While I understand that this is an effective strategy, I don’t understand what makes people choose not to respond at all rather than just saying “I’m not interested.”
A possibility I’m considering is that I have an abnormally large desire for explicit closure. This also fits with my enjoyment of (or at least lack of being bothered by) anvilicious political points and technical digressions in science fiction.
Regarding your desire for explicit closure: I don’t personally feel that explicit closure is actually possible in most cases. I will give you my personal “case studies” to help illustrate my thought process, since I seem to be the kind of person you don’t understand.
I had a friend who was flakey and unreliable. I stopped contacting and responding to him after we agreed to meet somewhere and he never showed up, and gave no explanation. My thought process, insofar as I explicitly reasoned it out, was: The emotional cost (and “status” cost) of further incidences like this is greater than any conceivable value this friendship may have had. I do not want to repair the friendship, so there is no point in telling this person what they did wrong. I have no realistic hope that they will amend their pattern of behavior. So, I will terminate all contact without explanation.
I’ve had at least a couple of friends with whom interactions became increasingly argumentative and critical and decreasingly positive and fun who I just stopped responding to because I could think of no affirmative reason to respond.
I had a friend who I discovered had been very deceptive towards me. In this case I told her why I was terminating contact and then terminated contact. Frankly the only reason I told her the reason was because I was angry and wanted to hurt her feelings. My normal impulse would have been to just “disappear.”
It is interesting that both you (magfrump) and I seem to both be committing Typical Mind fallacies in how we expect other people to react to our actions. I see ceasing contact without explanation as the default course of action, and you see providing an explanation as the default course of action, and we misunderstand other people who have different default responses. I see now that my policy in the past has not been rational. Whether I am capable of meaningfully updating on this is a different question.
It is interesting that both you (magfrump) and I seem to both be committing Typical Mind fallacies
This is kind of the point of the whole thread :P
And while I, personally, am annoyed by lack of closure, there have been numerous practical reasons not to explain oneself which are both understandable to me and quite rational. Though if you know the person will take your response in good faith, I would (acausally via symmetry with similar agents) appreciate that.
There are some people I don’t engage with because I don’t expect my engagement to leave either of us better off than my non-engagement.
There are many people I don’t engage with because I don’t expect their response to my engagement to leave me better off than their response to my non-engagement and I don’t much care about how it leaves them.
The sets of circumstances that leads me to those expectations and those values are many and varied, and I don’t know how I could begin to summarize the general case.
There are some people I engage with regularly, either because I expect doing so to leave us better off (for example, because I ordinarily enjoy interacting with them, or we can learn something from one another, or etc.) or because I’ve gotten into the habit and have not yet really noticed that our interactions are no longer providing value, or because I fear the costs of breaking contact are more than I want to pay in the short term despite probably leaving me better off in the long term.
Again, the set of circumstances that can lead me to those expectations are many and varied.
Ah, right. Sorry, I lost sight of your original context.
Hm.
There are people I’ve disengaged with, to whom I’ve never announced disengagement, because I expect the costs of that announcement to be high. For example, I expect them to respond by demanding further explanations for my decision, and then respond to that by explaining why my reasons for disengaging aren’t actually justified, and so on and so forth.
There are people I’ve disengaged with, to whom I’ve never announced disengagement, because it has seemed rude. That is, quietly ending an interaction is one thing, but saying “I’m not going to interact with you any more” has felt (in those contexts) like adding insult to injury.
So, turning those around… I guess the thing that would cause me to respond in this sense is being asked for such an explanation, in a context that makes me confident that the explanation will be accepted. (E.g., “Do you want to continue this conversation? It’s fine if you don’t, I’m just trying to establish whether we’re having a very slow conversation or not having a conversation at all.”)
I think some of it is a fear that the other person will take being told “I don’t want contact with you” as evidence that the person is still on speaking terms with them.
While I understand that this is an effective strategy, I don’t understand what makes people choose not to respond at all rather than just saying “I’m not interested.”
A possibility I’m considering is that I have an abnormally large desire for explicit closure. This also fits with my enjoyment of (or at least lack of being bothered by) anvilicious political points and technical digressions in science fiction.
Regarding your desire for explicit closure: I don’t personally feel that explicit closure is actually possible in most cases. I will give you my personal “case studies” to help illustrate my thought process, since I seem to be the kind of person you don’t understand.
I had a friend who was flakey and unreliable. I stopped contacting and responding to him after we agreed to meet somewhere and he never showed up, and gave no explanation. My thought process, insofar as I explicitly reasoned it out, was: The emotional cost (and “status” cost) of further incidences like this is greater than any conceivable value this friendship may have had. I do not want to repair the friendship, so there is no point in telling this person what they did wrong. I have no realistic hope that they will amend their pattern of behavior. So, I will terminate all contact without explanation.
I’ve had at least a couple of friends with whom interactions became increasingly argumentative and critical and decreasingly positive and fun who I just stopped responding to because I could think of no affirmative reason to respond.
I had a friend who I discovered had been very deceptive towards me. In this case I told her why I was terminating contact and then terminated contact. Frankly the only reason I told her the reason was because I was angry and wanted to hurt her feelings. My normal impulse would have been to just “disappear.”
It is interesting that both you (magfrump) and I seem to both be committing Typical Mind fallacies in how we expect other people to react to our actions. I see ceasing contact without explanation as the default course of action, and you see providing an explanation as the default course of action, and we misunderstand other people who have different default responses. I see now that my policy in the past has not been rational. Whether I am capable of meaningfully updating on this is a different question.
This is kind of the point of the whole thread :P
And while I, personally, am annoyed by lack of closure, there have been numerous practical reasons not to explain oneself which are both understandable to me and quite rational. Though if you know the person will take your response in good faith, I would (acausally via symmetry with similar agents) appreciate that.
There are some people I don’t engage with because I don’t expect my engagement to leave either of us better off than my non-engagement.
There are many people I don’t engage with because I don’t expect their response to my engagement to leave me better off than their response to my non-engagement and I don’t much care about how it leaves them.
The sets of circumstances that leads me to those expectations and those values are many and varied, and I don’t know how I could begin to summarize the general case.
What set of circumstances (or can you think of a set of circumstances that) would cause you TO respond?
There are some people I engage with regularly, either because I expect doing so to leave us better off (for example, because I ordinarily enjoy interacting with them, or we can learn something from one another, or etc.) or because I’ve gotten into the habit and have not yet really noticed that our interactions are no longer providing value, or because I fear the costs of breaking contact are more than I want to pay in the short term despite probably leaving me better off in the long term.
Again, the set of circumstances that can lead me to those expectations are many and varied.
I don’t mean “to respond regularly” I mean “to make some statement about ceasing interaction.”
Ah, right. Sorry, I lost sight of your original context.
Hm.
There are people I’ve disengaged with, to whom I’ve never announced disengagement, because I expect the costs of that announcement to be high. For example, I expect them to respond by demanding further explanations for my decision, and then respond to that by explaining why my reasons for disengaging aren’t actually justified, and so on and so forth.
There are people I’ve disengaged with, to whom I’ve never announced disengagement, because it has seemed rude. That is, quietly ending an interaction is one thing, but saying “I’m not going to interact with you any more” has felt (in those contexts) like adding insult to injury.
So, turning those around… I guess the thing that would cause me to respond in this sense is being asked for such an explanation, in a context that makes me confident that the explanation will be accepted. (E.g., “Do you want to continue this conversation? It’s fine if you don’t, I’m just trying to establish whether we’re having a very slow conversation or not having a conversation at all.”)
I think some of it is a fear that the other person will take being told “I don’t want contact with you” as evidence that the person is still on speaking terms with them.