The author expected me to find them creepy -without any particular behavior on their part-. That’s the bit you’re missing. The behaviors were added later to try to make me feel like they were creepy, but the author -already- found them creepy, without any of those behaviors added in (or at least expected me to, which I take as good evidence).
Look, I’m more than happy to completely start over, with a completely new context, and argue with you about behavior—but don’t drop the context of the argument I was already having in order to try to score a point against me. Yes, I think there should be social prohibitions against certain behaviors; I’d prefer both well-defined and gray areas. No, I don’t find “creepy’ to be a useful way of describing those behaviors, because it’s used to describe a lot of gray areas as well. No, I don’t think complaints about these behaviors should be eradicated.
However, and it’s a really big however, all the valid criticisms that can be raised against gray-area creepiness -also- apply to COMPLAINTS about non-specific creepiness. Creepiness makes people feel uncomfortable because they aren’t certain of your intent and lowers their utilons? Well, complaints about creepiness make people feel uncomfortable because they aren’t certain what you’re describing, and lowers their utilons.
When you communicate about creepiness, be socially well adjusted enough to consider the possibility that what you’re communicating isn’t what you’re intending to communicate. Audience matters, interpretation matters. What’s in your brain isn’t what’s in your mouth and in their ear isn’t what’s in their brain.
And maybe it’s a good idea to just drop the “creepy” label and use a more specific description.
The author expected me to find them creepy -without any particular behavior on their part-.
Taboo “find them creepy”. He was certainly trying to empathize with others’ emotional reaction, but that’s not the same as actively reviling them or finding them horrible. Adding in behaviors after the fact was probably not a wholly kosher argument, but fubarobfusco only insisted on that after you equated unpleasant emotional feelings with deliberate social shunning. So there were multiple sources of confusion in your argument. I suppose I should apologize for not trying to clarify these before—I honestly am not trying to score logical points against you, but I can’t really fault you for thinking that.
regarding them in a manner more appropriate to something crawling up your shoe which I don’t think your comment is really acknowledging
That wasn’t complete—it was modified by this statement:
Treating people as people would be an improvement.
My comment wasn’t just about the -attitude-, but the behavior that arises out of that attitude. Wanting to punch somebody is not the same as actually punching somebody. I didn’t mean to imply that visceral reactions were thoughtcrime.
The author expected me to find them creepy -without any particular behavior on their part-. That’s the bit you’re missing. The behaviors were added later to try to make me feel like they were creepy, but the author -already- found them creepy, without any of those behaviors added in (or at least expected me to, which I take as good evidence).
Look, I’m more than happy to completely start over, with a completely new context, and argue with you about behavior—but don’t drop the context of the argument I was already having in order to try to score a point against me. Yes, I think there should be social prohibitions against certain behaviors; I’d prefer both well-defined and gray areas. No, I don’t find “creepy’ to be a useful way of describing those behaviors, because it’s used to describe a lot of gray areas as well. No, I don’t think complaints about these behaviors should be eradicated.
However, and it’s a really big however, all the valid criticisms that can be raised against gray-area creepiness -also- apply to COMPLAINTS about non-specific creepiness. Creepiness makes people feel uncomfortable because they aren’t certain of your intent and lowers their utilons? Well, complaints about creepiness make people feel uncomfortable because they aren’t certain what you’re describing, and lowers their utilons.
When you communicate about creepiness, be socially well adjusted enough to consider the possibility that what you’re communicating isn’t what you’re intending to communicate. Audience matters, interpretation matters. What’s in your brain isn’t what’s in your mouth and in their ear isn’t what’s in their brain.
And maybe it’s a good idea to just drop the “creepy” label and use a more specific description.
Taboo “find them creepy”. He was certainly trying to empathize with others’ emotional reaction, but that’s not the same as actively reviling them or finding them horrible. Adding in behaviors after the fact was probably not a wholly kosher argument, but fubarobfusco only insisted on that after you equated unpleasant emotional feelings with deliberate social shunning. So there were multiple sources of confusion in your argument. I suppose I should apologize for not trying to clarify these before—I honestly am not trying to score logical points against you, but I can’t really fault you for thinking that.
Ah. I see where the disengagement happened.
From my original comment:
That wasn’t complete—it was modified by this statement:
My comment wasn’t just about the -attitude-, but the behavior that arises out of that attitude. Wanting to punch somebody is not the same as actually punching somebody. I didn’t mean to imply that visceral reactions were thoughtcrime.