So the main issue, it seems, is that respecting confidentiality of some shared information may actually require a lot of effort, if it comes into conflict with the drive to behave morally. And manipulation in such cases then is bestowing this burden on a person without their informed consent, right?
One related problems is that consent is tricky – Dave explicitly asked for consent, but if I had been older/wiser I’d have been more hesitant to say “yes”, or given them the “I reserve right to carefully share the information if I feel like Dave is manipulating me” schpiel. I just hadn’t realized some of consequences to consenting. (You could call this “getting informed consent” is difficult, but that still feels slightly off.)
I don’t get a clear idea of what you mean by “manipulation” from your post, and I would be uncomfortable using this word as self-evident. “Making someone do something without their informed consent” seems like a reasonable attempt at a definition to me.
A concrete example: I had a friend of a friend in an abusive relationship. They eventually got out of it, but later resumed contact with their abuser, who explicitly asked them for secrecy about the contact out of concern for their privacy. This prevented the victim’s friends from intervening, to the victim’s detriment.
[Obviously this is a pretty personal story. The victim has blessed the general case of sharing information like this, and I don’t care about the abuser]
Your friend’s case seems to be very clear cut, and the root issue is not some vague manipulation or secrecy, but the actual abuse that, I assume, continued through their interaction.
Describing “the thing I mean by manipulation” correctly is unfortunately really tricky, specifically because manipulators use a bunch of tricks to make it hard to pin down. (This can be done intentionally or unintentionally)
I think Aella’s recent post on Frame Control attempts to give one explanation, but I have some disagreements with the exact ontology there. (i.e. I think ‘frame control’ makes most sense to be a somewhat general term for controlling frames in any fashion, whether harmful or not, whether a big deal or not. Frame control is one of the primary tools that go into manipulation, but not the only one)
I think there is a third category worth subtly distinguishing from frame control and manipulation, which is “a particular kind of psychological damage, which is often related to frame control / manipulation”.
I do acknowledge that there’s a bunch more writing/clarification around manipulation-and-related-topics before I feel like I really understand it or that I’d advocate other people use the concept if they didn’t already have a strong sense that it was useful. But I know enough people who’ve experience some flavor of manipulation that I think we can roughly point at the cluster while talking about related concepts.
Describing “the thing I mean by manipulation” correctly is unfortunately really tricky
Significant understatement. Everyone engages in some amount of manipulative behavior, and exactly where to draw the line is personal and situation-dependent. And manipulators (intentional or not) tend to be good at actively finding the line and pressuring you to categorize their behaviors in the way they want.
While Aella’s post is very vivid in describing the horror of abuse, I don’t necessarily see it in your post. You don’t seem to be in a vulnerable/dependent position with respect to Carla and Dave, they don’t humiliate you, don’t make you doubt your own experience, don’t seem to discard your feelings, and so on.
That’s why if you said to me “I reserve the right to do X, if I find that you are manipulating me”, I wouldn’t be sure what you mean. (Even on the objective, God’s eye, level, let’s forget the question of how we make sure that it has indeed happened for a second).
I wonder if the qualifier (if you are X) is even needed. Whether the dilemma is created by someone manipulating things or just conflicting values (e.g., confidentiality/one’s word and discovered wrong correctable by disclosure) who wants to be on the horns.
Why not simply take the stance that I will always reserve judgment on what confidences I will protect and when you telling me something means you are deferring to my judgement, not binding me to your position?
So the main issue, it seems, is that respecting confidentiality of some shared information may actually require a lot of effort, if it comes into conflict with the drive to behave morally. And manipulation in such cases then is bestowing this burden on a person without their informed consent, right?
That’s one version of the problem.
One related problems is that consent is tricky – Dave explicitly asked for consent, but if I had been older/wiser I’d have been more hesitant to say “yes”, or given them the “I reserve right to carefully share the information if I feel like Dave is manipulating me” schpiel. I just hadn’t realized some of consequences to consenting. (You could call this “getting informed consent” is difficult, but that still feels slightly off.)
I don’t get a clear idea of what you mean by “manipulation” from your post, and I would be uncomfortable using this word as self-evident. “Making someone do something without their informed consent” seems like a reasonable attempt at a definition to me.
A concrete example: I had a friend of a friend in an abusive relationship. They eventually got out of it, but later resumed contact with their abuser, who explicitly asked them for secrecy about the contact out of concern for their privacy. This prevented the victim’s friends from intervening, to the victim’s detriment.
[Obviously this is a pretty personal story. The victim has blessed the general case of sharing information like this, and I don’t care about the abuser]
It’s definitely a huge red flag if someone is pressuring you out of sharing something with your closest friends.
Your friend’s case seems to be very clear cut, and the root issue is not some vague manipulation or secrecy, but the actual abuse that, I assume, continued through their interaction.
Describing “the thing I mean by manipulation” correctly is unfortunately really tricky, specifically because manipulators use a bunch of tricks to make it hard to pin down. (This can be done intentionally or unintentionally)
I think Aella’s recent post on Frame Control attempts to give one explanation, but I have some disagreements with the exact ontology there. (i.e. I think ‘frame control’ makes most sense to be a somewhat general term for controlling frames in any fashion, whether harmful or not, whether a big deal or not. Frame control is one of the primary tools that go into manipulation, but not the only one)
I think there is a third category worth subtly distinguishing from frame control and manipulation, which is “a particular kind of psychological damage, which is often related to frame control / manipulation”.
I do acknowledge that there’s a bunch more writing/clarification around manipulation-and-related-topics before I feel like I really understand it or that I’d advocate other people use the concept if they didn’t already have a strong sense that it was useful. But I know enough people who’ve experience some flavor of manipulation that I think we can roughly point at the cluster while talking about related concepts.
Significant understatement. Everyone engages in some amount of manipulative behavior, and exactly where to draw the line is personal and situation-dependent. And manipulators (intentional or not) tend to be good at actively finding the line and pressuring you to categorize their behaviors in the way they want.
While Aella’s post is very vivid in describing the horror of abuse, I don’t necessarily see it in your post. You don’t seem to be in a vulnerable/dependent position with respect to Carla and Dave, they don’t humiliate you, don’t make you doubt your own experience, don’t seem to discard your feelings, and so on.
That’s why if you said to me “I reserve the right to do X, if I find that you are manipulating me”, I wouldn’t be sure what you mean. (Even on the objective, God’s eye, level, let’s forget the question of how we make sure that it has indeed happened for a second).
I wonder if the qualifier (if you are X) is even needed. Whether the dilemma is created by someone manipulating things or just conflicting values (e.g., confidentiality/one’s word and discovered wrong correctable by disclosure) who wants to be on the horns.
Why not simply take the stance that I will always reserve judgment on what confidences I will protect and when you telling me something means you are deferring to my judgement, not binding me to your position?