If one comes to LW for refined insights, they want to see insights and counterarguments, and posts and comments that are nice but not insightful are not particularly useful.
Signal to noise.
A positive affirmation has almost no generalized information content useful for the reader. For people looking to exchange useful information on the internet, it will act as noise that needs to be filtered to get to the useful stuff.
A positive affirmation has almost no generalized information content useful for the reader.
With the important exception that it reinforces the behavior in question, which is actionable and useful information. The trouble is that this is mostly useful for the recipient, and not as useful for bystanders, and it is much more useful if the affirmation identifies the specific behavior it seeks to reinforce.
But if you’re trying to reinforce behavior, wouldn’t that also reinforce the behavior in the observers as well? Is public stroking more reinforcing? For some, in some context.
Here’s the thing. Don’t you feel it’s rather cheeky, or at least manipulative, to be responding to people for the explicit purpose of reinforcing their behavior? “Good boy!”
Maybe the consequentialists like it, or think they do, but it rubs me the wrong way. Somewhere along this thread I thanked someone for bringing me the word “dysphemism”. I wasn’t trying to reinforce his behavior, I was expressing appreciation and gratitude.
I don’t like to “handle” people. I don’t like to be “handled”. I find it disrespectful. Besides the mental energy involved to handle people, that’s probably where my aversion to it comes from.
Apparently, some people want to be handled. They consider it being nice and friendly. Considerate. I guess I can see that, even while noting that this fact doesn’t alter my aversion and distaste for handling.
This is one of the big reasons that niceness annoys me. I think I’ve developed a knee-jerk negative reaction to comments like “good job!” because I don’t want to be manipulated by them. Even when the speaker is just trying to express gratitude, and has no knowledge of behaviorism, “good job!” annoys me. I think it’s an issue of one-place vs. two-place predicates—I have no problem with people saying “I like that” or “I find that interesting”.
If I let my emotional system process both statements without filtering, I think “good job!” actually does reinforce the behavior regardless, while “I like that!” will depend on my relation to the speaker. I know that my emotional system is susceptible to these behaviorist things, and I think that’s part of why I’ve developed a negative reaction to them—to avoid letting them through to a place where they can influence me.
Another reason niceness annoys me is that it satisfies my craving for recognition and approval, but it’s like empty calories. If I can get a quick fix of approval by posting a cat picture on facebook, then it will decrease my motivation to actually accomplish anything I consider worthwhile. This is one of the many reasons I avoid social media and think it encourages complacence. (Also, I get the impression that constant exposure to social media is decreasing people’s internal motivation and increasing their external motivation. But I’m not sure if I believe this becaue it’s true, or because I enjoy being a curmudgeon.)
For me, it’s associated with positive encouragement after someone screws up on a team sport. No, it wasn’t a good job, it was a screw up. It’s epitomized by a very sweet, very positive Christian girl in PE class, while playing volleyball. The contrast of a hypersaccharine “good job!” and the annoyance at the screw up had me grinding my teeth.
The more general issue on “good job” is the inherent condescension. I am your superior, here to judge your performance and pat you on the head to encourage you to improve. No thanks.
That goes a little with your point about the difference between “good job” and “I like that”. I made a similar distinction between “You’re wrong”/”That’s wrong” and “I disagree”. It does seem less annoying or insulting to have people phrase their opinion in terms of themselves, instead of an objective fact about you or reality.
Convey your evaluation as your evaluation, instead of as a objective fact. Seems to feel better for the issues we’re annoyed with.
But do the nicies want to hear “good jobs” that the meanies don’t?
The problem with the comment was that it wasn’t clear what it was a disagreement with—the facts referred to, particular facts referred to, or the implicitly proposed community behavior (as I took it).
In that way, this is one of the worst kinds of comment—ambiguous disagreement. They haven’t made any effort to be clear. You don’t know what they’ve said, so it invites requests for clarification. It otherwise invites counter disagreement, based on an assumption of what was disagreed with. On the bright side, no one followed up.
But if he was just disagreeing with a proposed policy, and made that clear, it would have been an appropriate comment in my estimation.
And “I disagree” on a substantive fact is not really a negative affirmation in the sense I meant. It is a not very informative sharing of a personal attitude. In general, I find “I agree” noise to be filtered. But I wouldn’t call that comment unpleasant at all. It lacked all emotional tone for me.
Signal to noise.
A positive affirmation has almost no generalized information content useful for the reader. For people looking to exchange useful information on the internet, it will act as noise that needs to be filtered to get to the useful stuff.
With the important exception that it reinforces the behavior in question, which is actionable and useful information. The trouble is that this is mostly useful for the recipient, and not as useful for bystanders, and it is much more useful if the affirmation identifies the specific behavior it seeks to reinforce.
But if you’re trying to reinforce behavior, wouldn’t that also reinforce the behavior in the observers as well? Is public stroking more reinforcing? For some, in some context.
Here’s the thing. Don’t you feel it’s rather cheeky, or at least manipulative, to be responding to people for the explicit purpose of reinforcing their behavior? “Good boy!”
Maybe the consequentialists like it, or think they do, but it rubs me the wrong way. Somewhere along this thread I thanked someone for bringing me the word “dysphemism”. I wasn’t trying to reinforce his behavior, I was expressing appreciation and gratitude.
I don’t like to “handle” people. I don’t like to be “handled”. I find it disrespectful. Besides the mental energy involved to handle people, that’s probably where my aversion to it comes from.
Apparently, some people want to be handled. They consider it being nice and friendly. Considerate. I guess I can see that, even while noting that this fact doesn’t alter my aversion and distaste for handling.
This is one of the big reasons that niceness annoys me. I think I’ve developed a knee-jerk negative reaction to comments like “good job!” because I don’t want to be manipulated by them. Even when the speaker is just trying to express gratitude, and has no knowledge of behaviorism, “good job!” annoys me. I think it’s an issue of one-place vs. two-place predicates—I have no problem with people saying “I like that” or “I find that interesting”.
If I let my emotional system process both statements without filtering, I think “good job!” actually does reinforce the behavior regardless, while “I like that!” will depend on my relation to the speaker. I know that my emotional system is susceptible to these behaviorist things, and I think that’s part of why I’ve developed a negative reaction to them—to avoid letting them through to a place where they can influence me.
Another reason niceness annoys me is that it satisfies my craving for recognition and approval, but it’s like empty calories. If I can get a quick fix of approval by posting a cat picture on facebook, then it will decrease my motivation to actually accomplish anything I consider worthwhile. This is one of the many reasons I avoid social media and think it encourages complacence. (Also, I get the impression that constant exposure to social media is decreasing people’s internal motivation and increasing their external motivation. But I’m not sure if I believe this becaue it’s true, or because I enjoy being a curmudgeon.)
I have a real problem with “good job”.
For me, it’s associated with positive encouragement after someone screws up on a team sport. No, it wasn’t a good job, it was a screw up. It’s epitomized by a very sweet, very positive Christian girl in PE class, while playing volleyball. The contrast of a hypersaccharine “good job!” and the annoyance at the screw up had me grinding my teeth.
The more general issue on “good job” is the inherent condescension. I am your superior, here to judge your performance and pat you on the head to encourage you to improve. No thanks.
That goes a little with your point about the difference between “good job” and “I like that”. I made a similar distinction between “You’re wrong”/”That’s wrong” and “I disagree”. It does seem less annoying or insulting to have people phrase their opinion in terms of themselves, instead of an objective fact about you or reality.
Convey your evaluation as your evaluation, instead of as a objective fact. Seems to feel better for the issues we’re annoyed with.
But do the nicies want to hear “good jobs” that the meanies don’t?
This is important enough to be worth its own discussion, and I would recommend discussing it here.
Negative affirmations (for example) are also noise. But more unpleasant noise.
The problem with the comment was that it wasn’t clear what it was a disagreement with—the facts referred to, particular facts referred to, or the implicitly proposed community behavior (as I took it).
In that way, this is one of the worst kinds of comment—ambiguous disagreement. They haven’t made any effort to be clear. You don’t know what they’ve said, so it invites requests for clarification. It otherwise invites counter disagreement, based on an assumption of what was disagreed with. On the bright side, no one followed up.
But if he was just disagreeing with a proposed policy, and made that clear, it would have been an appropriate comment in my estimation.
And “I disagree” on a substantive fact is not really a negative affirmation in the sense I meant. It is a not very informative sharing of a personal attitude. In general, I find “I agree” noise to be filtered. But I wouldn’t call that comment unpleasant at all. It lacked all emotional tone for me.