humans will arrive at the same classifications?
Really? To me, it depends substantially on how the list is generated. If we try to “rip from the headlines,” I’d expect substantial disagreement. If we follow you around and watch you tell people what to do in your ordinary week, I expect more agreement.
In short, there are lots of points of disagreement about social interaction, but there are far more mundane and uncontroversial interactions than controversial ones.
Well, I certainly agree that it’s possible to generate a list of a hundred cases that 95% of people would agree on the classification of.
But if you followed me around for a week and picked samples randomly from that (both of cases where I tell people what to do, and cases where I could have told people what to do and didn’t), and you asked a hundred people, I expect you’d get <60% congruence. I work in an office full of Americans and Israelis, I am frequently amused and sometimes horrified by the spread of opinion on this sort of thing.
Of course, if you narrowed your sample to middle-class Americans, you might well get up above 90%.
Edit: I should explicitly admit, though, that I was not envisioning a randomly generated list of cases. It was a good question.
I had something a set of mundane cases in mind. My post was just meant to point out that discerning these sorts of situations is not something we use a set of rules or criteria for (at least no fixed set we could usefully enumerate), but most people are socially competant enough to tell the difference.
I agree that most people who share what you’re calling “social competence” within a given culture share a set of rules that determine acceptable utterances in that culture, and that those rules are difficult to enumerate.
Even without any feedback from others? Or are you OK with a specific kind of feedback? What kind would it be? Is explicitly telling a person what you expect of them OK? If so, when does it become not OK?
Yes, even without feedback, though its always helpful to have other people to think with. As to when telling someone what to do is okay and not, I can’t imagine there’s any general rule, but I also expect we’re all familiar with the kinds of situations when you can do then and when not.
Just to be clear: if a hundred randomly-selected humans are presented with an identical list describing, in full detail, a hundred cases where person A tells person B what to do, and those humans are asked to classify those cases into acceptable, unacceptable, and borderline, your expectation is that most or all of those humans will arrive at the same classifications?
Because I find that extremely unlikely.
Really? To me, it depends substantially on how the list is generated. If we try to “rip from the headlines,” I’d expect substantial disagreement. If we follow you around and watch you tell people what to do in your ordinary week, I expect more agreement.
In short, there are lots of points of disagreement about social interaction, but there are far more mundane and uncontroversial interactions than controversial ones.
Hm.
Well, I certainly agree that it’s possible to generate a list of a hundred cases that 95% of people would agree on the classification of.
But if you followed me around for a week and picked samples randomly from that (both of cases where I tell people what to do, and cases where I could have told people what to do and didn’t), and you asked a hundred people, I expect you’d get <60% congruence. I work in an office full of Americans and Israelis, I am frequently amused and sometimes horrified by the spread of opinion on this sort of thing.
Of course, if you narrowed your sample to middle-class Americans, you might well get up above 90%.
Edit: I should explicitly admit, though, that I was not envisioning a randomly generated list of cases. It was a good question.
I had something a set of mundane cases in mind. My post was just meant to point out that discerning these sorts of situations is not something we use a set of rules or criteria for (at least no fixed set we could usefully enumerate), but most people are socially competant enough to tell the difference.
I agree that most people who share what you’re calling “social competence” within a given culture share a set of rules that determine acceptable utterances in that culture, and that those rules are difficult to enumerate.