Yay, ethics of influence and seduction, one of my favorite subjects. I’m still figuring out my thoughts, so I would appreciate it if people tell me if I’m making incorrect assumptions.
First, I’ll state that I prefer the terms “unethical influence” and “unethical influence” to “manipulation” and “non-manipulation,” because people use “manipulation” to mean too many different things.
Second, in ethical discussions, we should distinguish between things that would be a good things to do that aren’t morally required, and things that are morally required (Kant called these “imperfect duties” vs “perfect duties”). Also, we should distinguish between ethical courses of action, and empathetic courses of action. There are lots of cases where there’s an action that’s a good and empathetic thing to do, but actually requiring it as a perfect duty would screw everything up.
Physical coercion forces you to do something that you don’t want to do, don’t enjoy while you’re doing it, and regret doing afterwards.
There is clearly a perfect duty against physical coercion, and that duty applies even if someone happens to enjoy what you are doing. An example of that case up when Roissy (a pickup blogger who built up a large following, but isn’t actually typical of the seduction community) condoned slapping women in arguments because it could “turn them on.” I argued that even if a certain percentage of women are turned on in that case, slapping without consent is unethical on both deontological and consequentialist terms. That thread has since been deleted, or I would link to it.
Hitting someone nonconsensually violates their rights from a deontological perspective. From a consequentialist perspective, the expected value of a positive reaction occurring is negative.
Emotional manipulation causes you to do something that you didn’t want to do before, and regret afterwards—but you may like it in the meantime.
Is it empathetic to avoid people regretting your forms of influence? Yes. Is it an imperfect duty to avoid buyer’s remorse? Probably yes. Is it a perfect duty to avoid influence that could create buyer’s remorse? Probably not.
This moral principle (as I understand it) is a bit too broad. It catches many things that we would actually consider ethical. A bit part of the problem is that it doesn’t account for uncertainty about whether buyer’s remorse will occur; I’m not sure what levels of uncertainty you are imagining, so the following analysis may reflect my interpretation of what you wrote better than it reflects your actual views.
Let’s say you want a friend to come to a movie with you. Your friend initially protests, but then you hype up the movie. Your friend decides that it sounds cool, and comes with you. Afterward, the friend enjoys the movie, but afterwards decides that it wasn’t worth the cost of admission.
By your criteria, this was “manipulation,” but I don’t think anything untoward has occurred here. Agree/disagree? We are, of course, assuming that your friend comes out of interest, not merely to make you happy. You don’t know in advance that your friend will decide that the movie wasn’t worth it.
The third option is “try it, you’ll like it.” The person didn’t intend to take the action before, but she wanted to do it at the moment she acted, and she was glad she did it afterwards. I don’t see a moral problem with this. It’s influence, but it’s not harmful.
But this sort of influence can sometimes result in people doing things that they regret; I’m having trouble reconciling it with the other principle you articulated.
Now, what if you knew that your friend probably wouldn’t find the movie worth it, and you dragged them along anyway? That’s falling into the category of unethical social influence, and perhaps that’s the scenario you are proscribing. But if you believed that they would enjoy it, and you turn out to be wrong, then arguably you’ve done a good thing by taking your friend to a movie that they might plausibly like, and that they believed that they would like based on information that you provided them… even though you were both wrong.
When influencing people, we must assume by default that people know their preferences better than we do. You must give primacy to the version of your friend that wants to see the movie now after you’ve told them why you think it will be great, rather than to the version 5 minutes ago that didn’t want to go out of the house.
People usually know more about what they will or won’t regret, and what risks they are willing to take, than we do. So if someone is willing to engage in a certain activity with you, that’s pretty strong evidence that it’s a good risk for them to take from their perspective. The fact they initially didn’t want to in the past is evidence that they might have buyer’s remorse, but that evidence is much weaker than the evidence of their preferences in the present.
Of course, if you have some information that someone might end up getting buyer’s remorse that they might not be aware of (like the product you are selling is defective), and it’s information that you believe the other person doesn’t have access to, and shouldn’t be expected to figure out for themselves, then influencing them starts becoming unethical. Perhaps that’s what you mean when you say:
Influencing someone to take an action that you know she will regret afterwards is manipulative.
Yet it’s actually rare that you “know” in advance whether or not someone will regret sex; in most cases, you really only have a guess, and so do they. By default, the informational asymmetry about whether the other person will experience buyer’s remorse favors the other person; their guess is probably better than yours about how they’ll feel later, and you shouldn’t try to do their thinking for them unless you know something big that they don’t.
I think you have a much better handle on this than I did; by comparison my comment was pretty flip.
What I was trying to get at was that it isn’t nice to tempt people to do things that are bad for them. (In my opinion it’s outright wrong to use physical force to coerce people except in self-defense; not nice is a weaker statement than wrong.) I don’t think it’s nice to influence people by selling a product you know is defective, or trying to get them to buy something you know they can’t afford. I don’t think it’s nice to talk your friend into going out to a party the night before his big test.
Yes, in some of these cases, the “victim” should have known better, but strong influence can bypass willpower. The better you are at tempting people, the more responsible you are for the results of the temptation. It may even be fair to say that it’s mostly because of you that your friend flunked or your client went broke.
On the contrary, I don’t think I’d mind being influenced to do something that turned out to be good for me, except in a few cases where I have a strong commitment against it and a second-order desire to retain that commitment.
What I was trying to get at was that it isn’t nice to tempt people to do things that are bad for them.
I think we’re saying something similar here. It’s a failure of empathy to tempt people to do things that might be bad for them, but I’m not convinced it’s always a failure of ethics in the sense of perfect duty. There are plenty of forms of influence where I would be comfortable saying that the influencer is being a jerk, but where I wouldn’t be comfortable saying that they are doing something unethical.
I don’t think it’s nice to influence people by selling a product you know is defective,
This is unethical under my analysis, also. It falls into the category of where you know something big that the other person doesn’t which destroys informed consent.
or trying to get them to buy something you know they can’t afford.
If you know this for sure, that would also be unethical under my analysis. My analysis only applies to situations where people are capable of watching out for their own interests. This is the default situation, but if someone gives you strong evidence that they can’t watch out for themselves (e.g. they are trying to buy things you know they can’t afford), then you should scale down the influence. Unfortunately, most real-life situations of influence are less clear-cut.
I don’t think it’s nice to talk your friend into going out to a party the night before his big test.
This one seems a bit less clear-cut. If you get your friend to miss out on sufficient sleep, or get hung over, then yeah, that’s unethical. But if the problem is that he might skimp on his studying? That’s less clear. Your friend knows better than you do whether they’ve done enough studying for their test. If you invite your friend, you know that he can refuse if he needs to study. On the other hand, maybe he’s done enough studying, and would benefit from relaxing. Unless you have some evidence either way, you’re not doing anything wrong by inviting him and letting him decide.
Yes, in some of these cases, the “victim” should have known better, but strong influence can bypass willpower.
Could you give an example of such a scenario? I’m not seeing it in either of the three in your post. Can you give an example of influence that is morally suspect, and (a) involves adequate informed consent, unlike the defective product scenario, (b) involves someone capable of watching out for themselves, unlike the scenario of buyers trying to buy things you know they can’t afford, and (c) is actually strong, unlike talking your friend into going to a party?
I tried to come up with an example, and the first thing I thought of was running an unhealthy fast food business and influencing people to eat your food. Then I realized that this example fails the test I proposed, because it would be known that many people don’t watch out for their health. While eating at your restaurant every once in a while might not be a health risk, your advertising will pull people in on a regular basis (in contrast, if you are running an ice cream shop, you aren’t trying to get people to eat there every day, and they won’t be eating ice cream instead of healthier food). There is something inherently wrong with supplying tasting food that is unhealthy, but if you do it in a way that influences people to substitute healthier food for what you are providing, and eat your food regularly enough that it’s a health risk, that’s unethical.
The better you are at tempting people, the more responsible you are for the results of the temptation.
The best way to tempt people is to offer them what they want (in a way that they identify it as satisfying one of their wants). I think your claim implies that people who can offer things that other people want more should have higher responsibility for the results of influencing people. That principle may be a little to broad, and lead the people who actually have good things to offer (which is influential) to have a moral panic and become too shy.
In terms of sales and products, there are four simplified categories:
Bad products with bad salesmen
Bad products with good salesmen
Good products with bad salesmen
Good products with good salesmen
The principle you suggest would make good salesmen with bad products more inhibited… but it will also make good salesmen with good products more inhibited! Actually, many of the most influential products may be good products with good salesmen… should these salesmen with the good products really be fretting the most about responsibility just because they are good at sales?
I think we need to articulate a principle that makes good salesmen with bad products scrutinize themselves more than good salesmen with good products.
The degree that people want what you offer isn’t quite the right index for the degree of responsibility you should shoulder for the result. People who want something really badly might be more likely to throw caution to the winds and make mistakes, so degree of want is weakly related to the responsibility you should take to protect them. But there are other variables that are much better indexes for the level of responsibility you should take:
Your estimate of the expected value to them of accepting your offer
Your estimate of how well they are watching out for themselves
Your confidence that they have enough information to be giving informed consent
The reasons that someone is consenting to whatever you are influencing them towards, and whether those are the type of reasons that are well-known to be correlated with buyer’s remorse
How do these criteria sound to you?
On the contrary, I don’t think I’d mind being influenced to do something that turned out to be good for me
Unfortunately, people who influence you can’t predict the future and know whether the results will turn out good or bad for you. Of course, they should make guesses, and refrain from influencing you if they think the expected value of the result will be negative for you, and you haven’t given informed consent to that risk. But when there is uncertainty about the result, the ability of people to make those sort of guesses varies depending on the domain.
In financial services, your broker really does know better than you about whether their product will be good for you, and the criteria for satisfying your preferences is objective and easily understood by them. As a result, a lot of responsibility falls on their shoulders.
In social interaction and dating, it’s a lot harder to know whether you are a good match with someone better than they do. You don’t know exactly what their preferences are and how you fit into them. Responsibility for protecting them from buyer’s remorse falls primarily (but of course, not completely) on them. Since they have the higher quality information about how you fit into their preferences, it’s their responsibility to communicate their preferences to you to help protect them from being unhappy later.
“Second, in ethical discussions, we should distinguish between things that would be a good things to do that aren’t morally required, and things that are morally required (Kant called these “imperfect duties” vs “perfect duties”). ”
That’s a good distinction, but it’s not Kant’s. For Kant, a perfect duty is prohibitive (“don’t lie”) while an imperfect duty is one which demands the pursuit of some end, like “develop your talents”. The ‘perfect’ and ‘imperfect’ refer to a grammatical distinction: perfect duties are complete when you’re not murdering people, etc. while imperfect duties are never complete and always ongoing.
The distinction you’re drawing is between the supererogatory and the obligatory, where the latter is what you have to do just to be decent, and the former is some extra good stuff you can do. Kant not only never makes this distinction, by his lights it’s impossible to make it.
That’s a good distinction, but it’s not Kant’s. For Kant, a perfect duty is prohibitive (“don’t lie”) while an imperfect duty is one which demands the pursuit of some end, like “develop your talents”. The ‘perfect’ and ‘imperfect’ refer to a grammatical distinction: perfect duties are complete when you’re not murdering people, etc. while imperfect duties are never complete and always ongoing.
I don’t know (or care much) about what Kant said but wikipedia seems to be closer to Hugh’s usage than yours.
Well, in case a fit of curiosity about Kant strikes you, the relevant discussion is in Metaphysics of Morals (not the Groundwork) 6:390ff. Neither Hugh’s interpretation nor mine is obviously correct and I think the matter is up for discussion. Hugh is right that a failure to pursue imperfect duties isn’t vicious or a transgression by Kant’s lights, but I think it’s neverless wrong to attribute to Kant the possibility of supererogatory action. imperfect duties are flexable because they can be trumped by other dutoes, not because they can be passed over. Failure to pursue imperfect duties is still moral failure, just not a failure of the same species as moral transgression.
You should give Kant a glance though. Perhaps his work is not strictly relevant to the question of machine morality (I think he might argue against the possibility of a moral machine), but it’s still very interesting stuff, even to argue against.
Yay, ethics of influence and seduction, one of my favorite subjects. I’m still figuring out my thoughts, so I would appreciate it if people tell me if I’m making incorrect assumptions.
First, I’ll state that I prefer the terms “unethical influence” and “unethical influence” to “manipulation” and “non-manipulation,” because people use “manipulation” to mean too many different things.
Second, in ethical discussions, we should distinguish between things that would be a good things to do that aren’t morally required, and things that are morally required (Kant called these “imperfect duties” vs “perfect duties”). Also, we should distinguish between ethical courses of action, and empathetic courses of action. There are lots of cases where there’s an action that’s a good and empathetic thing to do, but actually requiring it as a perfect duty would screw everything up.
There is clearly a perfect duty against physical coercion, and that duty applies even if someone happens to enjoy what you are doing. An example of that case up when Roissy (a pickup blogger who built up a large following, but isn’t actually typical of the seduction community) condoned slapping women in arguments because it could “turn them on.” I argued that even if a certain percentage of women are turned on in that case, slapping without consent is unethical on both deontological and consequentialist terms. That thread has since been deleted, or I would link to it.
Hitting someone nonconsensually violates their rights from a deontological perspective. From a consequentialist perspective, the expected value of a positive reaction occurring is negative.
Is it empathetic to avoid people regretting your forms of influence? Yes. Is it an imperfect duty to avoid buyer’s remorse? Probably yes. Is it a perfect duty to avoid influence that could create buyer’s remorse? Probably not.
This moral principle (as I understand it) is a bit too broad. It catches many things that we would actually consider ethical. A bit part of the problem is that it doesn’t account for uncertainty about whether buyer’s remorse will occur; I’m not sure what levels of uncertainty you are imagining, so the following analysis may reflect my interpretation of what you wrote better than it reflects your actual views.
Let’s say you want a friend to come to a movie with you. Your friend initially protests, but then you hype up the movie. Your friend decides that it sounds cool, and comes with you. Afterward, the friend enjoys the movie, but afterwards decides that it wasn’t worth the cost of admission.
By your criteria, this was “manipulation,” but I don’t think anything untoward has occurred here. Agree/disagree? We are, of course, assuming that your friend comes out of interest, not merely to make you happy. You don’t know in advance that your friend will decide that the movie wasn’t worth it.
But this sort of influence can sometimes result in people doing things that they regret; I’m having trouble reconciling it with the other principle you articulated.
Now, what if you knew that your friend probably wouldn’t find the movie worth it, and you dragged them along anyway? That’s falling into the category of unethical social influence, and perhaps that’s the scenario you are proscribing. But if you believed that they would enjoy it, and you turn out to be wrong, then arguably you’ve done a good thing by taking your friend to a movie that they might plausibly like, and that they believed that they would like based on information that you provided them… even though you were both wrong.
When influencing people, we must assume by default that people know their preferences better than we do. You must give primacy to the version of your friend that wants to see the movie now after you’ve told them why you think it will be great, rather than to the version 5 minutes ago that didn’t want to go out of the house.
People usually know more about what they will or won’t regret, and what risks they are willing to take, than we do. So if someone is willing to engage in a certain activity with you, that’s pretty strong evidence that it’s a good risk for them to take from their perspective. The fact they initially didn’t want to in the past is evidence that they might have buyer’s remorse, but that evidence is much weaker than the evidence of their preferences in the present.
Of course, if you have some information that someone might end up getting buyer’s remorse that they might not be aware of (like the product you are selling is defective), and it’s information that you believe the other person doesn’t have access to, and shouldn’t be expected to figure out for themselves, then influencing them starts becoming unethical. Perhaps that’s what you mean when you say:
Yet it’s actually rare that you “know” in advance whether or not someone will regret sex; in most cases, you really only have a guess, and so do they. By default, the informational asymmetry about whether the other person will experience buyer’s remorse favors the other person; their guess is probably better than yours about how they’ll feel later, and you shouldn’t try to do their thinking for them unless you know something big that they don’t.
I think you have a much better handle on this than I did; by comparison my comment was pretty flip.
What I was trying to get at was that it isn’t nice to tempt people to do things that are bad for them. (In my opinion it’s outright wrong to use physical force to coerce people except in self-defense; not nice is a weaker statement than wrong.) I don’t think it’s nice to influence people by selling a product you know is defective, or trying to get them to buy something you know they can’t afford. I don’t think it’s nice to talk your friend into going out to a party the night before his big test.
Yes, in some of these cases, the “victim” should have known better, but strong influence can bypass willpower. The better you are at tempting people, the more responsible you are for the results of the temptation. It may even be fair to say that it’s mostly because of you that your friend flunked or your client went broke.
On the contrary, I don’t think I’d mind being influenced to do something that turned out to be good for me, except in a few cases where I have a strong commitment against it and a second-order desire to retain that commitment.
I think we’re saying something similar here. It’s a failure of empathy to tempt people to do things that might be bad for them, but I’m not convinced it’s always a failure of ethics in the sense of perfect duty. There are plenty of forms of influence where I would be comfortable saying that the influencer is being a jerk, but where I wouldn’t be comfortable saying that they are doing something unethical.
This is unethical under my analysis, also. It falls into the category of where you know something big that the other person doesn’t which destroys informed consent.
If you know this for sure, that would also be unethical under my analysis. My analysis only applies to situations where people are capable of watching out for their own interests. This is the default situation, but if someone gives you strong evidence that they can’t watch out for themselves (e.g. they are trying to buy things you know they can’t afford), then you should scale down the influence. Unfortunately, most real-life situations of influence are less clear-cut.
This one seems a bit less clear-cut. If you get your friend to miss out on sufficient sleep, or get hung over, then yeah, that’s unethical. But if the problem is that he might skimp on his studying? That’s less clear. Your friend knows better than you do whether they’ve done enough studying for their test. If you invite your friend, you know that he can refuse if he needs to study. On the other hand, maybe he’s done enough studying, and would benefit from relaxing. Unless you have some evidence either way, you’re not doing anything wrong by inviting him and letting him decide.
Could you give an example of such a scenario? I’m not seeing it in either of the three in your post. Can you give an example of influence that is morally suspect, and (a) involves adequate informed consent, unlike the defective product scenario, (b) involves someone capable of watching out for themselves, unlike the scenario of buyers trying to buy things you know they can’t afford, and (c) is actually strong, unlike talking your friend into going to a party?
I tried to come up with an example, and the first thing I thought of was running an unhealthy fast food business and influencing people to eat your food. Then I realized that this example fails the test I proposed, because it would be known that many people don’t watch out for their health. While eating at your restaurant every once in a while might not be a health risk, your advertising will pull people in on a regular basis (in contrast, if you are running an ice cream shop, you aren’t trying to get people to eat there every day, and they won’t be eating ice cream instead of healthier food). There is something inherently wrong with supplying tasting food that is unhealthy, but if you do it in a way that influences people to substitute healthier food for what you are providing, and eat your food regularly enough that it’s a health risk, that’s unethical.
The best way to tempt people is to offer them what they want (in a way that they identify it as satisfying one of their wants). I think your claim implies that people who can offer things that other people want more should have higher responsibility for the results of influencing people. That principle may be a little to broad, and lead the people who actually have good things to offer (which is influential) to have a moral panic and become too shy.
In terms of sales and products, there are four simplified categories:
Bad products with bad salesmen
Bad products with good salesmen
Good products with bad salesmen
Good products with good salesmen
The principle you suggest would make good salesmen with bad products more inhibited… but it will also make good salesmen with good products more inhibited! Actually, many of the most influential products may be good products with good salesmen… should these salesmen with the good products really be fretting the most about responsibility just because they are good at sales?
I think we need to articulate a principle that makes good salesmen with bad products scrutinize themselves more than good salesmen with good products.
The degree that people want what you offer isn’t quite the right index for the degree of responsibility you should shoulder for the result. People who want something really badly might be more likely to throw caution to the winds and make mistakes, so degree of want is weakly related to the responsibility you should take to protect them. But there are other variables that are much better indexes for the level of responsibility you should take:
Your estimate of the expected value to them of accepting your offer
Your estimate of how well they are watching out for themselves
Your confidence that they have enough information to be giving informed consent
The reasons that someone is consenting to whatever you are influencing them towards, and whether those are the type of reasons that are well-known to be correlated with buyer’s remorse
How do these criteria sound to you?
Unfortunately, people who influence you can’t predict the future and know whether the results will turn out good or bad for you. Of course, they should make guesses, and refrain from influencing you if they think the expected value of the result will be negative for you, and you haven’t given informed consent to that risk. But when there is uncertainty about the result, the ability of people to make those sort of guesses varies depending on the domain.
In financial services, your broker really does know better than you about whether their product will be good for you, and the criteria for satisfying your preferences is objective and easily understood by them. As a result, a lot of responsibility falls on their shoulders.
In social interaction and dating, it’s a lot harder to know whether you are a good match with someone better than they do. You don’t know exactly what their preferences are and how you fit into them. Responsibility for protecting them from buyer’s remorse falls primarily (but of course, not completely) on them. Since they have the higher quality information about how you fit into their preferences, it’s their responsibility to communicate their preferences to you to help protect them from being unhappy later.
“Second, in ethical discussions, we should distinguish between things that would be a good things to do that aren’t morally required, and things that are morally required (Kant called these “imperfect duties” vs “perfect duties”). ”
That’s a good distinction, but it’s not Kant’s. For Kant, a perfect duty is prohibitive (“don’t lie”) while an imperfect duty is one which demands the pursuit of some end, like “develop your talents”. The ‘perfect’ and ‘imperfect’ refer to a grammatical distinction: perfect duties are complete when you’re not murdering people, etc. while imperfect duties are never complete and always ongoing.
The distinction you’re drawing is between the supererogatory and the obligatory, where the latter is what you have to do just to be decent, and the former is some extra good stuff you can do. Kant not only never makes this distinction, by his lights it’s impossible to make it.
I don’t know (or care much) about what Kant said but wikipedia seems to be closer to Hugh’s usage than yours.
Well, in case a fit of curiosity about Kant strikes you, the relevant discussion is in Metaphysics of Morals (not the Groundwork) 6:390ff. Neither Hugh’s interpretation nor mine is obviously correct and I think the matter is up for discussion. Hugh is right that a failure to pursue imperfect duties isn’t vicious or a transgression by Kant’s lights, but I think it’s neverless wrong to attribute to Kant the possibility of supererogatory action. imperfect duties are flexable because they can be trumped by other dutoes, not because they can be passed over. Failure to pursue imperfect duties is still moral failure, just not a failure of the same species as moral transgression.
You should give Kant a glance though. Perhaps his work is not strictly relevant to the question of machine morality (I think he might argue against the possibility of a moral machine), but it’s still very interesting stuff, even to argue against.
Where would you place trying to influence people out of feeling buyer’s remorse when they’re feeling it?
I place it at “closing the stable door after the horse has bolted”. ;)
The part of the game that involves reducing buyer’s remorse is for most part before the sex, not after.
I’d consider that an imperfect duty.
An imperfect duty to do it, or to not do it?
To do it.
Wouldn’t it be better to influence them not to buy similar products again?