But treating human beings, especially adults, like animals is characteristically unethical.
This statement without context is clearly incorrect; there are all sorts of behaviors we can ethically execute with respect to both humans and other animals. I understand that what you and the OP both mean to connote is particular behaviors which we restrict in typical contexts only to non-human animals, but if you’re going to label them as unethical when applied to humans it helps to specify what behaviors and context those are.
manipulating the behavior of other people by means other than convincing them that they should behave in a certain way seems to me to be almost definitional of a dark art.
That’s a little more specific, but not too much, as I’m not really sure what you mean by “convincing” here.
That is, if at time T1 I don’t exhibit behavior B and don’t assert that I should exhibit B, and you perform some act A at T2 after which I exhibit B and assert that I should exhibit B, is A an act of convincing me (and therefore OK on your account) or not (and therefore unethical on your account)? How might I test that?
never do this to other people without their explicit consent
This, on the other hand, is clear. Thank you. I disagree with it strongly.
Eliezer replied: “Well, three weeks ago I was working with Anna and Alicorn, and every time I said something nice they fed me an M&M.”
That story doesn’t trouble you at all?
For most people, there’s lots of low hanging fruit from trying to recognize when they are reinforcing and punishing behaviors of others. Also, positive reinforcement is more effective at changing behavior than positive punishment.
But that doesn’t mean that we should embrace conditioning-type behavior-modification wholesale. I’m highly doubtful that conditioning responses are entirely justifiable by decision-theoretic reasons. And “not justifiable by decision theoretic reasons” is a reasonable definition of non-rational. Which implies that relying on those types of processes to change others behaviors might be unethical.
Does it trouble me at all? I suppose. Not a huge amount, but some. Had Esar said “Doing this to people without their consent is troubling” rather than “never do this to other people without their explicit consent” I likely wouldn’t have objected.
My response to the rest of this would mostly be repeating myself, so I’ll point to here instead.
More generally, “conditioning-type behavior-modification” isn’t some kind of special category of activity that is clearly separable from ordinary behavior. We modify one another’s behavior through conditioning all the time. You did it just now when you replied to my comment. Declaring it unethical across the board seems about as useful as saying “never kill a living thing.”
This statement without context is clearly incorrect...
You seem to know what I mean, so I won’t go into a buch of unnecessary qualifications.
is A an act of convincing me?
Not necessarily. Is the meaning of ‘convince’ really unclear? Threatening someone with a gun seems to satisfy your description, but it’s obviously not a case of convincing. I’m not sure what you’re unclear about.
Suppose I decide I want my coworkers to visit my desk more often at work, and therefore begin a practice of smiling at everyone who visits, keeping treats on my desk and inviting visitors to partake, being nicer to people when they visit me at my desk than I am at other times, and otherwise setting up a schedule of differential reinforcement designed to increase the incidence of desk-visiting behavior, and I do all of that without ever announcing to anyone that I’m doing it or why I’m doing it, let alone securing anyone’s consent. (Let alone securing everyone’s consent.)
Do you consider that an example of unethical behavior? I don’t.
Now, maybe you don’t either. Maybe it’s “obviously” not an example of manipulating the behavior of other people by means other than convincing them that they should behave in a certain way. I don’t really know, since you’ve declined to clarify your constraints. But it sure does seem to match what you described.
Do you consider that an example of unethical behavior? I don’t.
You’re right that this doesn’t seem quite unethical, but it is awfully creepy and I’m not sure how to pull my intuitions apart there. Sitting across from someone who is faking affection and smiles and pleasantries so as to manipulate my behavior would cause me to avoid them like the plague.
In professional environments I find this happens all the time, and when the fake friendliness is discovered as such, the effect reverses considerably. If it’s terribly important to something’s being effective that the person you’re doing it to doesn’t know what’s going on, it’s probably bad.
(nods) Absolutely. I could have also framed it to make it seem far creepier, or to make it seem significantly less creepy.
In particular, the use of loaded words like “faking” and “manipulate” ups the creepy factor of the description a lot. The difference between faking affection and choosing to be affectionate is difficult to state precisely, but boy do we respond to the difference between the words!
I agree that most activities which depend on my ignorance for their effectiveness are bad. I even agree that a higher percentage of activities which depend on my ignorance for their effectiveness are bad than the equivalent percentage of activities that don’t so depend.
That said, you seem to be going from that claim to the implicit claim that they are bad by virtue of depending on my ignorance. That’s less clear to me.
Well, I think it’s important because IMHO that negative emotional response is what underlies the (incorrect) description of the corresponding behavior as unethical. But I expect Esar would find that implausible.
‘Taboo with an eye to this question’, not ‘answer this question’. I’d already noticed the pattern that people consider finding something creepy to be sufficient reason to label it unethical, but that observation isn’t useful for very much beyond predicting other peoples’ labeling habits.
Oh, I see. Sorry, misunderstood. I could replace “creepy” everywhere it appears with “emotionally disquieting”, but I’m not sure what that would help. I figured using the same language Esar was using would be helpful, but I may well have been wrong.
I could have also framed it to make it seem far creepier
I’ll put it simply: if someone asks me about my kids, neither to be polite nor because they care, but because they want to change the way I behave, then they’re (in most cases) being manipulative and insincere. While perhaps they’re not wronging me, per se, it’s certainly not something that speaks well of them, ethically speaking. If you find this controversial, then you surprise me.
It would be bad advice, I think, to encourage people to use positive reinforcement on others when their ignorance is necessary for it to be effective. Not just practically bad advice, as people are pretty good at picking up on fake friendliness. But full stop ethically damaging advice, if taken seriously. I’m not saying that every such case is going to be unethical, but I’m not in the business of lawlike ethical principles anyway.
That said, you seem to be going from that claim to the implicit claim that they are bad by virtue of depending on my ignorance. That’s less clear to me.
No, what I said was that behaviors which depend on someone’s ignorance for their effectiveness are often also bad behaviors. I didn’t say anything one way or the other about a stricter relation between the two properties, but I’ll say now that I don’t think they’re unrelated.
I agree that asking you about your kids solely to change your behavior is manipulative. I also agree that it’s insincere. (Which is an entirely distinct thing.) I would also say that asking you about your kids solely to be polite is insincere. I would not agree that any of these are necessarily unethical.
I am not quite sure what you mean by “ethically damaging advice.” I agree with you that it’s not always unethical to positively reinforce others without their knowledge. I would agree that “Positively reinforcing others without their knowledge is a good thing to do, do it constantly” is advice that, if taken seriously, would often lead me to perform unethical acts. I can accept calling it unethical advice for that reason, I suppose. But I also think that “Positively reinforcing others without their knowledge is a bad thing to do, never do it.” is unethical advice in the same (somewhat unclear) sense.
I agree that behaviors that depend on others’ ignorance are often also bad behaviors. Behaviors that depend on others’ knowledge are also often bad behaviors.
Well, I think I’d stand by what I said originally. Though I guess I’m counting on no one reading that as the exceptionless proposition ‘for all x such that x is a case of using positive reinforcement without someone’s knowledge, x is unethical’. Likewise, if someone asked me, I’d say ‘Don’t ever shoplift, it’s unethical.’ Though I wouldn’t want or expect anyone to read that as ‘all cases of shoplifting are, without exception, unethical.’
I think it’s false to suggest that pleasantries are being outright faked. This person is probably not sitting there going, “Oh, woe is me, I have to pay the horrible price of smiling and being nice to these imbeciles in order to make them give me what I want; I would never do that otherwise.” In fact, why would he even want his coworkers to visit his desk more if he had such utter contempt for them that he had to fake affection wholesale?
Rather, like many people, there’s a part of him which would probably like to be a nicer person overall, but he can’t always bring himself to live up to the ideal. “People will visit my desk more” is a good immediate incentive to be a better person. The coworker who wants more people to visit their desk is also affected by the results of his own behavior. He’ll probably be happier because of the visitations, and his happiness would cause him to smile more, and the very act of smiling would make him even more happy. After a while the “initial motivation,” whether it was 100% selfish “I want people to visit my desk more; damn their own desires” or the 100% altruistic “I want to manipulate myself into being a nicer person,” or, more likely, a mixture of the two, has faded away, and all that remains is the slightly modified, more pleasant person.
I don’t understand how using friendly behavior to reinforce people visiting one’s desk precludes that behavior being genuine. You seem to be dismissing the possibility that the person in question feels real affection, and is smiling because they are in fact happy that their desk is being visited. Just because they are using their (real) positive response to coworkers visiting their desk as positive reinforcement doesn’t mean that their behavior is “fake” in any way.
Just like a woman who feels a surge of affection towards her husband when he puts away the laundry, and kisses or praises him.
Yes, it’s positive reinforcement, but it’s also a genuine response.
This statement without context is clearly incorrect; there are all sorts of behaviors we can ethically execute with respect to both humans and other animals. I understand that what you and the OP both mean to connote is particular behaviors which we restrict in typical contexts only to non-human animals, but if you’re going to label them as unethical when applied to humans it helps to specify what behaviors and context those are.
That’s a little more specific, but not too much, as I’m not really sure what you mean by “convincing” here.
That is, if at time T1 I don’t exhibit behavior B and don’t assert that I should exhibit B, and you perform some act A at T2 after which I exhibit B and assert that I should exhibit B, is A an act of convincing me (and therefore OK on your account) or not (and therefore unethical on your account)? How might I test that?
This, on the other hand, is clear. Thank you.
I disagree with it strongly.
That story doesn’t trouble you at all?
For most people, there’s lots of low hanging fruit from trying to recognize when they are reinforcing and punishing behaviors of others. Also, positive reinforcement is more effective at changing behavior than positive punishment.
But that doesn’t mean that we should embrace conditioning-type behavior-modification wholesale. I’m highly doubtful that conditioning responses are entirely justifiable by decision-theoretic reasons. And “not justifiable by decision theoretic reasons” is a reasonable definition of non-rational. Which implies that relying on those types of processes to change others behaviors might be unethical.
Does it trouble me at all? I suppose. Not a huge amount, but some. Had Esar said “Doing this to people without their consent is troubling” rather than “never do this to other people without their explicit consent” I likely wouldn’t have objected.
My response to the rest of this would mostly be repeating myself, so I’ll point to here instead.
More generally, “conditioning-type behavior-modification” isn’t some kind of special category of activity that is clearly separable from ordinary behavior. We modify one another’s behavior through conditioning all the time. You did it just now when you replied to my comment. Declaring it unethical across the board seems about as useful as saying “never kill a living thing.”
You seem to know what I mean, so I won’t go into a buch of unnecessary qualifications.
Not necessarily. Is the meaning of ‘convince’ really unclear? Threatening someone with a gun seems to satisfy your description, but it’s obviously not a case of convincing. I’m not sure what you’re unclear about.
If you care to explain why, please do so.
Sure.
The easiest way to get at it is with an example.
Suppose I decide I want my coworkers to visit my desk more often at work, and therefore begin a practice of smiling at everyone who visits, keeping treats on my desk and inviting visitors to partake, being nicer to people when they visit me at my desk than I am at other times, and otherwise setting up a schedule of differential reinforcement designed to increase the incidence of desk-visiting behavior, and I do all of that without ever announcing to anyone that I’m doing it or why I’m doing it, let alone securing anyone’s consent. (Let alone securing everyone’s consent.)
Do you consider that an example of unethical behavior? I don’t.
Now, maybe you don’t either. Maybe it’s “obviously” not an example of manipulating the behavior of other people by means other than convincing them that they should behave in a certain way. I don’t really know, since you’ve declined to clarify your constraints. But it sure does seem to match what you described.
You’re right that this doesn’t seem quite unethical, but it is awfully creepy and I’m not sure how to pull my intuitions apart there. Sitting across from someone who is faking affection and smiles and pleasantries so as to manipulate my behavior would cause me to avoid them like the plague.
In professional environments I find this happens all the time, and when the fake friendliness is discovered as such, the effect reverses considerably. If it’s terribly important to something’s being effective that the person you’re doing it to doesn’t know what’s going on, it’s probably bad.
(nods) Absolutely. I could have also framed it to make it seem far creepier, or to make it seem significantly less creepy.
In particular, the use of loaded words like “faking” and “manipulate” ups the creepy factor of the description a lot. The difference between faking affection and choosing to be affectionate is difficult to state precisely, but boy do we respond to the difference between the words!
I agree that most activities which depend on my ignorance for their effectiveness are bad. I even agree that a higher percentage of activities which depend on my ignorance for their effectiveness are bad than the equivalent percentage of activities that don’t so depend.
That said, you seem to be going from that claim to the implicit claim that they are bad by virtue of depending on my ignorance. That’s less clear to me.
You and Esar both: Taboo ‘creepy’? Particularly with an eye to ‘why is it important that this situation evokes this emotion’?
Well, I think it’s important because IMHO that negative emotional response is what underlies the (incorrect) description of the corresponding behavior as unethical. But I expect Esar would find that implausible.
‘Taboo with an eye to this question’, not ‘answer this question’. I’d already noticed the pattern that people consider finding something creepy to be sufficient reason to label it unethical, but that observation isn’t useful for very much beyond predicting other peoples’ labeling habits.
Oh, I see.
Sorry, misunderstood.
I could replace “creepy” everywhere it appears with “emotionally disquieting”, but I’m not sure what that would help. I figured using the same language Esar was using would be helpful, but I may well have been wrong.
I’ll put it simply: if someone asks me about my kids, neither to be polite nor because they care, but because they want to change the way I behave, then they’re (in most cases) being manipulative and insincere. While perhaps they’re not wronging me, per se, it’s certainly not something that speaks well of them, ethically speaking. If you find this controversial, then you surprise me.
It would be bad advice, I think, to encourage people to use positive reinforcement on others when their ignorance is necessary for it to be effective. Not just practically bad advice, as people are pretty good at picking up on fake friendliness. But full stop ethically damaging advice, if taken seriously. I’m not saying that every such case is going to be unethical, but I’m not in the business of lawlike ethical principles anyway.
No, what I said was that behaviors which depend on someone’s ignorance for their effectiveness are often also bad behaviors. I didn’t say anything one way or the other about a stricter relation between the two properties, but I’ll say now that I don’t think they’re unrelated.
I agree that asking you about your kids solely to change your behavior is manipulative.
I also agree that it’s insincere. (Which is an entirely distinct thing.)
I would also say that asking you about your kids solely to be polite is insincere.
I would not agree that any of these are necessarily unethical.
I am not quite sure what you mean by “ethically damaging advice.”
I agree with you that it’s not always unethical to positively reinforce others without their knowledge.
I would agree that “Positively reinforcing others without their knowledge is a good thing to do, do it constantly” is advice that, if taken seriously, would often lead me to perform unethical acts. I can accept calling it unethical advice for that reason, I suppose.
But I also think that “Positively reinforcing others without their knowledge is a bad thing to do, never do it.” is unethical advice in the same (somewhat unclear) sense.
I agree that behaviors that depend on others’ ignorance are often also bad behaviors.
Behaviors that depend on others’ knowledge are also often bad behaviors.
Agreed on all counts. In fact, it doesn’t look like we disagree at all, judging from your comment.
Oh good!
When you started out by saying “never do this,” I concluded otherwise.
I’m pleased to discover I was wrong.
Well, I think I’d stand by what I said originally. Though I guess I’m counting on no one reading that as the exceptionless proposition ‘for all x such that x is a case of using positive reinforcement without someone’s knowledge, x is unethical’. Likewise, if someone asked me, I’d say ‘Don’t ever shoplift, it’s unethical.’ Though I wouldn’t want or expect anyone to read that as ‘all cases of shoplifting are, without exception, unethical.’
OK. I apologize for misunderstanding your original comment.
Quite alright, I’ve enjoyed the discussion.
What do you think being polite is?
I think it’s false to suggest that pleasantries are being outright faked. This person is probably not sitting there going, “Oh, woe is me, I have to pay the horrible price of smiling and being nice to these imbeciles in order to make them give me what I want; I would never do that otherwise.” In fact, why would he even want his coworkers to visit his desk more if he had such utter contempt for them that he had to fake affection wholesale?
Rather, like many people, there’s a part of him which would probably like to be a nicer person overall, but he can’t always bring himself to live up to the ideal. “People will visit my desk more” is a good immediate incentive to be a better person. The coworker who wants more people to visit their desk is also affected by the results of his own behavior. He’ll probably be happier because of the visitations, and his happiness would cause him to smile more, and the very act of smiling would make him even more happy. After a while the “initial motivation,” whether it was 100% selfish “I want people to visit my desk more; damn their own desires” or the 100% altruistic “I want to manipulate myself into being a nicer person,” or, more likely, a mixture of the two, has faded away, and all that remains is the slightly modified, more pleasant person.
I don’t understand how using friendly behavior to reinforce people visiting one’s desk precludes that behavior being genuine. You seem to be dismissing the possibility that the person in question feels real affection, and is smiling because they are in fact happy that their desk is being visited. Just because they are using their (real) positive response to coworkers visiting their desk as positive reinforcement doesn’t mean that their behavior is “fake” in any way.
Just like a woman who feels a surge of affection towards her husband when he puts away the laundry, and kisses or praises him.
Yes, it’s positive reinforcement, but it’s also a genuine response.