I expect that most gossip is… not necessarily false, but at least something innocent taken out of context and exaggerated. Therefore the negative reaction.
The reason is, imagine two people, one verifies the information before passing it on, the other does not. Who will spread more gossip? Or, one person passes on the information exactly as received, the other exaggerates it to make it more interesting. Whose message will spread further? Unsolicited gossip is like clickbait, where the reward is attention. This, for me, is what I imagine first when you say “gossip”.
But there are also other examples. Situations, where people who generally do not gossip, find some information important enough to overcome their habits. “Uhm, guys, I usually don’t comment on other people, but this person you invited for the rationality meetup is a serial killer.” I would pay more attention to that.
There is also a possibility that I would ask about people. “This guy contacted me on Facebook, and proposed to send me $500,000,000 from a Nigerian prince. I see that you also have him among your contacts, can you tell me how much I should trust him?”
And there are also situations when I wish we had more/better gossip, e.g. when I read stories about bad actors in the rationalist community, who gain other people’s trust by being seen with some celebrities and having them among online contacts, only to hurt those who trust them in private, or scam them out of their money. And on one hand I am angry about the naivety of people who trust too much based on very superficial signals, but on the other hand I am angry that this happens repeatedly without someone yelling “hey, this guy is evil, avoid him, and don’t consider him to be one of us despite whatever he might say”.
So, all these things considered, gossip just seems to be a chaotic tool, which can be used for both good and bad, probably more bad than good, but there are moments where you will regret its lack. And probably with more social skills it works better, but that doesn’t seem like our collective strength.
I wonder if gossip could be improved. For example, your suggestion to pass on the entire evidence chain “Alice told me Bob told her Carol told him that David is a serial killer” seems like an improvement (but also difficult to remember; I would need written notes). On the other hand, if David really is a serial killer, then seeing this in my notes may get Carol killed. The chaotic nature may sometimes be a feature, not a bug. In a world where every information is perfectly traced, snitches get eliminated quickly, and then the information flow stops. But in a world where information is not traced, bad actors can introduce false information; not just in the sense “David is a serial killer” when he is not, but also “Carol told me that David is a serial killer” where she did not.
So, it’s complicated, and I don’t have a consistent policy. I trust my friends, sometimes I ask them for information, and sometimes they volunteer information and I listen. But that’s because (a) I already trust them, and (b) I know they share this type of information rarely. If someone talked about people too much, I would doubt their ability to get that much true information. Also, this policy limits me to information my trusted friends have and consider super important to share with me. So, for example, if they know some information important for me, but they don’t know the fact that the information is important to me, it will not get to me. Also, I don’t get the potentially useful information from people who are not my trusted friends. So this is probably far from optimal. And it’s even inconsistent because I would wish to get more information from people I trust, but the reason I trust them is precisely because they do not give too much of this type of information.
I expect that most gossip is… not necessarily false, but at least something innocent taken out of context and exaggerated. Therefore the negative reaction.
The reason is, imagine two people, one verifies the information before passing it on, the other does not. Who will spread more gossip? Or, one person passes on the information exactly as received, the other exaggerates it to make it more interesting. Whose message will spread further? Unsolicited gossip is like clickbait, where the reward is attention. This, for me, is what I imagine first when you say “gossip”.
But there are also other examples. Situations, where people who generally do not gossip, find some information important enough to overcome their habits. “Uhm, guys, I usually don’t comment on other people, but this person you invited for the rationality meetup is a serial killer.” I would pay more attention to that.
There is also a possibility that I would ask about people. “This guy contacted me on Facebook, and proposed to send me $500,000,000 from a Nigerian prince. I see that you also have him among your contacts, can you tell me how much I should trust him?”
And there are also situations when I wish we had more/better gossip, e.g. when I read stories about bad actors in the rationalist community, who gain other people’s trust by being seen with some celebrities and having them among online contacts, only to hurt those who trust them in private, or scam them out of their money. And on one hand I am angry about the naivety of people who trust too much based on very superficial signals, but on the other hand I am angry that this happens repeatedly without someone yelling “hey, this guy is evil, avoid him, and don’t consider him to be one of us despite whatever he might say”.
So, all these things considered, gossip just seems to be a chaotic tool, which can be used for both good and bad, probably more bad than good, but there are moments where you will regret its lack. And probably with more social skills it works better, but that doesn’t seem like our collective strength.
I wonder if gossip could be improved. For example, your suggestion to pass on the entire evidence chain “Alice told me Bob told her Carol told him that David is a serial killer” seems like an improvement (but also difficult to remember; I would need written notes). On the other hand, if David really is a serial killer, then seeing this in my notes may get Carol killed. The chaotic nature may sometimes be a feature, not a bug. In a world where every information is perfectly traced, snitches get eliminated quickly, and then the information flow stops. But in a world where information is not traced, bad actors can introduce false information; not just in the sense “David is a serial killer” when he is not, but also “Carol told me that David is a serial killer” where she did not.
So, it’s complicated, and I don’t have a consistent policy. I trust my friends, sometimes I ask them for information, and sometimes they volunteer information and I listen. But that’s because (a) I already trust them, and (b) I know they share this type of information rarely. If someone talked about people too much, I would doubt their ability to get that much true information. Also, this policy limits me to information my trusted friends have and consider super important to share with me. So, for example, if they know some information important for me, but they don’t know the fact that the information is important to me, it will not get to me. Also, I don’t get the potentially useful information from people who are not my trusted friends. So this is probably far from optimal. And it’s even inconsistent because I would wish to get more information from people I trust, but the reason I trust them is precisely because they do not give too much of this type of information.