There are all sorts of different domains in which we have those different boundaries. If the above were a representation of people’s feelings about personal space, then the person on the left would probably be big into hugs and slaps-on-the-shoulder, while the one on the right might not be comfortable sharing an elevator with more than one other person (if that).
If the above were a representation of, say, people’s openness to criticism, then the person on the left probably wouldn’t mind if you told them their presentation sucked, in front of an audience of their friends, colleagues, and potential romantic partners. Meanwhile, the person on the right would probably prefer that you send a private message checking to see whether they were even interested in critical feedback at this time.
Can we abandon one dimensional continuums as models for everything? (They work well for one thing! They’re awful everywhere else. As a ‘representation of people’s feelings about personal space’ it didn’t need an explanation—it was simple to extrapolate. Then you added more dimensions that don’t collapse well.)
Some people like hugs.
Some people don’t.
Some people are fine with ‘hugs and slaps’.
Some people are not.
The above also doesn’t do a great job of showing uncertainty in one’s boundaries, which is often substantial. The “grey area” between okay and not okay might be quite small, in some cases (you have a clear, unambiguous “line” that you do not want crossed) and quite wide in others where you’re not sure how you feel, and you might not know exactly where that gradient begins and ends.
While we’re here we might as well review set theory, namely the difference between:
[0, 1] and (0, 1), and maybe cover fuzzy sets as well (whatever those are).
But for any given subculture, it seems to me that society tries to set the boundaries at something like “ninety percent of the present/relevant/participating people will not have their personal boundaries violated.”
might want to emphasize subculture there.
depending on all sorts of factors
It seems like different groups clearly have this set to different thresholds. (4chan might be unusual in this regard, even if it is broadly accurate.)
I suspect some people’s minds will have leapt straight to the (true!) point that
If you wanted to write an essay without so many caveats, you could have talked about ‘boundaries between you and ‘the world″ and gone on about how sometimes you like ‘going on adventures’ where you are fine with that boundary between ‘you and ‘the world’ being different’.
Would that have served the purpose of this essay? Perhaps not.
The only way to tell that a given social boundary violation is benign is to find out, from the individual, whether it in fact failed to violate their personal boundary.
Fair enough. ‘failed’ isn’t an ideal metaphor. The pie thing might be fine as part of a game, once. (You lose the set of matches, pie to the face. The winner gets to...eat a pie. Normally.)
Yet another way is to say that if it did, in fact, cross your personal boundary, then it was by definition not benign in the sense intended here.
This is a different place from where this essay seemed like it was going at the start:
I said (among other things) that I’d really enjoy some benign boundary violations.
Perhaps the terminology could be refined further, to make that more clear.
I predict that nonzero readers will be something-like offended, or perhaps alarmed, that I’m trying to crystallize a concept like “benign boundary violation” at all, since it could e.g. be abused to give cover to those other, worse things.
I object to the terminology—it’s not clear.
Examples like ‘me and [friend name] like giving each other really hard high fives for fun. (but not too hard)’ are easy to get.
(remember, the fact that they are benign for me does not imply they are generally so):
I’d have added a ‘sometimes’ before the benign.
So they are indeed past the social boundary. But they didn’t violate my boundaries.
This is why the terminology is unclear. ‘boundary violation’ - which ‘boundary’?
but they all seem to dismiss a set of costs as not-being-costs, rather than properly weighing and accounting for them.
You could make this specific—costs to you.
For example: “Why don’t people just ask you if you’re chill with being hit with water balloons, and then ever after they can hit you with water balloons?”
‘What do you want for your party?’
‘Let’s have a waterballoon fight, etc.’
it’s still an update in the direction of diminished intimacy.
Do you want a party with fights with water balloons? Or a costume party? (With nerf darts?)
These are somewhat exclusive. Oh no! Choices!
Both, arguably requires more planning—costumes that are good with water (and to run in)...
We haven’t banned Reese’s from all public spaces, even though this is a hardship for people with peanut allergies, because it saves too few at too high a cost.
What public spaces have Reese’s?
(e.g. our society offers martial arts classes, which you can pay for and put into your weekly schedule. It does not offer friendly surprise attacks.)
Seems somewhat doable with pranks?
This is the part where I would like to have suggestions or recommendations or next actions, but I largely don’t. I didn’t anticipate this essay being nearly as fraught as it felt, when I first set out to write it. I thought that I would just say “sometimes it’s nice to be pushed into the pool,” and explain my three reasons why, and that would be that.
Obviously, we need to find a way to combine nerf darts with water in a way that isn’t terrible.
(And meanwhile the ten percent of people
This didn’t seem accurate? Did seem excessive.
Who (plural) like driving at 100 miles an hour?
And as a result, people are a little less creeping and terrified.
creeping?
bailey-and-motte’d
Enter stage right, the court will not accept X as evidence, but they will accept Y. (If a society is cool with a lot of things that aren’t cool, then there may be a sharp discontinuity where once a line is crossed that people know others will have their back, yeah, ‘the pitchforks come out’.)
In my culture. Not in this one. In this one, we don’t seem to have very many medium-sized responses left. We have some responses which average out to medium-sized, in that they’re sometimes huge and usually nothing, but that’s not the same thing.
Ah, is that a rejection I spy, of those utility axioms about which I have heard so much? (Or just ‘small consistent responses are more effective deterrence.’)
(And there are also, I suspect, a lot of people with legitimate medium-sized grievances who are going without justice because the only tools they have at their disposal are frowny-face stickers and hand grenades, and the former doesn’t suffice and the latter feels like overkill.)
And then there’s the problem of what happens next.
I am uncertain what the purpose of this comment is.
(I mean that genuinely, not as like some snide comment. I started reading with the intent to engage and respond, and was unable to figure out what kind of engagement or response was wanted, or even if any was wanted.)
If there’s a prompt for me or others, I missed it, and would appreciate a restatement of it. =)
1. The post communicates its point but the terminology could be better. (Which is probably why there are so many “hedges”.)
Less important:
2. In order to scale up, some things do require opt in/advance notice. Some possibilities are (largely) exclusive of each other. (A costume party and a surprise water balloon fight.) 3. The post mentions different subcultures have different rules, but talks about society boundaries like they are one thing only.
(Purpose:)
Overall, I made notes as I read the post. (This post is fairly straightforward and didn’t need lots of re-reads to understand, but it is kind of long. More complex and long occasionally go together, so I made notes as I went. It’s also useful for more formed thoughts and has a few quotes or points I could go back and re-read, instead of having to skim the whole thing to get back to.)
There’s been a bid elsewhere for “boundaries” to refer exclusively to the individually-specified thing, and “norms” to be used to indicate the social boundary. This … tracks, and seems good, although it leaves out that people e.g. say “Boundaries, Phil, geez!” in reinforcement of social ones, and that the word “norms” refers to many things besides boundaries.
But I don’t object to using those as the terms if enough other people think they make sense.
No disagreement that some things (many, even) require opting in or advance notice.
I think they largely are one-thing-only within a subculture (where e.g. “LW” would count as a subculture, and “LWers who live in California when they meet in person” would count as a somewhat different one). I think there is approximately always, for any given collection of humans in any given time and place, a surprisingly-consistent-across-people sense of what the norms are.
1. Yeah, this is tricky. I didn’t like the terminology, but I didn’t have a replacement. It’s hard to come up with a term for this (for reasons discussed at length in the post). I was looking more at ‘both are ’boundaries″ and disambiguating that it is your boundary (versus the social one) that you are sort of opting in/asking others to work with you to define. (Opting-in (by self) to boundary exploration (of self by others).) ‘Boundary exploration’ still doesn’t sound good, though ‘boundary violation’ sounds worse. Emphasizing the opt-in part in the terminology seems helpful, given that it’s what you want is a surprise, hence it not being ‘someone asks for permission to push you in the pool’.
1⁄2. It seems clear that what you want would involve people asking someone other than the person being surprised. (Like planning a surprise party, or ‘Friend A throws Friend B into the pool in order to splash Friend C during a water fight/similar game’.)
2. Yeah, aside from the issue over all (surprising seems hard to scale)...You were mostly talking about other things, but it kind of sounded like you wanted a surprise party. (Or to be surprised by, not it, but what would happen there.) That seems like it could be
hard to do with a party.
Very dependent on stuff like where you are (versus talking about an abstract topic on LW). (Like, is the weather good enough that, your friends don’t tell you where the party will be, and the day of, they surprise you by*...going to the beach. Or some other place that’s fun for a group, and it’s a surprise.)
*associated details might include, your eyes are covered or closed until you get there etc.
This is a narrower topic than ‘how to handle/negotiate fitting the personal bounds rather than the other one, which is being treated in this post as serving a different purpose’, so I didn’t focus on it more.
Can we abandon one dimensional continuums as models for everything? (They work well for one thing! They’re awful everywhere else. As a ‘representation of people’s feelings about personal space’ it didn’t need an explanation—it was simple to extrapolate. Then you added more dimensions that don’t collapse well.)
Some people like hugs.
Some people don’t.
Some people are fine with ‘hugs and slaps’.
Some people are not.
While we’re here we might as well review set theory, namely the difference between:
[0, 1] and (0, 1), and maybe cover fuzzy sets as well (whatever those are).
might want to emphasize subculture there.
It seems like different groups clearly have this set to different thresholds. (4chan might be unusual in this regard, even if it is broadly accurate.)
If you wanted to write an essay without so many caveats, you could have talked about ‘boundaries between you and ‘the world″ and gone on about how sometimes you like ‘going on adventures’ where you are fine with that boundary between ‘you and ‘the world’ being different’.
Would that have served the purpose of this essay? Perhaps not.
Fair enough. ‘failed’ isn’t an ideal metaphor. The pie thing might be fine as part of a game, once. (You lose the set of matches, pie to the face. The winner gets to...eat a pie. Normally.)
This is a different place from where this essay seemed like it was going at the start:
Perhaps the terminology could be refined further, to make that more clear.
I object to the terminology—it’s not clear.
Examples like ‘me and [friend name] like giving each other really hard high fives for fun. (but not too hard)’ are easy to get.
I’d have added a ‘sometimes’ before the benign.
This is why the terminology is unclear. ‘boundary violation’ - which ‘boundary’?
You could make this specific—costs to you.
‘What do you want for your party?’
‘Let’s have a waterballoon fight, etc.’
Do you want a party with fights with water balloons? Or a costume party? (With nerf darts?)
These are somewhat exclusive. Oh no! Choices!
Both, arguably requires more planning—costumes that are good with water (and to run in)...
What public spaces have Reese’s?
Seems somewhat doable with pranks?
Obviously, we need to find a way to combine nerf darts with water in a way that isn’t terrible.
This didn’t seem accurate? Did seem excessive.
Who (plural) like driving at 100 miles an hour?
creeping?
Enter stage right, the court will not accept X as evidence, but they will accept Y. (If a society is cool with a lot of things that aren’t cool, then there may be a sharp discontinuity where once a line is crossed that people know others will have their back, yeah, ‘the pitchforks come out’.)
Ah, is that a rejection I spy, of those utility axioms about which I have heard so much? (Or just ‘small consistent responses are more effective deterrence.’)
And then there’s the problem of what happens next.
What if it’s going a little fast on a bike (with pedals) instead of a car?
I am uncertain what the purpose of this comment is.
(I mean that genuinely, not as like some snide comment. I started reading with the intent to engage and respond, and was unable to figure out what kind of engagement or response was wanted, or even if any was wanted.)
If there’s a prompt for me or others, I missed it, and would appreciate a restatement of it. =)
(Prompt:)
The important part would be:
1. The post communicates its point but the terminology could be better. (Which is probably why there are so many “hedges”.)
Less important:
2. In order to scale up, some things do require opt in/advance notice. Some possibilities are (largely) exclusive of each other. (A costume party and a surprise water balloon fight.)
3. The post mentions different subcultures have different rules, but talks about society boundaries like they are one thing only.
(Purpose:)
Overall, I made notes as I read the post. (This post is fairly straightforward and didn’t need lots of re-reads to understand, but it is kind of long. More complex and long occasionally go together, so I made notes as I went. It’s also useful for more formed thoughts and has a few quotes or points I could go back and re-read, instead of having to skim the whole thing to get back to.)
(Thanks)
There’s been a bid elsewhere for “boundaries” to refer exclusively to the individually-specified thing, and “norms” to be used to indicate the social boundary. This … tracks, and seems good, although it leaves out that people e.g. say “Boundaries, Phil, geez!” in reinforcement of social ones, and that the word “norms” refers to many things besides boundaries.
But I don’t object to using those as the terms if enough other people think they make sense.
No disagreement that some things (many, even) require opting in or advance notice.
I think they largely are one-thing-only within a subculture (where e.g. “LW” would count as a subculture, and “LWers who live in California when they meet in person” would count as a somewhat different one). I think there is approximately always, for any given collection of humans in any given time and place, a surprisingly-consistent-across-people sense of what the norms are.
1. Yeah, this is tricky. I didn’t like the terminology, but I didn’t have a replacement. It’s hard to come up with a term for this (for reasons discussed at length in the post). I was looking more at ‘both are ’boundaries″ and disambiguating that it is your boundary (versus the social one) that you are sort of opting in/asking others to work with you to define. (Opting-in (by self) to boundary exploration (of self by others).) ‘Boundary exploration’ still doesn’t sound good, though ‘boundary violation’ sounds worse. Emphasizing the opt-in part in the terminology seems helpful, given that it’s what you want is a surprise, hence it not being ‘someone asks for permission to push you in the pool’.
1⁄2. It seems clear that what you want would involve people asking someone other than the person being surprised. (Like planning a surprise party, or ‘Friend A throws Friend B into the pool in order to splash Friend C during a water fight/similar game’.)
2. Yeah, aside from the issue over all (surprising seems hard to scale)...You were mostly talking about other things, but it kind of sounded like you wanted a surprise party. (Or to be surprised by, not it, but what would happen there.) That seems like it could be
hard to do with a party.
Very dependent on stuff like where you are (versus talking about an abstract topic on LW). (Like, is the weather good enough that, your friends don’t tell you where the party will be, and the day of, they surprise you by*...going to the beach. Or some other place that’s fun for a group, and it’s a surprise.)
*associated details might include, your eyes are covered or closed until you get there etc.
This is a narrower topic than ‘how to handle/negotiate fitting the personal bounds rather than the other one, which is being treated in this post as serving a different purpose’, so I didn’t focus on it more.
3. That makes sense.