I’m frequently a victim of “your needs are uncommon, therefore no one else has to accommodate them” type reasoning. A compromise is necessary: I can’t demand that the people around me not eat any mint candy (much less that everyone stop using mint toothpaste lest I encounter them an hour later) just because the smell is intolerable to me. Slightly more common needs (that people not invade my personal space) or needs that are supported by societal distaste (that people not smoke cigarettes in my school buildings) get accommodated. In my case, I know these things are at least partly hardwired—oversensitivity to sensory stimuli is par for the course with Asperger’s—but I haven’t noticed anyone get more sympathetic to this sort of thing when I so inform them unless they’ve been my friend for a long time (I think non-friends assume I’m making it up to get my way). Even with my friends, I suspect it’s because my long-term friends assume anything I don’t like must be a consequence of my wiring. I’ve stopped bothering to explain that my dislike of ginger doesn’t mean anything except that I don’t like ginger.
There’s a danger, in accommodating preferences because they are hardwired, a) that these preferences will seem completely intractable, with nothing on the part of the annoyed to be done and all the accommodation to be done by the annoyer; and/or b) that people resistant to the idea of preferences being hardwired will conclude from the use of this reasoning that if they don’t have to believe that preferences are hardwired, then they don’t have to take responsibility for accommodating others. The former is dangerous because—in the majority of cases—the annoyed can do something about the annoyance. It’s rare that there is a noise next door so loud that earplugs will accomplish nothing, from which follows that to eliminate the annoyance, the noise doesn’t necessarily have to be eliminated, just reduced enough that earplugs will do the rest. The second is dangerous because people who won’t accommodate anyone else are… well… annoying, and I don’t want to live in a society with those people.
I’m frequently a victim of “your needs are uncommon, therefore no one else has to accommodate them” type reasoning.
You’re also a victimizer of that type of reasoning too.
I actually don’t mean this as a criticism (not completely, anyway …) It just suggests to me that, per Yvain, we will all, to some extent, fall on both sides of that reasoning, depending on the issue, and we should watch for where we trivialize others’ concerns.
I don’t think that dredging up Alicorn’s comment from a distant thread in order to accuse her of hypocrisy adds anything to this exchange. If you think that a claim of uncommon needs in finding romantic partners is germane to that discussion, it would be significantly more productive and less antagonistic to link to this thread over there.
Did you read to the final paragraph? The point wasn’t to accuse Alicorn of hypocrisy (although that was an excellent example of the general point), nor was it to point out my unusual situation (which I already did in that other thread).
The point was that people who believe that their uncommon needs are not properly accomodated do the exact same thing to others and we should account for this in our disputes with others. I did not mean to imply Alicorn was somehow alone in this double standard, and I apologize if I made it seem that way.
Okay, here goes (and my remark applies to several of your comments but the linked one was representative):
If you do not know any women, something is wrong. It either means that (1) you don’t know anyone at all, in which case you should take care of that before “find a girlfriend” reaches the top of your list of priorities, or it means that (2) none of the men you know have introduced you to any of the women they know, which probably means something needs to be addressed on your end too, or it means that (3) the men you know themselves do not know any women, in which case something is wrong with them
There, first you identified how my situation was strange in one of three ways. Then, you listed things I should do to adapt:
If you know some women, but all the women you know are all taken or for some reason unacceptable, the odds are good that they know women who are neither taken nor unacceptable. Behave in a decent manner …
There’s nothing wrong with attempting to help with suggestions—except for their grounding in ignorance of my situation—but you are quite clearly saying that no one else should have done anything else accomodative on their end.
Therefore, you both claimed that my needs are unusual, and no one else needed to accomodate them.
Somehow, I don’t think saying “You’re doing everything right, your lack of success is the fault of misbehaving others, and I’ll be sure to tell them so if I ever meet the people in your social circle” would have been germane or helpful. Is it possible that people in your social circle aren’t giving you enough of a chance or giving you enough leeway for your quirks? Sure. That’s totally possible. I can’t do anything about that, so I didn’t focus on it.
Secondly, I made no claims about your needs. I made statements of advice conditional on who you might or might not be acquainted with (I identified the relevant and mutually exclusive categories as: nobody, only men who haven’t introduced you to any women, only men who don’t know women, or some women who you find unacceptable). The only “need” that was involved was your interest in finding women who you could date, which, given the thread’s context, was hardly unusual—and I never said it was!
The only “need” that was involved was your interest in finding women who you could date, which, given the thread’s context, was hardly unusual—and I never said it was!
The unusual need was not interest in finding women, but rather, interest in finding women while not having the superabundant resources you falsely assume everyone has. Remember, your original advice was basically, “Hey, just try your luck with one of the million women who have prefiltered you and see who you’re spark-y with.”
a.k.a. “You can’t find any bread? Well, why not just draw down your cake stockpiles?”
You didn’t seem to think that people like me could exist—the very same unfortunate premise people treat you with.
Therefore, you have the resources to take my advice.
Silas has the resources to use your advice same as you, just like Yvain can deal with the neighbor’s noise same as Bill.
As I understand your advice, you are suggesting that the internet is a resource for Silas to either meet people to date, or meet friends who may later introduce him to people to date. There are multiple problems with this syllogism.
It assumes that it is equally easy for males and females to meet people from the internet. There is no reason to believe that this is true, since people consider men more dangerous and like women more. If the reason is for dating, then it it’s going to be even harder for men to meet women online than the reverse. As for online dating websites, they are relatively oversaturated with men and still require a baseline of style and interpersonal skills.
Furthermore, it assumes that the people who will meet men from online are the same as the types of people who will meet women from online. But what if it is difficult for Silas to find women to meet him from online even as new friends, and then only men who want to meet Silas from online have similar challenges and can’t introduce him to many people? We must consider that:
P( person will introduce Silas to potential dates | person meets Silas from online ) < P( person will know potential dates for you | person meets you from online )
Due to these assumption, your posting contains the exact problem observed in the article, where Person A doesn’t think that a certain phenomenon is a problem (whether it be neighbor noise, or meeting people from the internet), and assumes that Person B shouldn’t find it to be a problem either.
I understand why you say that the internet is a resource for expanding one’s social circle, yet I suggest that you consider that the usefulness of this resource may depend on one’s personality and gender, or on an interaction between the two. In general, I would caution people against assumptions that some challenge in dating or relationships is manageable just because it is manageable for people of their gender and personality; at least, any such claims should show knowledge of gender differences in difficulty of particular challenges and how these interact with personality, compensation for biasing factors, or require some empirical evidence that goes beyond individual experience.
Thank you for your thoroughness and clarity. It is possible I was overgeneralizing; I consider myself to be below average in overall social skills, but it is possible that the mere fact that I’m female more than compensates for that deficit. However, I will note that I and many people (including other women) I do know are quite willing to accept online social approaches from people of any gender, as long as there’s something to talk about besides inane, content-free chatroom nonsense. (Examples: fan e-mails or IMs on creative works—both to and from me—have led to extended friendships, and I have a lot of friends of both genders from message boards.)
I consider myself to be below average in overall social skills, but it is possible that the mere fact that I’m female more than compensates for that deficit.
It’s not only possible, but, from everything I understand, very likely. And probably to a far higher degree than you realize.
You’re seriously suggesting that when SilasBarta complained about not having a good procedure for meeting women, your response should have been “The Internet”?!
wow. I hope you don’t write software specifications.
By nit-picking the details here you’re missing the point: that you’re just as quick to write off someone else’s problems as unimportant/easily-solved as others are with your problems (and that this isn’t just something you do but something that people often do).
There’s nothing wrong with attempting to help with suggestions—except for their grounding in ignorance of my situation—but you are quite clearly saying that no one else should have done anything else accomodative on their end.
The quote quite clearly does not say that, which is an oversite on Alicorn’s part and probably the advice most applicable to what little of your situation was presented in the context.
Nobody else should have done or should do anything else to accomodate your reproductive drives on their end.
Once you acknowledge that much the rest becomes simple. Just absorb some relevantresources then devote (say) four hours a day for a year to the mating game. Assuming you have rudimentary intelligence (obviously) and a face (I assume...?) then the chance of success is relatively high.
-Claim that no one else should be doing or should have done anything different to accomodate me? Check.
Alicorn didn’t comment on what other people should or should not do to accomodate you. The emphasis was on what you could do, which is far more useful. Dating is not a situation in which others can be expected to accomodate you.
with apologies, it gets a bit annoying constantly getting dating advice that assumes away the most critical problems, and I can’t be the only one in this position.
If you do not know any women, something is wrong.
SilasBarta claimed that he has special needs that are not being accommodated by the local dating advice. Alicorn claimed that there is something wrong with SilasBarta, so there is no reason for anyone to accomodate him.
Alternate reading:
SilasBarta claimed that he has special needs that are not being accommodated by the local dating advice. Alicorn claimed that there is something wrong with SilasBarta, and suggested ways to fix it so that the local dating advice could be used.
I made a series of “if” statements. I don’t know who SilasBarta knows. I claim that something is wrong (and not necessarily “with him”) if he knows exactly zero women. If he knows a nonzero number of women, the statement doesn’t apply.
I’m frequently a victim of “your needs are uncommon, therefore no one else has to accommodate them” type reasoning. A compromise is necessary: I can’t demand that the people around me not eat any mint candy (much less that everyone stop using mint toothpaste lest I encounter them an hour later) just because the smell is intolerable to me. Slightly more common needs (that people not invade my personal space) or needs that are supported by societal distaste (that people not smoke cigarettes in my school buildings) get accommodated. In my case, I know these things are at least partly hardwired—oversensitivity to sensory stimuli is par for the course with Asperger’s—but I haven’t noticed anyone get more sympathetic to this sort of thing when I so inform them unless they’ve been my friend for a long time (I think non-friends assume I’m making it up to get my way). Even with my friends, I suspect it’s because my long-term friends assume anything I don’t like must be a consequence of my wiring. I’ve stopped bothering to explain that my dislike of ginger doesn’t mean anything except that I don’t like ginger.
There’s a danger, in accommodating preferences because they are hardwired, a) that these preferences will seem completely intractable, with nothing on the part of the annoyed to be done and all the accommodation to be done by the annoyer; and/or b) that people resistant to the idea of preferences being hardwired will conclude from the use of this reasoning that if they don’t have to believe that preferences are hardwired, then they don’t have to take responsibility for accommodating others. The former is dangerous because—in the majority of cases—the annoyed can do something about the annoyance. It’s rare that there is a noise next door so loud that earplugs will accomplish nothing, from which follows that to eliminate the annoyance, the noise doesn’t necessarily have to be eliminated, just reduced enough that earplugs will do the rest. The second is dangerous because people who won’t accommodate anyone else are… well… annoying, and I don’t want to live in a society with those people.
Not to sound vindictive, but …
You’re also a victimizer of that type of reasoning too.
I actually don’t mean this as a criticism (not completely, anyway …) It just suggests to me that, per Yvain, we will all, to some extent, fall on both sides of that reasoning, depending on the issue, and we should watch for where we trivialize others’ concerns.
I don’t think that dredging up Alicorn’s comment from a distant thread in order to accuse her of hypocrisy adds anything to this exchange. If you think that a claim of uncommon needs in finding romantic partners is germane to that discussion, it would be significantly more productive and less antagonistic to link to this thread over there.
Did you read to the final paragraph? The point wasn’t to accuse Alicorn of hypocrisy (although that was an excellent example of the general point), nor was it to point out my unusual situation (which I already did in that other thread).
The point was that people who believe that their uncommon needs are not properly accomodated do the exact same thing to others and we should account for this in our disputes with others. I did not mean to imply Alicorn was somehow alone in this double standard, and I apologize if I made it seem that way.
It’s not at all obvious to me how that comment is an instance of that reasoning.
-Claim that my needs are unusual? Check.
-Claim that no one else should be doing or should have done anything different to accomodate me? Check.
Implied connection of those views? Check.
-Obviousness of how linked comment and surrounding is an instance of quoted reasoning? Check.
-Annoyingness of this style of response? Check.
You haven’t pointed out where in the comment I commit these behaviors, you’ve merely restated the kind of reasoning you’ve already accused me of.
Okay, here goes (and my remark applies to several of your comments but the linked one was representative):
There, first you identified how my situation was strange in one of three ways. Then, you listed things I should do to adapt:
There’s nothing wrong with attempting to help with suggestions—except for their grounding in ignorance of my situation—but you are quite clearly saying that no one else should have done anything else accomodative on their end.
Therefore, you both claimed that my needs are unusual, and no one else needed to accomodate them.
Somehow, I don’t think saying “You’re doing everything right, your lack of success is the fault of misbehaving others, and I’ll be sure to tell them so if I ever meet the people in your social circle” would have been germane or helpful. Is it possible that people in your social circle aren’t giving you enough of a chance or giving you enough leeway for your quirks? Sure. That’s totally possible. I can’t do anything about that, so I didn’t focus on it.
Secondly, I made no claims about your needs. I made statements of advice conditional on who you might or might not be acquainted with (I identified the relevant and mutually exclusive categories as: nobody, only men who haven’t introduced you to any women, only men who don’t know women, or some women who you find unacceptable). The only “need” that was involved was your interest in finding women who you could date, which, given the thread’s context, was hardly unusual—and I never said it was!
The unusual need was not interest in finding women, but rather, interest in finding women while not having the superabundant resources you falsely assume everyone has. Remember, your original advice was basically, “Hey, just try your luck with one of the million women who have prefiltered you and see who you’re spark-y with.”
a.k.a. “You can’t find any bread? Well, why not just draw down your cake stockpiles?”
You didn’t seem to think that people like me could exist—the very same unfortunate premise people treat you with.
I have met a majority of my close personal friends on the Internet.
Therefore, it is possible to meet people on the Internet.
You have the Internet.
Therefore, you have the resources to take my advice.
I thought that the “you have the Internet” step of the syllogism went without saying, considering our venue.
Silas has the resources to use your advice same as you, just like Yvain can deal with the neighbor’s noise same as Bill.
As I understand your advice, you are suggesting that the internet is a resource for Silas to either meet people to date, or meet friends who may later introduce him to people to date. There are multiple problems with this syllogism.
It assumes that it is equally easy for males and females to meet people from the internet. There is no reason to believe that this is true, since people consider men more dangerous and like women more. If the reason is for dating, then it it’s going to be even harder for men to meet women online than the reverse. As for online dating websites, they are relatively oversaturated with men and still require a baseline of style and interpersonal skills.
Furthermore, it assumes that the people who will meet men from online are the same as the types of people who will meet women from online. But what if it is difficult for Silas to find women to meet him from online even as new friends, and then only men who want to meet Silas from online have similar challenges and can’t introduce him to many people? We must consider that:
P( person will introduce Silas to potential dates | person meets Silas from online ) < P( person will know potential dates for you | person meets you from online )
Due to these assumption, your posting contains the exact problem observed in the article, where Person A doesn’t think that a certain phenomenon is a problem (whether it be neighbor noise, or meeting people from the internet), and assumes that Person B shouldn’t find it to be a problem either.
I understand why you say that the internet is a resource for expanding one’s social circle, yet I suggest that you consider that the usefulness of this resource may depend on one’s personality and gender, or on an interaction between the two. In general, I would caution people against assumptions that some challenge in dating or relationships is manageable just because it is manageable for people of their gender and personality; at least, any such claims should show knowledge of gender differences in difficulty of particular challenges and how these interact with personality, compensation for biasing factors, or require some empirical evidence that goes beyond individual experience.
Thank you for your thoroughness and clarity. It is possible I was overgeneralizing; I consider myself to be below average in overall social skills, but it is possible that the mere fact that I’m female more than compensates for that deficit. However, I will note that I and many people (including other women) I do know are quite willing to accept online social approaches from people of any gender, as long as there’s something to talk about besides inane, content-free chatroom nonsense. (Examples: fan e-mails or IMs on creative works—both to and from me—have led to extended friendships, and I have a lot of friends of both genders from message boards.)
It’s not only possible, but, from everything I understand, very likely. And probably to a far higher degree than you realize.
I agree. Having your friends introduce you to new friends is not to be taken for granted.
I can’t thank you enough for stating all of that so clearly and diplomatically, Hugh.
Great link—I hadn’t seen this essay.
Does anyone know what Baumeister means, though, when he says the following?
You’re seriously suggesting that when SilasBarta complained about not having a good procedure for meeting women, your response should have been “The Internet”?!
wow. I hope you don’t write software specifications.
By nit-picking the details here you’re missing the point: that you’re just as quick to write off someone else’s problems as unimportant/easily-solved as others are with your problems (and that this isn’t just something you do but something that people often do).
That’s not exactly the weak point in your syllogism...
What is, then, the weak point in my syllogism? If it’s that no one you meet on the Internet likes you… I doubt you want my advice about that.
The quote quite clearly does not say that, which is an oversite on Alicorn’s part and probably the advice most applicable to what little of your situation was presented in the context.
Nobody else should have done or should do anything else to accomodate your reproductive drives on their end.
Once you acknowledge that much the rest becomes simple. Just absorb some relevant resources then devote (say) four hours a day for a year to the mating game. Assuming you have rudimentary intelligence (obviously) and a face (I assume...?) then the chance of success is relatively high.
No, if anything the reverse claim was made.
Alicorn didn’t comment on what other people should or should not do to accomodate you. The emphasis was on what you could do, which is far more useful. Dating is not a situation in which others can be expected to accomodate you.
SilasBarta claimed that he has special needs that are not being accommodated by the local dating advice. Alicorn claimed that there is something wrong with SilasBarta, so there is no reason for anyone to accomodate him.
Alternate reading:
SilasBarta claimed that he has special needs that are not being accommodated by the local dating advice. Alicorn claimed that there is something wrong with SilasBarta, and suggested ways to fix it so that the local dating advice could be used.
I made a series of “if” statements. I don’t know who SilasBarta knows. I claim that something is wrong (and not necessarily “with him”) if he knows exactly zero women. If he knows a nonzero number of women, the statement doesn’t apply.
Okay, this is probably getting out of hand, but it was obvious even at the time that I didn’t “know zero women”.
Yes, Alicorn, it sure sucks when people don’t understand your situation, doesn’t it?