Maybe I missed it; did you give the same speech about how empowering it is to focus on what you can change about yourself to those who are taking offense at the speech of others? You understand you could have, right?
Concluding that you are misinterpreted because your audience is listening wrong, or is coming into the conversation with crazy priors, weakens you.
Not if it’s true.
If it’s true, knowing the truth strengthens me. Just because I think it’s true, doesn’t mean I can’t choose to adjust my speech to them.
And yes, when someone has a false impression, and wants to have an accurate one, you can often change their minds by offering evidence for them to update on.
Concluding that you are misinterpreted because you have misspoken, or failed to understand where your audience is coming from, gives you the power to fix the situation and accomplish goals. This strengthens you.
And assuming that I’ve mispoken does weaken me. It assumes I can “fix” the situation by speaking differently. Ok, compared to what have I misspoken? Compared to preemptively changing my speech patterns so that those with extremely high priors of hostile intent from me are less likely to take offense? Do I have a better alternative?
As a first cut, I’m better off talking to people who don’t assume hostility from my style of speech, who can talk to me ‘as is’ in a productive manner. Seems to be a number of such people. To the extent that they’re similar to me, they will be annoyed and possibly offended by speech acts which seem aimed at managing their potential hurt feelings over my disagreements with their opinions. But even removing these emotional factors from the equation, my attempts to manage their feelings take time and effort from me, and wastes time and effort for them on issues extraneous to the topic at hand. At best, altering our styles will waste our time, and at worst, annoy the hell out of each other. That’s a cost.
I’m to bear that cost, for what?
To talk to others who find my manner hostile? Should I unilaterally cave to every demand that I change my manner when they say they feel hurt or offended? On a game theoretic basis alone, that seems like a bad idea. I am to be malleable to their preferences. Ok, I willing to look at that.
I have been having discussions on adjusting my speech patterns to avoid impressions of hostility in others. Even came up with an idea that someone thought was a good step forward—say “I disagree” instead of “You’re wrong.”
And them? Are they to be malleable to my preferences? Not that I’ve seen.
Where are the discussions of the “offended or hurt” adjusting their priors to better reflect the reality that “meanies” like me really aren’t here to insult, offend, or demean them? Or even where are the discussions that assume the priors are correct, but look for ways to suck it up and develop a thicker skin to better deal the hateful bastards trying to hurt them?
I don’t see those. What I’ve seen are offended rejections of any suggestion they might work on changing their reactions, by them, and often by those defending them.
I was the person who said going from “You’re wrong” to “I disagree” was an important step. I’m glad it registered.
Becoming less thin-skinned takes time and sometimes a good bit of work. You don’t know where any particular person is in that process.
You might be in a Pareto’s Law situation—it’s not that you need to avoid offending the most fragile people, a small amount of effort might lead to not offending 85% of thin-skinned people.
Yes, but I didn’t want to finger you as the culprit.
Becoming less thin-skinned takes time and sometimes a good bit of work.
Indeed.
My concern is that some seem to consider it a crime to suggest that this would be a desirable thing, or to suggest that people adjust their inaccurate priors for hostility downwards when interpreting the actions of others.
The nicies want the meanies to try harder to be understood.OK, fine. But if the meanies suggest that the nicies try harder to understand, that’s just one more thing for the nicies to get offended about.
I would note to all the nicies—if LW feels hostile to you, you’ve led a very sheltered existence. I’m from the HItchens party of debate, that prefers a sharp point be embellished with a barb. That’s part of the fun, in the same way that a decleating hit in football is part of the fun. And that’s not even hostility, that’s just style. And that’s a common style.
By my estimate, LW has a very “Just the Facts Ma’am” culture. Going beyond the facts and putting any relish into a debate is rarely done, and frowned on when it happens. Maybe there were nastier times in the long long ago that led to this culture. LW does seem relatively unique in the equal mix of LIbertarians and Progressives.
FWIW, one of the things that caught my attention about this community, and encouraged me to stick around, was the emphasis on valuing accuracy and precision (which I value) without the “barbs are part of the fun/putting relish into a debate” style you describe here (which I dislike intensely).
There are lots of “nice is more important than true” spaces on the net, and lots of “being unpleasant to people is part of the fun” spaces; and an astonishing number of spaces that are both. A space that manages to even approximate being neither is rare.
Barbs are largely the part of the classical rhetoric that play on biases in the listener. That’s probably true of niceness as well.
And I agree that the Lesswrong tone seems relatively unique, particularly given the broad and general nature of discussion topics, and the variety in political opinions.
One of the good things which contributes to the tone here is people reliably getting credit for saying they’ve changed their mind for some good reason. I can’t think of any other site where that’s in play.
Way back when, I remember discussing exactly that point on the Extropians list. In many ways a similar group to here. But some very smart guys were arguing that it was a huge loss of face to admit you were wrong, and better to deny or evade (I’m sure they put it more convincingly than that).
When someone is wrong, graciously admitting and accepting it scores major points with me.
Thinking about it, maybe I can make a better argument for denial. There are two issues, being wrong, and whether one admits being wrong. If admitting being wrong is what largely determines whether you are perceived as being wrong, then denying the error maintains status.
For people driven by social truth, which is likely the majority, truth is scored on attitude, power, authority, popularity, solidarity, fealty, etc. The validity of the arguments don’t matter much. For people driven by epistemic truth, the arguments are what matters, so denying the plain truth of them is seen as a personality defect, while admitting it a virtue.
The thing is, it’s not that the deniers are aliens. I am. I and my kind. For us, in an argument, it’s the facts that matter, and letting other considerations intrude on that is intruding the rules of the normals into the game. That’s largely what this whole thread is about.
One side says we’ll be more effective playing the normals game. It’s a game my kind strongly prefers not to play. Having to behave as normals is ineffective for us, and the opportunity to play by our rules is extremely valuable to us.
Josh Waitzkin’s book The Art of Learning describes his various encounters with unsporting conduct and cheating in chess tournaments and competitive tai chi. He wrote that he’d developed the approach to just work so hard at developing his own skill at the game that he was able to ignore the distractions the opponent was trying to pull and proceed to win anyway. He claimed that the opponents would generally become agitated and careless once they noticed that they couldn’t get any sort of upset out of him.
Discussions aren’t games with rules, but you might still get something out of the idea that social gamesmanship is basically just compensating poor skill with cheating, and you need to work hard enough on your epistemic skills that it won’t stop you even when it does get thrown in your way.
Well, I’d say that social gamesmanship isn’t cheating, it’s playing a different game.
Being very good with your epistemic skills has mileage socially too, and importantly, mileage with people with personal properties you’re more likely concerned about. And refraining from the usual types of social gamesmanship earns you points with those people as well.
Yes, but I didn’t want to finger you as the culprit.
I’m actually very fond of being told I was right. (I only figured that out when a friend mentioned that he’s very fond of other people admitting they were wrong.)
It’s true that there’s currently a belief that it’s very bad to tell people they should be less thin-skinned. People generally want a social environment which suits their preferences, and while it’s not likely that anyone will get a total victory, it’s certainly possible to push the balance towards your preferences.
Thin-skinned people are apt to hear a demand that they be thicker-skinned as “You shouldn’t care about the way I keep hurting you.” The more aggressive among them have started shoving back. Interesting times.
IMO when you write, you should be asking yourself: “What’s the worst way someone could interpret this?”, because surely, someone will interpret it that way. And when you read, you should ask yourself: “What’s the nicest way I could interpret this?”, because that’s probably the way they meant it.
when you write, you should be asking yourself: “What’s the worst way someone could interpret this?”
When dealing with people, habitually searching for only the worst that can happen is a very bad habit, in my experience. It’s a habit I’ve been trying to break. Through availability bias, your world becomes a horrible place. Your priors are distorted toward the bad, and you miss opportunities. Too careful, too risk averse, too distrusting.
And when you read, you should ask yourself: “What’s the nicest way I could interpret this?”, because that’s probably the way they meant it.
I think that’s the right policy, even if it’s not true. It will generally be the more productive assumption—particularly for online forums.
Just work out the cases. Search for everything that can happen. Either a person has basic good will towards you, or they don’t.
If they do, the nice interpretation is likely right, and you understand someone with good will toward you. That makes for a good discussion. Further, if the guy meant it in a nasty way, your response as if he were nice might soften his mood, or not. If it softens, things have at least improved. If not, most observers will likely think him a schmuck, and he is just very unlikely to be a good discussion partner anyway.
If they do have good will, but you assume that it is bad, you’re likely limiting the positive outcomes available with them. If they don’t have good will and you assume they don’t, you have maybe avoided some aggravation and saved yourself some time.
Having worked out the general case, you don’t have to do a de novo analysis each time. Commit to the policy, and blithely move on. Sometimes someone won’t like you. Ok, you knew that was going to happen.
This is what I’ve tried to do in general with my own defensiveness with people. Don’t focus on the worst that a person might do. Try to have an accurate prior on intentions (most people are not con men or mass murderers, and they’re not really out to get me—I’m not that important to them.) Pick a decision based on an analysis of of what their intent and attitudes might be, and the differing outcomes based on your actions.
Most of the analysis applies, except real world encounters carry more serious risks. I live in the Seattle are, which is pretty safe and so real world risks are limited, though I realize not everyone lives in such a safe place, so YMMV.
In general, the best strategy is to act assuming approval and good will, because those situations present the best opportunities.
when you write, you should be asking yourself: “What’s the worst way someone could interpret this?”
When dealing with people, habitually searching for only the worst that can happen is a very bad habit, in my experience.
Ah, but that wasn’t what I meant. I just meant to say that you should be careful when writing, because even when 99%+ of people won’t have any problems with what you write, someone is sure to misinterpret it, if it possibly can be. Communication is hard, and written communication even more so.
I’d say more briefly “someone is sure to misinterpret it”, because it is always possible to do so. There’s going to be a level of misinterpretation no mater how you agonize over what you write.
I agree with you that the underlying good will or lack of it is a crucial factor. I’m still trying to figure out what tends to build good will or damage it.
“Offended or hurt” doesn’t enter into it. This isn’t about hazy feelings; it’s about hard practical effects of actions: do we accomplish what we want to accomplish?
Let’s say you and your interlocutor disagreed about your intention in saying that they were wrong (about whatever). Your interlocutor believes that your intention was for them to shut up and go away, but actually that wasn’t what you meant at all; you meant to invite more discussion.
They are wrong about you.
And you want them to have a correct belief about you.
But … how can you cause your interlocutor to possess a correct belief about your intention? You could lecture them about how wrong they are to have misinterpreted you. But that won’t work if they will take your lecturing as meaning “shut up and go away” … and may very well do so.
That’s all I’m saying. You can’t force people to understand you, or to want to understand you. If you really want to get your ideas across (because you care about those ideas — not because you’re trying to find people who will easily like you) then you use the try harder which probably involves restating them in a way that doesn’t repel people.
Or … well, you could say that you never really cared about that kind of person’s understanding, and really you never wanted a discussion with that kind of person.
But in that case … they weren’t wrong about you, were they?
But in that case … they weren’t wrong about you, were they?
There are plenty of people who would be correct in concluding that I would bear them hostility if I knew what they were like.
They would be incorrect to conclude that the priors I assign to that type of person among LW is very high, and incorrect to assume that my asserting that someone is wrong indicates I have concluded the person is that type of person, so that my comment indicates hostile intent.
Perhaps I’ve given you an incorrect impression.
If you really want to get your ideas across
While I have proselytizing tendencies, that’s not my fundamental goal, particularly in a forum disagreement. Given my limited resources of me, my proselytizing attitude is to sing to those with the ears to hear. People who are assuming that I am hostile are not the low hanging fruit in that regard.
But people who assume I am hostile can be perfectly fine partners in a disagreement. In a disagreement, I am primarily hoping to change my own mind, whether in correcting an error, or clarifying hazy positions of my own. They might even be better, in that they won’t cut me slack when I am sloppy. People who dislike you can be perfectly useful in a discussion. The enemy of my enemy (our ignorance) is my friend.
But I find it strange that you think I should find it hopelessly futile to try to change a person’s assumptions about my intent, but a productive use of my time to try to change their minds about some other fact of reality.
Maybe I missed it; did you give the same speech about how empowering it is to focus on what you can change about yourself to those who are taking offense at the speech of others? You understand you could have, right?
Not if it’s true.
If it’s true, knowing the truth strengthens me. Just because I think it’s true, doesn’t mean I can’t choose to adjust my speech to them.
And yes, when someone has a false impression, and wants to have an accurate one, you can often change their minds by offering evidence for them to update on.
And assuming that I’ve mispoken does weaken me. It assumes I can “fix” the situation by speaking differently. Ok, compared to what have I misspoken? Compared to preemptively changing my speech patterns so that those with extremely high priors of hostile intent from me are less likely to take offense? Do I have a better alternative?
As a first cut, I’m better off talking to people who don’t assume hostility from my style of speech, who can talk to me ‘as is’ in a productive manner. Seems to be a number of such people. To the extent that they’re similar to me, they will be annoyed and possibly offended by speech acts which seem aimed at managing their potential hurt feelings over my disagreements with their opinions. But even removing these emotional factors from the equation, my attempts to manage their feelings take time and effort from me, and wastes time and effort for them on issues extraneous to the topic at hand. At best, altering our styles will waste our time, and at worst, annoy the hell out of each other. That’s a cost.
I’m to bear that cost, for what?
To talk to others who find my manner hostile? Should I unilaterally cave to every demand that I change my manner when they say they feel hurt or offended? On a game theoretic basis alone, that seems like a bad idea. I am to be malleable to their preferences. Ok, I willing to look at that.
I have been having discussions on adjusting my speech patterns to avoid impressions of hostility in others. Even came up with an idea that someone thought was a good step forward—say “I disagree” instead of “You’re wrong.”
And them? Are they to be malleable to my preferences? Not that I’ve seen.
Where are the discussions of the “offended or hurt” adjusting their priors to better reflect the reality that “meanies” like me really aren’t here to insult, offend, or demean them? Or even where are the discussions that assume the priors are correct, but look for ways to suck it up and develop a thicker skin to better deal the hateful bastards trying to hurt them?
I don’t see those. What I’ve seen are offended rejections of any suggestion they might work on changing their reactions, by them, and often by those defending them.
Why is change a one way street?
I was the person who said going from “You’re wrong” to “I disagree” was an important step. I’m glad it registered.
Becoming less thin-skinned takes time and sometimes a good bit of work. You don’t know where any particular person is in that process.
You might be in a Pareto’s Law situation—it’s not that you need to avoid offending the most fragile people, a small amount of effort might lead to not offending 85% of thin-skinned people.
Yes, but I didn’t want to finger you as the culprit.
Indeed.
My concern is that some seem to consider it a crime to suggest that this would be a desirable thing, or to suggest that people adjust their inaccurate priors for hostility downwards when interpreting the actions of others.
The nicies want the meanies to try harder to be understood.OK, fine. But if the meanies suggest that the nicies try harder to understand, that’s just one more thing for the nicies to get offended about.
I would note to all the nicies—if LW feels hostile to you, you’ve led a very sheltered existence. I’m from the HItchens party of debate, that prefers a sharp point be embellished with a barb. That’s part of the fun, in the same way that a decleating hit in football is part of the fun. And that’s not even hostility, that’s just style. And that’s a common style.
By my estimate, LW has a very “Just the Facts Ma’am” culture. Going beyond the facts and putting any relish into a debate is rarely done, and frowned on when it happens. Maybe there were nastier times in the long long ago that led to this culture. LW does seem relatively unique in the equal mix of LIbertarians and Progressives.
And you’re right about Pareto’s law too.
FWIW, one of the things that caught my attention about this community, and encouraged me to stick around, was the emphasis on valuing accuracy and precision (which I value) without the “barbs are part of the fun/putting relish into a debate” style you describe here (which I dislike intensely).
There are lots of “nice is more important than true” spaces on the net, and lots of “being unpleasant to people is part of the fun” spaces; and an astonishing number of spaces that are both. A space that manages to even approximate being neither is rare.
I can understand someone disliking the barbs.
Barbs are largely the part of the classical rhetoric that play on biases in the listener. That’s probably true of niceness as well.
And I agree that the Lesswrong tone seems relatively unique, particularly given the broad and general nature of discussion topics, and the variety in political opinions.
One of the good things which contributes to the tone here is people reliably getting credit for saying they’ve changed their mind for some good reason. I can’t think of any other site where that’s in play.
Isn’t it peculiar that most people are otherwise?
Way back when, I remember discussing exactly that point on the Extropians list. In many ways a similar group to here. But some very smart guys were arguing that it was a huge loss of face to admit you were wrong, and better to deny or evade (I’m sure they put it more convincingly than that).
When someone is wrong, graciously admitting and accepting it scores major points with me.
Thinking about it, maybe I can make a better argument for denial. There are two issues, being wrong, and whether one admits being wrong. If admitting being wrong is what largely determines whether you are perceived as being wrong, then denying the error maintains status.
For people driven by social truth, which is likely the majority, truth is scored on attitude, power, authority, popularity, solidarity, fealty, etc. The validity of the arguments don’t matter much. For people driven by epistemic truth, the arguments are what matters, so denying the plain truth of them is seen as a personality defect, while admitting it a virtue.
The thing is, it’s not that the deniers are aliens. I am. I and my kind. For us, in an argument, it’s the facts that matter, and letting other considerations intrude on that is intruding the rules of the normals into the game. That’s largely what this whole thread is about.
One side says we’ll be more effective playing the normals game. It’s a game my kind strongly prefers not to play. Having to behave as normals is ineffective for us, and the opportunity to play by our rules is extremely valuable to us.
Josh Waitzkin’s book The Art of Learning describes his various encounters with unsporting conduct and cheating in chess tournaments and competitive tai chi. He wrote that he’d developed the approach to just work so hard at developing his own skill at the game that he was able to ignore the distractions the opponent was trying to pull and proceed to win anyway. He claimed that the opponents would generally become agitated and careless once they noticed that they couldn’t get any sort of upset out of him.
Discussions aren’t games with rules, but you might still get something out of the idea that social gamesmanship is basically just compensating poor skill with cheating, and you need to work hard enough on your epistemic skills that it won’t stop you even when it does get thrown in your way.
Well, I’d say that social gamesmanship isn’t cheating, it’s playing a different game.
Being very good with your epistemic skills has mileage socially too, and importantly, mileage with people with personal properties you’re more likely concerned about. And refraining from the usual types of social gamesmanship earns you points with those people as well.
I’m actually very fond of being told I was right. (I only figured that out when a friend mentioned that he’s very fond of other people admitting they were wrong.)
It’s true that there’s currently a belief that it’s very bad to tell people they should be less thin-skinned. People generally want a social environment which suits their preferences, and while it’s not likely that anyone will get a total victory, it’s certainly possible to push the balance towards your preferences.
Thin-skinned people are apt to hear a demand that they be thicker-skinned as “You shouldn’t care about the way I keep hurting you.” The more aggressive among them have started shoving back. Interesting times.
IMO when you write, you should be asking yourself: “What’s the worst way someone could interpret this?”, because surely, someone will interpret it that way. And when you read, you should ask yourself: “What’s the nicest way I could interpret this?”, because that’s probably the way they meant it.
Postel’s law FTW!
When dealing with people, habitually searching for only the worst that can happen is a very bad habit, in my experience. It’s a habit I’ve been trying to break. Through availability bias, your world becomes a horrible place. Your priors are distorted toward the bad, and you miss opportunities. Too careful, too risk averse, too distrusting.
I think that’s the right policy, even if it’s not true. It will generally be the more productive assumption—particularly for online forums.
Just work out the cases. Search for everything that can happen. Either a person has basic good will towards you, or they don’t.
If they do, the nice interpretation is likely right, and you understand someone with good will toward you. That makes for a good discussion. Further, if the guy meant it in a nasty way, your response as if he were nice might soften his mood, or not. If it softens, things have at least improved. If not, most observers will likely think him a schmuck, and he is just very unlikely to be a good discussion partner anyway.
If they do have good will, but you assume that it is bad, you’re likely limiting the positive outcomes available with them. If they don’t have good will and you assume they don’t, you have maybe avoided some aggravation and saved yourself some time.
Having worked out the general case, you don’t have to do a de novo analysis each time. Commit to the policy, and blithely move on. Sometimes someone won’t like you. Ok, you knew that was going to happen.
This is what I’ve tried to do in general with my own defensiveness with people. Don’t focus on the worst that a person might do. Try to have an accurate prior on intentions (most people are not con men or mass murderers, and they’re not really out to get me—I’m not that important to them.) Pick a decision based on an analysis of of what their intent and attitudes might be, and the differing outcomes based on your actions.
Most of the analysis applies, except real world encounters carry more serious risks. I live in the Seattle are, which is pretty safe and so real world risks are limited, though I realize not everyone lives in such a safe place, so YMMV.
In general, the best strategy is to act assuming approval and good will, because those situations present the best opportunities.
I previously relayed an anecdote from a book on this: http://lesswrong.com/lw/s0/where_recursive_justification_hits_bottom/4wsn
Ah, but that wasn’t what I meant. I just meant to say that you should be careful when writing, because even when 99%+ of people won’t have any problems with what you write, someone is sure to misinterpret it, if it possibly can be. Communication is hard, and written communication even more so.
I’d say more briefly “someone is sure to misinterpret it”, because it is always possible to do so. There’s going to be a level of misinterpretation no mater how you agonize over what you write.
I agree with you that the underlying good will or lack of it is a crucial factor. I’m still trying to figure out what tends to build good will or damage it.
One problem is, what builds good will with one may erode good will in another. Life is full of trade offs.
“Offended or hurt” doesn’t enter into it. This isn’t about hazy feelings; it’s about hard practical effects of actions: do we accomplish what we want to accomplish?
Let’s say you and your interlocutor disagreed about your intention in saying that they were wrong (about whatever). Your interlocutor believes that your intention was for them to shut up and go away, but actually that wasn’t what you meant at all; you meant to invite more discussion.
They are wrong about you.
And you want them to have a correct belief about you.
But … how can you cause your interlocutor to possess a correct belief about your intention? You could lecture them about how wrong they are to have misinterpreted you. But that won’t work if they will take your lecturing as meaning “shut up and go away” … and may very well do so.
That’s all I’m saying. You can’t force people to understand you, or to want to understand you. If you really want to get your ideas across (because you care about those ideas — not because you’re trying to find people who will easily like you) then you use the try harder which probably involves restating them in a way that doesn’t repel people.
Or … well, you could say that you never really cared about that kind of person’s understanding, and really you never wanted a discussion with that kind of person.
But in that case … they weren’t wrong about you, were they?
There are plenty of people who would be correct in concluding that I would bear them hostility if I knew what they were like.
They would be incorrect to conclude that the priors I assign to that type of person among LW is very high, and incorrect to assume that my asserting that someone is wrong indicates I have concluded the person is that type of person, so that my comment indicates hostile intent.
Perhaps I’ve given you an incorrect impression.
While I have proselytizing tendencies, that’s not my fundamental goal, particularly in a forum disagreement. Given my limited resources of me, my proselytizing attitude is to sing to those with the ears to hear. People who are assuming that I am hostile are not the low hanging fruit in that regard.
But people who assume I am hostile can be perfectly fine partners in a disagreement. In a disagreement, I am primarily hoping to change my own mind, whether in correcting an error, or clarifying hazy positions of my own. They might even be better, in that they won’t cut me slack when I am sloppy. People who dislike you can be perfectly useful in a discussion. The enemy of my enemy (our ignorance) is my friend.
But I find it strange that you think I should find it hopelessly futile to try to change a person’s assumptions about my intent, but a productive use of my time to try to change their minds about some other fact of reality.