I think this post successfully got me to notice this phenomena when I do it, at least sometimes.
For me, the canonical example here is “how clean exactly are we supposed to keep the apartment?”, where there’s just a huge array of how much effort (and how much ambient clutter) is considered normal.
I notice that, while I had previously read both Setting the Default and Choosing the Zero Point, this post seemed to do a very different thing (this is especially weird because it seems like structurally it’s making the exact same argument as Setting the Default).
I think part of this was because some of the examples were things I had done (where I thought the situation was somewhat more complex than the abstraction Duncan included here, but where ‘setting the zero point’ was still clearly an important part of what was going on). I’m not sure if the post would have landed if I hadn’t had more concrete arguments about specific instances that gave me a lot more handholds on what it’s like to set a zero point.
Regardless, I think this post is more specifically pointed at “help the reader understand when they might have done this, in a dark-artsy way”, then the previous Scott post.
I think… it’s both true that people don’t notice zero-point-setting and it has Manipulative nature to it, but also I think cultures having zero-points is probably kinda important (from a “have relatively simple structures that people can rely on” standpoint), and I’m interested in followup work that tries to synthesize that with “but also, zero points are made up and sneaky”.
I think this post successfully got me to notice this phenomena when I do it, at least sometimes.
For me, the canonical example here is “how clean exactly are we supposed to keep the apartment?”, where there’s just a huge array of how much effort (and how much ambient clutter) is considered normal.
I notice that, while I had previously read both Setting the Default and Choosing the Zero Point, this post seemed to do a very different thing (this is especially weird because it seems like structurally it’s making the exact same argument as Setting the Default).
I think part of this was because some of the examples were things I had done (where I thought the situation was somewhat more complex than the abstraction Duncan included here, but where ‘setting the zero point’ was still clearly an important part of what was going on). I’m not sure if the post would have landed if I hadn’t had more concrete arguments about specific instances that gave me a lot more handholds on what it’s like to set a zero point.
Regardless, I think this post is more specifically pointed at “help the reader understand when they might have done this, in a dark-artsy way”, then the previous Scott post.
Rereading this post + Scott’s also reminds me of John Wentworth’s The Prototypical Negotiation Game, and Parable of the Dammed, which are about the cultural processes for changing zero points.
I think… it’s both true that people don’t notice zero-point-setting and it has Manipulative nature to it, but also I think cultures having zero-points is probably kinda important (from a “have relatively simple structures that people can rely on” standpoint), and I’m interested in followup work that tries to synthesize that with “but also, zero points are made up and sneaky”.