(Epistemic status: Contains use of the trolley problem, eventually / the whole time, so what do you expect?)
(I’m aware that there are a lot of good, practical reasons to try and figure out whether someone likes you, and that many of these inform the weird extra-importance we place on knowing for sure that we’re liked. Try to ignore those strictly practical reasons, if you can, in favour of thinking about why and how we should worry what our friends think on principle)
You are travelling through time when you notice that one of your relationships is heading towards...a hangout? Maybe? Looking back, you had foreseen a hangout at around this time every week, and steered towards it, and it seems again like there is a potential hangout ahead. You like hangouts, so you begin to type up a request to your relationship co-pilot to steer your mutual relationship towards the hangout, but something compels you to stop just before sending it.
It occurs to you that maybe you don’t actually have to make a request? Maybe the hangout will occur without you having to do anything at all this time? After all, your hangout requests have been mostly approved so far, and, having arrived at the requested hangouts, and engaged in the associated hangings out, they all seemed pleasant and genial for both you and your co-pilot. Perhaps your co-pilot, to whom you have been making these hangout requests, does also foresee this hangout, and does also wants to steer towards it. Perhaps they will make a request to you this time to steer towards the hangout.
That, you think, would actually be kind of nice. There’s always a bit of tension when you make a request to your relationship’s co-pilot; you always worry that they’ll say no. True, they’ve agreed many times before (and when they haven’t their justifications have seemed unrelated to your mutual relationship), but still you wonder: what if this time they say no to your request?
That would suck! You quite like when your relationship leads to these hangouts, and you don’t think it’s just you; it seems like your co-pilot has liked them as well, like they genuinely enjoy piloting this relationship with you. That said, you’re not their only co-pilot, nor they yours. Both of you pilot many other relationships, relationships which you co-pilot with other people, relationships which occasionally require your attention at the occasional expense of your relationship with this particular co-pilot. Might it be asking too much of your co-pilot to constantly steer towards these hangouts?
It’s not like you need these hangouts to pilot your mutual relationship. At least you don’t think so. Sure they’re nice, really nice even, but the relationship is worthwhile even without them. You could live without them, you suppose. At the same time, they’re nice for you, really nice even, and well worth the extra time they require you to devote to this relationship. Again you remind yourself that you seem to recall these hangouts being nice for both of you, that by all appearances they have only strengthened and improved the quality of you and your co-pilot’s relationship.
But you can’t help thinking that maybe you’re wrong about that. Maybe your co-pilot doesn’t the same way at all. Maybe they are happy enough with your relationship, but feel like they need to keep accepting these hangout requests or else you’ll abandon the relationship entirely (You don’t think you’d do that. Well, you’re not sure.). Maybe your co-pilot feels guilted into it, has this whole time, and only accepts your request to steer towards the hangout because it’s not as bad as the awkwardness that would certainly arise between you from them refusing it outright, from them making explicit the disparity in how much you two value this relationship.
Thinking of it that way, you are suddenly reluctant to make the request at all. Sure, you are fairly confident that if you request to steer towards the hangout then that request will be accepted, and that if it isn’t accepted the reason why not will have nothing to do with you. You’re even fairly sure that your co-pilot enjoys the hangouts as much as you do, and values this relationship about as much as you do, and so would probably make the same request that you would, if it seems like you aren’t going to steer towards the hangout naturally.
But maybe they wouldn’t make the request. You just aren’t certain, and oh, wouldn’t it be so nice to have this extra bit of evidence, this extra little data point saying something more about your relationship, about you and your co-pilot’s mutual commitment to it and your shared values? Even if they don’t make the same request to you, that’s useful evidence too! Either way, you’ll learn something about your relationship, and isn’t that kind of the whole point of a relationship? For its co-pilots to learn about eachother?
And yet...
If you don’t make the request, and they don’t make the request, then how, in that highly unlikely, basically hypothetical event, do you proceed? Not only will you not get to hangout, now you’ll know that they didn’t want to hangout. Maybe they never wanted to hangout. Now everytime you request to steer towards a hangout, you’ll know in the back of your mind that they don’t want this. This is something you need to force, maybe something you’ll need to force forever.
Or maybe you could just...forget about this stressful dynamic altogether. It’s so convoluted and conditional, not to mention painful, why not just ignore it, and continue making requests and enjoying the hangouts that usually follow? The point of hanging out is that it’s enjoyable, and that’s not a product of your co-pilot wanting it too, or wanting it just as much as you, or wanting it out of their pure devotion to you, their treasured co-pilot. The enjoyment you get from these hangouts is just a consequence of the things you do together in that time.
Knowing your co-pilot’s true feelings might make those hangouts worse, or make them stop forever, and with no perceivable benefit. If their true feelings aren’t what you want, why should you care? They appear to like you and enjoy hanging out already, and that has led to many fun hangouts, and a rewarding relationship. Why risk it?
You realize you’ve been thinking about this for a long time, and look up. The chance to steer your relationship towards a hangout is coming up quickly. As it happens, your co-pilot hasn’t made any hangout request to you, but you try to ignore that. You know that waiting much longer might jeapordize your mutual ability to steer towards the hangout at all, so it’s time to decide. What are you going to do? Will you make the request, or will you wait and see what happens?
~~~
In other words, do you make make a request (not pull the lever) ensuring the greatest likelihood of your hangout, or do you wait to see if your co-pilot will do it (pull the lever) on the basis that there is also some importance to whether or not you should enjoy the hangout, and you need to know about it to keep hanging out?
The central problem here doesn’t seem to me to be whether or not it’s good to know what’s true (like, c’mon. I’m not that new...) but whether in this instance, and similar instances, whether there’s some kind of deontological matter of principle that ought to compel us to seek out our friends’ true opinions, or if that’s just a rationalization we arrive at out of our own insecurity.
Put in a less behaviourist, more truth-seeking framing, to what extent do we need to seek out new evidence to update our beliefs? Is there not a tradeoff between enjoying a thing for its own sake versus knowing that you are justified in your enjoyment of it? How do you make the calculation?
Being Likened to a Trolley Problem
(Epistemic status: Contains use of the trolley problem, eventually / the whole time, so what do you expect?)
(I’m aware that there are a lot of good, practical reasons to try and figure out whether someone likes you, and that many of these inform the weird extra-importance we place on knowing for sure that we’re liked. Try to ignore those strictly practical reasons, if you can, in favour of thinking about why and how we should worry what our friends think on principle)
You are travelling through time when you notice that one of your relationships is heading towards...a hangout? Maybe? Looking back, you had foreseen a hangout at around this time every week, and steered towards it, and it seems again like there is a potential hangout ahead. You like hangouts, so you begin to type up a request to your relationship co-pilot to steer your mutual relationship towards the hangout, but something compels you to stop just before sending it.
It occurs to you that maybe you don’t actually have to make a request? Maybe the hangout will occur without you having to do anything at all this time? After all, your hangout requests have been mostly approved so far, and, having arrived at the requested hangouts, and engaged in the associated hangings out, they all seemed pleasant and genial for both you and your co-pilot. Perhaps your co-pilot, to whom you have been making these hangout requests, does also foresee this hangout, and does also wants to steer towards it. Perhaps they will make a request to you this time to steer towards the hangout.
That, you think, would actually be kind of nice. There’s always a bit of tension when you make a request to your relationship’s co-pilot; you always worry that they’ll say no. True, they’ve agreed many times before (and when they haven’t their justifications have seemed unrelated to your mutual relationship), but still you wonder: what if this time they say no to your request?
That would suck! You quite like when your relationship leads to these hangouts, and you don’t think it’s just you; it seems like your co-pilot has liked them as well, like they genuinely enjoy piloting this relationship with you. That said, you’re not their only co-pilot, nor they yours. Both of you pilot many other relationships, relationships which you co-pilot with other people, relationships which occasionally require your attention at the occasional expense of your relationship with this particular co-pilot. Might it be asking too much of your co-pilot to constantly steer towards these hangouts?
It’s not like you need these hangouts to pilot your mutual relationship. At least you don’t think so. Sure they’re nice, really nice even, but the relationship is worthwhile even without them. You could live without them, you suppose. At the same time, they’re nice for you, really nice even, and well worth the extra time they require you to devote to this relationship. Again you remind yourself that you seem to recall these hangouts being nice for both of you, that by all appearances they have only strengthened and improved the quality of you and your co-pilot’s relationship.
But you can’t help thinking that maybe you’re wrong about that. Maybe your co-pilot doesn’t the same way at all. Maybe they are happy enough with your relationship, but feel like they need to keep accepting these hangout requests or else you’ll abandon the relationship entirely (You don’t think you’d do that. Well, you’re not sure.). Maybe your co-pilot feels guilted into it, has this whole time, and only accepts your request to steer towards the hangout because it’s not as bad as the awkwardness that would certainly arise between you from them refusing it outright, from them making explicit the disparity in how much you two value this relationship.
Thinking of it that way, you are suddenly reluctant to make the request at all. Sure, you are fairly confident that if you request to steer towards the hangout then that request will be accepted, and that if it isn’t accepted the reason why not will have nothing to do with you. You’re even fairly sure that your co-pilot enjoys the hangouts as much as you do, and values this relationship about as much as you do, and so would probably make the same request that you would, if it seems like you aren’t going to steer towards the hangout naturally.
But maybe they wouldn’t make the request. You just aren’t certain, and oh, wouldn’t it be so nice to have this extra bit of evidence, this extra little data point saying something more about your relationship, about you and your co-pilot’s mutual commitment to it and your shared values? Even if they don’t make the same request to you, that’s useful evidence too! Either way, you’ll learn something about your relationship, and isn’t that kind of the whole point of a relationship? For its co-pilots to learn about eachother?
And yet...
If you don’t make the request, and they don’t make the request, then how, in that highly unlikely, basically hypothetical event, do you proceed? Not only will you not get to hangout, now you’ll know that they didn’t want to hangout. Maybe they never wanted to hangout. Now everytime you request to steer towards a hangout, you’ll know in the back of your mind that they don’t want this. This is something you need to force, maybe something you’ll need to force forever.
Or maybe you could just...forget about this stressful dynamic altogether. It’s so convoluted and conditional, not to mention painful, why not just ignore it, and continue making requests and enjoying the hangouts that usually follow? The point of hanging out is that it’s enjoyable, and that’s not a product of your co-pilot wanting it too, or wanting it just as much as you, or wanting it out of their pure devotion to you, their treasured co-pilot. The enjoyment you get from these hangouts is just a consequence of the things you do together in that time.
Knowing your co-pilot’s true feelings might make those hangouts worse, or make them stop forever, and with no perceivable benefit. If their true feelings aren’t what you want, why should you care? They appear to like you and enjoy hanging out already, and that has led to many fun hangouts, and a rewarding relationship. Why risk it?
You realize you’ve been thinking about this for a long time, and look up. The chance to steer your relationship towards a hangout is coming up quickly. As it happens, your co-pilot hasn’t made any hangout request to you, but you try to ignore that. You know that waiting much longer might jeapordize your mutual ability to steer towards the hangout at all, so it’s time to decide. What are you going to do? Will you make the request, or will you wait and see what happens?
~~~
In other words, do you make make a request (not pull the lever) ensuring the greatest likelihood of your hangout, or do you wait to see if your co-pilot will do it (pull the lever) on the basis that there is also some importance to whether or not you should enjoy the hangout, and you need to know about it to keep hanging out?
The central problem here doesn’t seem to me to be whether or not it’s good to know what’s true (like, c’mon. I’m not that new...) but whether in this instance, and similar instances, whether there’s some kind of deontological matter of principle that ought to compel us to seek out our friends’ true opinions, or if that’s just a rationalization we arrive at out of our own insecurity.
Put in a less behaviourist, more truth-seeking framing, to what extent do we need to seek out new evidence to update our beliefs? Is there not a tradeoff between enjoying a thing for its own sake versus knowing that you are justified in your enjoyment of it? How do you make the calculation?