I don’t think that explicit communications automatically leads to more abuse.
It doesn’t lead to more abuse among people who didn’t want to abuse others in the first place. But for people who already wanted to abuse others, this creates additional plausible deniability; it allows them to shift the blame to the victim: “hey, I never promised not to do X, and they never asked me not to do X, so it’s okay by the rules of your group, right?”, where X is some rare ugly behavior that you automatically expect nice people not to do, but it doesn’t come to your mind when you explicitly negotiate the boundaries.
To make an analogy; in legal situations it is somewhat expected that people cannot make perfect contracts, so there are two helps. First, the law provides “templates” for your contracts; you start your contract by saying “this is a contract based on law X” which means that the law X provides defaults in case something unexpected happens. For example, you make a contract with me that you will pay me €10 today, and tomorrow I will mow your lawn. I take the money and spend them on beer, then get hit by a car and die. What now? Are my relatives required to return you the money? Can they keep the money and mow your lawn instead of me, even if they are e.g. much worse lawnmowers? Or are you simply supposed to accept the loss? Our mutual agreement didn’t include this possibility, because neither of us expected it. (That’s the weakness of the “tell culture”: anything you forget to mention explicitly is undefined.) In legal situations, basing our contract on law X means that for weird situations we didn’t mention explicitly, there is a chance the law X provides an answer. (Analogically, in the “guess culture”, all relations are automatically based on the cultural expectations.)
Second, in legal system some laws can override contracts. Libertarians sometimes complain about it, but the idea is that if you sign a 200-page agreement with e.g. your phone company, they cannot in the long and barely legible text cleverly hide a clause that e.g. if you are late at payment, you become their slave. Sorry, the constitution says slavery is illegal, the part of the contract is automatically invalid. This prevents abuse in situations where you deal with someone who is either much better than you at law generally, or can spend more computing power constructing the specific contract than you can spend analyzing it. This prevents you from being exploited too much by people with more computing power.
I think that in real life, no matter how much “tell culture” is our applause light, we actually hold a lot of unspoken assumptions. To give a sex-related example, if one party says “okay, let’s have sex, but only with a condom”, it is automatically assumed that the other party didn’t intentionally pierce the condom, even if such assumption is never communicated explicitly (and I’d bet it almost never is), and it would be quite reasonable to blame the party that pierced the condom, even if they could defend themselves that technically they followed the rules of the “tell culture” to the letter.
It doesn’t lead to more abuse among people who didn’t want to abuse others in the first place. But for people who already wanted to abuse others, this creates additional plausible deniability; it allows them to shift the blame to the victim: “hey, I never promised not to do X, and they never asked me not to do X, so it’s okay by the rules of your group, right?”, where X is some rare ugly behavior that you automatically expect nice people not to do, but it doesn’t come to your mind when you explicitly negotiate the boundaries.
When it comes to physical contact “ask culture” doesn’t mean it’s okay for me to touch a woman’s private parts unless she asks me not to touch them. It generally means that instead of guessing whether or not I’m allowed to touch, I have to ask whether I’m allowed to touch.
and it would be quite reasonable to blame the party that pierced the condom, even if they could defend themselves that technically they followed the rules of the “tell culture” to the letter.
I don’t think any community that runs on tell culture or ask culture would in this case suggest that’s okay to pierce the condom.
It seems to me like you are arguing against a strawman.
In tell culture withholding relevant information that the other person needs would be a violation of the tell standards.
By the way, I find it amusing that on some level this whole website is about how to have the “tell culture” with a superhuman artificial intelligence. And how difficult it is to consent to the right things.
When it comes to physical contact “ask culture” doesn’t mean it’s okay for me to touch a woman’s private parts unless she asks me not to touch them.
By unspoken assumptions I mean something like this: Is it okay if you afterwards write a blog with detailed descriptions of the sex you had? Is it okay if you simultaneously date her sister / mother / daughter without telling her? (Let’s assume that your explicit agreement was “each of us can have other partners, no need to tell each other”, but she absolutely didn’t expect it could be anyone in her family.) Is it okay if you afterwards tell her that you had sex with her just to win a public bet on a prediction market? Neither of these things violate the explicit agreement you had.
In tell culture withholding relevant information that the other person needs would be a violation of the tell standards.
And how exactly would the “information that the other person needs” be determined, without some cultural assumption? Is it okay if I forget to mention that I am a Sagittarius, or a 1⁄64 black person, or a trans woman, or that I voted for Trump?
Let’s assume that your explicit agreement was “each of us can have other partners, no need to tell each other”
That’s not how an agreement of someone who practices tell culture looks like. It starts with the fact that in tell culture you usually don’t make agreement not to tell each other things because both participants value exchange of information.
Secondly oeople in guess culture might have an agreement that boils down to a single sentence but people who practice tell culture usually speak more about the expectations that they have.
And how exactly would the “information that the other person needs” be determined, without some cultural assumption?
I haven’t seen anybody who advocated that one should completely ignore cultural assumptions. Ask culture generally means, that you are allowed to ask for something like writing a blog post with detailed descriptions of the sex you had but it in no way implies that you can simply write the post because the other person hasn’t explicitly asked you not to write the post.
For example, you make a contract with me that you will pay me €10 today, and tomorrow I will mow your lawn. I take the money and spend them on beer, then get hit by a car and die. What now? Are my relatives required to return you the money? Can they keep the money and mow your lawn instead of me, even if they are e.g. much worse lawnmowers? Or are you simply supposed to accept the loss?
(Not really on topic, but FWIW my intuition tells me that the person who was driving the car that killed you now owes me €10 or however much is needed for me to hire somebody else to mow my lawn as well as you would have, whichever is more.)
“okay, let’s have sex, but only with a condom”, it is automatically assumed that the other party didn’t intentionally pierce the condom, even if such assumption is never communicated explicitly
I’d say that a pierced condom is no longer a condom, so that does technically violate the rules.
It doesn’t lead to more abuse among people who didn’t want to abuse others in the first place. But for people who already wanted to abuse others, this creates additional plausible deniability; it allows them to shift the blame to the victim: “hey, I never promised not to do X, and they never asked me not to do X, so it’s okay by the rules of your group, right?”, where X is some rare ugly behavior that you automatically expect nice people not to do, but it doesn’t come to your mind when you explicitly negotiate the boundaries.
To make an analogy; in legal situations it is somewhat expected that people cannot make perfect contracts, so there are two helps. First, the law provides “templates” for your contracts; you start your contract by saying “this is a contract based on law X” which means that the law X provides defaults in case something unexpected happens. For example, you make a contract with me that you will pay me €10 today, and tomorrow I will mow your lawn. I take the money and spend them on beer, then get hit by a car and die. What now? Are my relatives required to return you the money? Can they keep the money and mow your lawn instead of me, even if they are e.g. much worse lawnmowers? Or are you simply supposed to accept the loss? Our mutual agreement didn’t include this possibility, because neither of us expected it. (That’s the weakness of the “tell culture”: anything you forget to mention explicitly is undefined.) In legal situations, basing our contract on law X means that for weird situations we didn’t mention explicitly, there is a chance the law X provides an answer. (Analogically, in the “guess culture”, all relations are automatically based on the cultural expectations.)
Second, in legal system some laws can override contracts. Libertarians sometimes complain about it, but the idea is that if you sign a 200-page agreement with e.g. your phone company, they cannot in the long and barely legible text cleverly hide a clause that e.g. if you are late at payment, you become their slave. Sorry, the constitution says slavery is illegal, the part of the contract is automatically invalid. This prevents abuse in situations where you deal with someone who is either much better than you at law generally, or can spend more computing power constructing the specific contract than you can spend analyzing it. This prevents you from being exploited too much by people with more computing power.
I think that in real life, no matter how much “tell culture” is our applause light, we actually hold a lot of unspoken assumptions. To give a sex-related example, if one party says “okay, let’s have sex, but only with a condom”, it is automatically assumed that the other party didn’t intentionally pierce the condom, even if such assumption is never communicated explicitly (and I’d bet it almost never is), and it would be quite reasonable to blame the party that pierced the condom, even if they could defend themselves that technically they followed the rules of the “tell culture” to the letter.
When it comes to physical contact “ask culture” doesn’t mean it’s okay for me to touch a woman’s private parts unless she asks me not to touch them. It generally means that instead of guessing whether or not I’m allowed to touch, I have to ask whether I’m allowed to touch.
I don’t think any community that runs on tell culture or ask culture would in this case suggest that’s okay to pierce the condom. It seems to me like you are arguing against a strawman.
In tell culture withholding relevant information that the other person needs would be a violation of the tell standards.
By the way, I find it amusing that on some level this whole website is about how to have the “tell culture” with a superhuman artificial intelligence. And how difficult it is to consent to the right things.
By unspoken assumptions I mean something like this: Is it okay if you afterwards write a blog with detailed descriptions of the sex you had? Is it okay if you simultaneously date her sister / mother / daughter without telling her? (Let’s assume that your explicit agreement was “each of us can have other partners, no need to tell each other”, but she absolutely didn’t expect it could be anyone in her family.) Is it okay if you afterwards tell her that you had sex with her just to win a public bet on a prediction market? Neither of these things violate the explicit agreement you had.
And how exactly would the “information that the other person needs” be determined, without some cultural assumption? Is it okay if I forget to mention that I am a Sagittarius, or a 1⁄64 black person, or a trans woman, or that I voted for Trump?
That’s not how an agreement of someone who practices tell culture looks like. It starts with the fact that in tell culture you usually don’t make agreement not to tell each other things because both participants value exchange of information.
Secondly oeople in guess culture might have an agreement that boils down to a single sentence but people who practice tell culture usually speak more about the expectations that they have.
I haven’t seen anybody who advocated that one should completely ignore cultural assumptions. Ask culture generally means, that you are allowed to ask for something like writing a blog post with detailed descriptions of the sex you had but it in no way implies that you can simply write the post because the other person hasn’t explicitly asked you not to write the post.
(Not really on topic, but FWIW my intuition tells me that the person who was driving the car that killed you now owes me €10 or however much is needed for me to hire somebody else to mow my lawn as well as you would have, whichever is more.)
I’d say that a pierced condom is no longer a condom, so that does technically violate the rules.