I didn’t respond to this at the time because I was crunching for the Unconference, but wanted to follow up and say:
I think all the frameworks you mention are good frameworks (FYI, there was a Circling workshop at the Unconference). There is a sense in which I think they are better designed than Ask or Guess culture, mostly by virtue of having been designed on purpose at all instead of randomly cobbled together by social evolution, as well as by virtue of “it’s clear that you’re supposed to actually practice them instead of just adopting them blindly.”
But also think your take on NVC here is making a similar reference class of mistake to the people who are dismissing any particular Ask/Guess/Interrupt/whatever culture. The system works for you, but it’s not going to work for everyone. (I know some people that find NVC and Circling infuriating. A counterpoint is that their descriptions of NVC/Circling involve people ‘doing it wrong’ (i.e. end up using it passive aggressively, or manipulatively). But THEIR counterpoint to that is that you can’t trust people to actually know what they’re doing with these techniques, or not to misuse them)
One of the main thesis of this post was supposed to be “all these other ways of being that seem stupid or crazy to you have actual reasons that people like them, that you can’t just round off as ‘some people like dumb things’. If you want to be socially successful, you need to understand what’s going on and why a person would actually want [or not want] these things.”
But also think your take on NVC here is making a similar reference class of mistake to the people who are dismissing any particular Ask/Guess/Interrupt/whatever culture. The system works for you, but it’s not going to work for everyone.
My argument has nothing to do with NVC working for me. NVC is not a system in which I’m well trained nor that I advocate this community to do more NVC. I explicitly said so in my post, but you still make that objection because it’s an easy objection to make you can make without addressing the substance of my argument.
A counterpoint is that their descriptions of NVC/Circling involve people ‘doing it wrong’ (i.e. end up using it passive aggressively, or manipulatively).
Often descriptions are not simply ‘doing it wrong’ in the sense of using it ‘passive aggressively or manipulatively’ but rather providing example where they think the example describes NVC but which violates core NVC concepts.
I remember a tumbler post providing an example where a person said “I feel violated” in a passive-aggressive way. They thought that the example illustrates a person expressing their feelings. In NVC “I feel violated” is not an expression of a real feeling. It’s not complicated to see that it isn’t for a person who went far enough into NVC to have read and understand the book but a single blog post like the WikiHow post.
But THEIR counterpoint to that is that you can’t trust people to actually know what they’re doing with these techniques,
I agree in the sense that you can’t trust a person who read a blog post about NVC to know what they are doing when they try to do NVC. The same goes for many people who read the book and various seminars on Youtube.
You generally need in-person training to transfer these kinds of skills in a way where you can trust that the learner knows what they are doing. Teacher quality does matter, but if you have a decent teacher the students also can learn what they are doing.
Reading the WikiHow post and trying to follow it’s scripts can work but it can also end up in cargo-culting NVC.
One of the main thesis of this post was supposed to be “all these other ways of being that seem stupid or crazy to you have actual reasons that people like them, that you can’t just round off as ‘some people like dumb things’.
Yes, there are many ideas that have actual reasons why people like them. Astrology is liked by many people. I can have a debate about why people like astrology but it’s a very different debate from the debate about whether more rationalists should adopt astrology.
If you want to be socially successful, you need to understand what’s going on and why a person would actually want [or not want] these things.”
That seems to me like a fairly trivial intuitive idea. I would guess that the idea seems intuitively true to many rationalists.
At the same time I don’t think you have provided a decent argument for it being true. You spent no effort into investigating the counter-thesis or provided any empiric evidence for the claim.
To use your Harry Potter framing, the idea that understanding is necessary to be successful is a Ravenclaw idea. I do believe that understanding is helpful or I wouldn’t be on LessWrong but I think there are plenty of people who are socially successful who don’t understand very much. Their charisma along with engaging in high status behavior can sometimes be enough.
I retract my “to be socially successful, you must X” point—it’s obviously false, plenty of people are socially successful without understanding much of anything.
I think there was a different point I was trying to make, which was more like: “I see people actively dismissing some of these conversational styles and the accompanying skills required for them, and I see that having explicit impacts on how the rationality community is perceived, (which ends up painting all of us with a “overconfident, unfriendly and bad at social grace” brush) which is making it harder for our good ideas to be accepted.”
So I think my argument is something like a) I think this specific cluster of people (who are Ravenclaws) are dismissing something because they don’t understand it and this is having bad effects, and b) in addition to the bad effects, it’s just irritating to me to see people preoccupied with truth to dismiss something that they don’t understand. (this latter point should NOT be universally compelling but may happen to be compelling to the people I’m complaining about)
My argument has nothing to do with NVC working for me
The specific point I was responding to was “All this talk about cultures doesn’t change whether social interaction feels draining or feels like it is giving you energy. If you however, do nonviolent communication decently that experience usually won’t feel draining.” This seemed explicitly born out of your experience and doesn’t seem obviously true to me (it hasn’t been my experience—I’ve gotten good things out of NVC but ‘communication that wasn’t draining’ wasn’t one of them).
without addressing the substance of my argument.
I’m… actually not sure I understand what your argument actually was. I read it as saying “metaframework X isn’t a good framework for discussing how to communicate. Metaramework Y is better.” (With metaframework Y loosely pointing at the cluster of things shared by Circling, NVC and others).
I think you provided evidence those frameworks are useful. (I agree, I’ve personally used two of them, and do think the cluster they are a part of is an important piece of the overall puzzle). I don’t think those frameworks accomplish the same set of things as the things I was mostly talking about it in this post, and if that was an important piece of your point I don’t think you provided much evidence for it.
This seemed explicitly born out of your experience and doesn’t seem obviously true to me
My personal hypothesis on the subject is that social interaction often feels draining for people because they inhibit their emotions. If Bob worries about what Alice thinks of him and doesn’t express the emotion there’s a good chance that he will feel drained after the interaction.
That hypothesis is backed by personal experience in the sense that when I’m anxious about a social action and suppressed that emotion that’s a draining social interaction. It’s also supported by a bunch more theoretic arguments.
Then there’s the hypothesis that well done NVC resolves the emotion. That’s again a hypothesis build on some experience and a bunch of theory about emotions.
You do reveal your needs by saying “I like being clever. I like pursuing ambitious goals.” That’s nice but I imagine that it’s mean to say that you run project Hufflepuff simply because you like being clever and you like to pursue ambitious projects.
I imagine that you do feel a desire to have a community that’s nicer to each other and that feels more connected to each other, however you don’t explicitly express that desire in your post.
This suggests to me that the NVC rhetorical moves aren’t deeply ingrained in your communication habits. Given that they aren’t deeply ingrained I would expect that it frequently happens in communications that you feel something and don’t express the feeling or the needs and afterwards feel drained.
If you actually spent a decent amount of time in NVC workshops, that would be interesting to know and might cause me to update in the direction of NVC being a framework that’s harder to use in practice.
I’m… actually not sure I understand what your argument actually was. I read it as saying “metaframework X isn’t a good framework for discussing how to communicate. Metaramework Y is better.” (With metaframework Y loosely pointing at the cluster of things shared by Circling, NVC and others).
The point was frameworks that are based on empiric experience, where there are exercises that have been refined for years are better than a framework like ask/guess culture that’s basically about an observation that’s turned into a blog post. Even when the blog post has been written by an respected community member and the framework with years of refining through practice is created by an outsider, the framework with longer history is still preferable.
This seemed explicitly born out of your experience and doesn’t seem obviously true to me
My personal hypothesis on the subject is that social interaction often feels draining for people because they inhibit their emotions. If Bob worries about what Alice thinks of him and doesn’t express the emotion there’s a good chance that he will feel drained after the interaction.
That hypothesis is backed by personal experience in the sense that when I’m anxious about a social action and suppressed that emotion that’s a draining social interaction.
It’s also supported by a bunch more theoretic arguments.
If I
My argument
I’m… actually not sure I understand what your argument actually was. I read it as saying “metaframework X isn’t a good framework for discussing how to communicate. Metaramework Y is better.” (With metaframework Y loosely pointing at the cluster of things shared by Circling, NVC and others).
The point was metaframeworks that are based on empiric experience, where there are exercises that have been refined for years are better than a framework like ask/guess culture that’s basically about an observation that’s turned into a blog post.
I didn’t respond to this at the time because I was crunching for the Unconference, but wanted to follow up and say:
I think all the frameworks you mention are good frameworks (FYI, there was a Circling workshop at the Unconference). There is a sense in which I think they are better designed than Ask or Guess culture, mostly by virtue of having been designed on purpose at all instead of randomly cobbled together by social evolution, as well as by virtue of “it’s clear that you’re supposed to actually practice them instead of just adopting them blindly.”
But also think your take on NVC here is making a similar reference class of mistake to the people who are dismissing any particular Ask/Guess/Interrupt/whatever culture. The system works for you, but it’s not going to work for everyone. (I know some people that find NVC and Circling infuriating. A counterpoint is that their descriptions of NVC/Circling involve people ‘doing it wrong’ (i.e. end up using it passive aggressively, or manipulatively). But THEIR counterpoint to that is that you can’t trust people to actually know what they’re doing with these techniques, or not to misuse them)
One of the main thesis of this post was supposed to be “all these other ways of being that seem stupid or crazy to you have actual reasons that people like them, that you can’t just round off as ‘some people like dumb things’. If you want to be socially successful, you need to understand what’s going on and why a person would actually want [or not want] these things.”
My argument has nothing to do with NVC working for me. NVC is not a system in which I’m well trained nor that I advocate this community to do more NVC. I explicitly said so in my post, but you still make that objection because it’s an easy objection to make you can make without addressing the substance of my argument.
Often descriptions are not simply ‘doing it wrong’ in the sense of using it ‘passive aggressively or manipulatively’ but rather providing example where they think the example describes NVC but which violates core NVC concepts.
I remember a tumbler post providing an example where a person said “I feel violated” in a passive-aggressive way. They thought that the example illustrates a person expressing their feelings. In NVC “I feel violated” is not an expression of a real feeling. It’s not complicated to see that it isn’t for a person who went far enough into NVC to have read and understand the book but a single blog post like the WikiHow post.
I agree in the sense that you can’t trust a person who read a blog post about NVC to know what they are doing when they try to do NVC. The same goes for many people who read the book and various seminars on Youtube. You generally need in-person training to transfer these kinds of skills in a way where you can trust that the learner knows what they are doing. Teacher quality does matter, but if you have a decent teacher the students also can learn what they are doing.
Reading the WikiHow post and trying to follow it’s scripts can work but it can also end up in cargo-culting NVC.
Yes, there are many ideas that have actual reasons why people like them. Astrology is liked by many people. I can have a debate about why people like astrology but it’s a very different debate from the debate about whether more rationalists should adopt astrology.
That seems to me like a fairly trivial intuitive idea. I would guess that the idea seems intuitively true to many rationalists. At the same time I don’t think you have provided a decent argument for it being true. You spent no effort into investigating the counter-thesis or provided any empiric evidence for the claim.
To use your Harry Potter framing, the idea that understanding is necessary to be successful is a Ravenclaw idea. I do believe that understanding is helpful or I wouldn’t be on LessWrong but I think there are plenty of people who are socially successful who don’t understand very much. Their charisma along with engaging in high status behavior can sometimes be enough.
I retract my “to be socially successful, you must X” point—it’s obviously false, plenty of people are socially successful without understanding much of anything.
I think there was a different point I was trying to make, which was more like: “I see people actively dismissing some of these conversational styles and the accompanying skills required for them, and I see that having explicit impacts on how the rationality community is perceived, (which ends up painting all of us with a “overconfident, unfriendly and bad at social grace” brush) which is making it harder for our good ideas to be accepted.”
So I think my argument is something like a) I think this specific cluster of people (who are Ravenclaws) are dismissing something because they don’t understand it and this is having bad effects, and b) in addition to the bad effects, it’s just irritating to me to see people preoccupied with truth to dismiss something that they don’t understand. (this latter point should NOT be universally compelling but may happen to be compelling to the people I’m complaining about)
The specific point I was responding to was “All this talk about cultures doesn’t change whether social interaction feels draining or feels like it is giving you energy. If you however, do nonviolent communication decently that experience usually won’t feel draining.” This seemed explicitly born out of your experience and doesn’t seem obviously true to me (it hasn’t been my experience—I’ve gotten good things out of NVC but ‘communication that wasn’t draining’ wasn’t one of them).
I’m… actually not sure I understand what your argument actually was. I read it as saying “metaframework X isn’t a good framework for discussing how to communicate. Metaramework Y is better.” (With metaframework Y loosely pointing at the cluster of things shared by Circling, NVC and others).
I think you provided evidence those frameworks are useful. (I agree, I’ve personally used two of them, and do think the cluster they are a part of is an important piece of the overall puzzle). I don’t think those frameworks accomplish the same set of things as the things I was mostly talking about it in this post, and if that was an important piece of your point I don’t think you provided much evidence for it.
That hypothesis is backed by personal experience in the sense that when I’m anxious about a social action and suppressed that emotion that’s a draining social interaction.
It’s also supported by a bunch more theoretic arguments.
Then there’s the hypothesis that well done NVC resolves the emotion. That’s again a hypothesis build on some experience and a bunch of theory about emotions.
To assess whether you practice NVC I might look at a post where you wrote your motivation for this series of blog posts ( http://lesswrong.com/lw/ouc/project_hufflepuff_planting_the_flag/ ) . A person from whom NVC is deeply integrated is likely going to make NVC rhetorical moves.
You do reveal your needs by saying “I like being clever. I like pursuing ambitious goals.” That’s nice but I imagine that it’s mean to say that you run project Hufflepuff simply because you like being clever and you like to pursue ambitious projects. I imagine that you do feel a desire to have a community that’s nicer to each other and that feels more connected to each other, however you don’t explicitly express that desire in your post.
This suggests to me that the NVC rhetorical moves aren’t deeply ingrained in your communication habits. Given that they aren’t deeply ingrained I would expect that it frequently happens in communications that you feel something and don’t express the feeling or the needs and afterwards feel drained.
If you actually spent a decent amount of time in NVC workshops, that would be interesting to know and might cause me to update in the direction of NVC being a framework that’s harder to use in practice.
The point was frameworks that are based on empiric experience, where there are exercises that have been refined for years are better than a framework like ask/guess culture that’s basically about an observation that’s turned into a blog post. Even when the blog post has been written by an respected community member and the framework with years of refining through practice is created by an outsider, the framework with longer history is still preferable.
My personal hypothesis on the subject is that social interaction often feels draining for people because they inhibit their emotions. If Bob worries about what Alice thinks of him and doesn’t express the emotion there’s a good chance that he will feel drained after the interaction.
That hypothesis is backed by personal experience in the sense that when I’m anxious about a social action and suppressed that emotion that’s a draining social interaction. It’s also supported by a bunch more theoretic arguments.
If I
My argument
The point was metaframeworks that are based on empiric experience, where there are exercises that have been refined for years are better than a framework like ask/guess culture that’s basically about an observation that’s turned into a blog post.